Chapter Two - 'The Letters'...........(title credit to Barbara Hegarty!)

Right. So. 

I left here yesterday and posted a link on Facebook to the blog on Grandad’s letter to Mam for her 21^st. My lovely cousin, Lisa Connolly, daughter of Mam’s sister – Norah, read the blog and my comment on FB that I had nothing with my mother’s writing on it.

 Lisa informed me she had a letter Mammy wrote her when Lisa was living in San Francisco. The letter is dated March 14^th 1991. Six days before Mammy died.  When Lisa read the letter in San Francisco Mammy was dead, and Lisa read it in the company of Phyllis Glynn, a great friend of Mam’s, who had travelled to SF to spend time with her son.

Lisa couldn’t rest easy after she told me about the letter. My excitement was palpable on FB. And an excited Evelyn is an unstoppable force of Nature!  Up into the attic with my lovely, lovely Lisa and she retrieved the letter. Read it. Bawled for all that was lost. She told me to P.M. her my address. I told her not to post it, I was terrified anything would happen to it. I had to have it, to hold Mammy between my fingers again.

I couldn’t sleep, so pottered around the house – a little writing, a little reading, a lot of thinking. 

When the clock reached 7.30 a.m. I hopped into the car and drove the twenty odd miles to Lisa’s house, much of it down a winding country road (where bloody truckers don’t think the ‘dip your headlights’ rule applies to them). When I got near the house I realised it was probably a bit too early to have mad relatives dropping in for breakfast so I pulled into a service station and checked Facebook to see if there was anyone stirring in Lida’s house. Yes! She ‘liked’ a post of mine so she was up. I drove the last few miles and rang the doorbell. Lisa has three gorgeous children all early to mid teens and three magnificent LARGE dogs. I had them all as wound up as meself!

Lisa produced ‘the letter’ and let me hold it. She forbid me to open and read it until we both had a cup of tea in front of us.

Mammy’s sloping left-handed writing  on the envelope. I sniffed it. I could SMELL her! The unmistakeable smell of  talc. Of love. Of caring. Oh Sweet Jesus Tonight!

I could feel her energy between my fingers. Lisa’s daughters were going mad. The school bus was due and they weren’t going to get to see my reaction when I read 'the letter'. Just as I opened the envelope and unfolded  three A4 ruled, feint and margin, foolscap pages pages the bus arrived and the girls had to leg it. They wer raging – they didn’t get to take snaps. So I promised a detailed account. Here yiz are.

I started to read it aloud and my voice caught. 

   ‘Don’t read it aloud if you can’t’ said Lee.

    ‘No, I have to. I have to hear her in the room.’ I read on.

Here is the transcribed text of the letter plus the original document 

                                                                                                                   Bons Secours Hosp.

                                                                                                               (S.W.)Ballymun Glasnevin Hill

(Dad’s writing for Ballymun and Hill)

14^th March ‘91

Dear Lisa,

How are you chicks? I believe you are away on holidays but by the time Phyllis gets to you - you’ll be back.

            Well here I am back in hospital – but you’re not to worry ‘cause I’m fine and coming on – it has nothing to do with the tumours. My head is marvellous – not an ache or pain. But my breathing is desperate. My lungs and chest are all congested and I sound like a train with all the wheezing and whistling. Judy was sitting beside me the other night and she says (sic) “Jesus – name that tune in 3.” You know Judy’s sense of humour.

            Lisa wants to know if I’m in for an oiling.

            But all joking aside, I’m in great form and that’s the main thing and Lisa – I’m not depressed and I don’t care about anything physical, as long as I’m not suffering from depression. As long as I live I’ll never forget the ten weeks of hell at Christmas and before and after it. It was like being in a deep black pit, that I couldn't get out of. I know it was terrible for everyone – it was the worst Christmas we all ever must have had (sic) – however its all behind us now – T.G. and pray it will never come back.

            I discovered a lovely saint, his name is St. Peregrine – he’s the patron saint of cancer sufferers and he’s working miracles in my life. Say a little prayer each day  to him Lisa, and spread his devotion for me. Nobody here heard of him. I’m trying to get you his leaflet and believe me he was no saint in the beginning, he did terrible things – but in the latter part of his life became a cancer victim himself and there are wonderful miracles attributed to him.

            Phyllis will fill you in on all the family news. Judy and Bill hae bough a house out in Killbarrack(sic) – and the final signing is 30^th april. She’s delighted. It’s a grand house – I think it was £42,000, so another one for the high jump.

            Evelyn has moved in with Jim and they have rented a house out in Lucan.

            Aisling is home during the week and stays with Owen (sic) at weekends, so little by little they are finally making lives for themselves. T. G.

Me sons, well I just can’t get rid of them. They don’t know haow to boil any eggs. However they’ll learn bloody fast – can you ever see any of them starving.

Seamus is still ‘my hero’ the auld ‘boll---‘ is doing everything for me as I’ve got a lot weaker.

I’d say our Phyllis will have a ball. Her little new house is gorgeous. Ideal for herself and John. She ha had a few ding-dongs in it but unfortunately I haven’t been able to go as the night time I’m too shagged to go anywhere.

My bedtime is 9.30.

I’m not going to close this letter as I’ll jot down other little bits od info. As the days go on. I’m going to give Phyllis this note on Thursday.

_________________________________________________

By the way I saw ‘Beaches’ on Sunday, Louise myself and Lisa watched it on video, well the 3 of us laughed and cried our way through it. I thought it was one of the best films I’d ever seen. I just love Bette Midler.

(switches to Dad’s writing)

            Just came in to see ‘Big Mama.’ She asked me to add a P.S. So this is it +P.S.

Seamus

(overleaf)

Thursday

Lisa, have to close as Phyllis is collecting this. Love to Mary and baby abnd she is gorgeous and of course Noel. I’m mad about my chopping boards. Judy has her eye on one but she can F off.

Love Liz

I love you

So there you are. I got Mammy back today. That is the power of the written word. I could hear her, see her in my mind's eye arguing with Dad over whether the hospital was Glasnevin or Ballymun. yanking the letter back from him and saying 'Now, see what you made me do,' at the little tear on page three. I could smell her.

Write something tonight for someone you love. shove it in a drawer. In years to come they will unearth it and you will be back with them. It is said we die twice. Once when our physical body ceases breathing, and again when our name is uttered for the last time.

 Elizabeth Kennedy Walsh 1937 -1991 will live here until d'Internet explodes. And some night, somewher in our little planet an idlly surfing finger will click in and Liz will leap off the page - fully formed again - her laughing living lovely self.

We love you Mam. 

'That's my girl!'

Finally got around to deciphering a letter my maternal grandfather sent my mother for her 21st birthday in 1958. The cheque for 21 dollars he sent would have been worth roughly £7 ten shillings. A pint of plain cost 1 shilling 6d back then, she could have bought almost a hundred pints, (the sums working that out nearly killed me, and yes, I know it's easy...). Except she didn't drink back then, women rarely frequentd pubs, many of them were men only, and women earned on average 48% less than their male couterparts.

Grandad was a typesetter with the Irish Independent, he went to Detroit in the 50s to gain experience on a new litho machine operating in The Freeman's Journal. He lived there for a number of years and, times being what they were, didn't get home often. UncleTommy was 15 at  the time of the letter and he and my mother clashed constantly. I'm quite sure it was her fault - she had a ferociously quick temper, like her own mother. Tommy was more like Grandad; a funny, gentle, peace keeping man.

Mam and Dad (Seamus) married in October the following year. Thankfully Grandad came home for the wedding. The letter kickstarted a novel I've been working on - on and off, for a number of years, it's based on the time Grandad was in Detroit, 'cept I'm giving him an affair with a younger American female journalist! G'wan the Grandad!.

All of the Kennedys of Glandore Road are dead now, and all barring Grandma died young. Mammy only got another 33 years, not the 79 Grandad wished for her. Tommy was the last to go, he died a few years ago. I discussed the novel with him before he died and, while none of us have the faintest idea what Grandad's life was like in Detroit, Tommy approved of my granting Grandad a tempestuous love affair. If I ever finish it it will e dedicated to The Kennedys of Glandore Road.

 See text of letter and original below. Any errors mine.

Sunday

My darling Elizabeth,

     I am sending this a wee bit early just so that if there is something special you wish to buy for your ‘21^st’ you will have it in good time.

     The  cheque for twenty one dollars is to represent a dollar for each year. You have made me so proud to be able to say ‘that’s my girl!’. And proud of you, I really am - and always shall be, because I know you will never do anything to make me feel otherwise about you.

     It seems such a short time since you were just a wee baby. The years are flying and my earnest wish is that yourself and Seamus will have as happy a life as your Mam and I have had, and that you may be blessed with as lovely a family as God has given to us. My one regret is that I am not with you in person to wish you a Happy Birthday.

     Now, I know I should not, particularly in this letter, strike what may seem a discordant note, I am going to ask you to do one little thing for me.

      I know that Tommy and yourself do have little differences of opinion, and upset each other from time to time. Don’t forget, that in doing so you can upset your Mammy even more so than yourselves. Now I am laying blame nowhere, it’s just one of those things, and I know that Tommy and you will get together for my sake and be real good pals. I know the difference in your ages makes that difficult but you will both do it. 

     You know honey, when you are separated from your family – it is then, and only then, that you really appreciate each and every member of the family.  I know you both love each other deeply, all you have to do is to show it.

So now ‘left arm’ – for that’s as useful to me as my ‘right arm’, loads of love and I hope you have a wonderful birthday- at least another 79 to follow. 

Dad xxxxx

 PS I should also say thanks to Mam for giving you to me.

Psychoanalysing meself - it's all our Judy's fault........

I've been feeling well lately, contented. I'm working on something I'm enjoying and feeling hopeful for it.

I know these November days are short, can be grey and depressing. Cold days and nights, or worse - that constant drizzly rain, can confine one indoors. But as I sit by my fire, house quiet for once, knowing where all my loved ones are - I cannot help but feel content. I'm trying not to brood on a past I cannot change nor worry about a future I have no control over. Then I started to think.............

I have long wondered why Spring is my worst time of the year. From late March I often feel a huge sadness building in me. Why, when the natural world is gearing up to its brief magnificent season do I feel at my lowest? All of the worst bouts of long lasting depression I suffered occurred between late April and July.

But I love gardening, love sitting in the sun like a big fat lazy cat. So why, when I should be anticipating great pleasure, do I often feel incredibly tense, anxious and low?

I was born in May 1961, first surviving child to my parents. Their first child, my stillborn brother, was delivered at eight months gestation in April 1960, a huge shock for the young couple who had eagerly awaited his birth. Mam had been taking the anti-morning sickness medication that was later shown to have caused Thalidomide. The baby was ten days dead before he was delivered, sadly he was also malformed. My mother never saw her baby's body. Dad did, but he never talked about it.

So when I came along thirteen months later their anxiety levels must have been very high. They poured every bit of love they had into me, and I blossomed. Mam quickly became pregnant again and my first beloved sister, Judy, was born in April 1962. 

At that time women were ‘confined’ in hospital for up to five days after the birth of a child. I was eleven months old, my father had to work so I was sent over to my beautiful Aunt Norah, Mam’s sister, to be cared for. There is a picture of me standing in a playpen at the gate of Norah’s house. Apparently it was the only thing that quietened me. I would stay there for hours looking up the road, waiting for my world to come back to me. 

AND SHE CAME!!!!!!! 

When I read Owl Babies by Martin Waddell to children I tell them ‘Mammys ALWAYS come back’. Of course, in reality, sometimes they can’t. Serious illness or death can pull a mother from a child. Mam didn’t die until I was twenty nine, but the wrench was as bad as if I were five. And she died on March 20^th. Which would explain my feelings of grief around that time since then. But what about before 1991? I reckon that when I sense the days warming and lengthening, and see things growing, it reminds me of my anxious vigil at the gate in April 1962. And I must have been miffed that someone smaller and cuter than me usurped my position as ‘baby’ in the house.

Judy once said she didn’t always feel loved at home. Perhaps Mam and Dad overcompensated with me – afraid I’d be jealous of the new arrival. Apparently I did once balance a large 1d coin on her lips and stood, waiting to see what would happen when she opened her mouth! I don’t remember being jealous of her. Envious yet – she was (is) incredibly beautiful, with a stillness and serenity about her I longed to emulate. I wrote this for her some Christmases ago. It’s not great poetry. But it’s heartfelt.

Childhood Memories#2

Winter 1965

Judy

                          You were the most beautiful creature -

Perfect.

Flawless skin,

huge trusting eyes

watching from

the bolster on the double bed

Its creaky iron frame

bathed in the light of

the glowing Sacred Heart

that pinked

candy striped brushed cotton sheets,

blankets,

a maroon eiderdown

topped by a Gardá great coat;

its buttons left an imprint on your face

insignia of peace on chubby cheek.

You whispered -

‘Let’s play the drawing-on-the back game,

Me first.’

I loosened your pyjama top

and sketched a scene,

plump childish fingers intent on detail

hoping you wouldn’t guess it right

and I could crow

‘No!’

‘Now me’, I whispered.

But you were sleeping.

I spooned in behind you

And lying still inhaled

Pears soap and Cusson’s talc.

Now, if I close my eyes and deeply breathe

I can almost feel that moment

That safety in our kingdom -

our hot water bottle warmed

double bed

^{Evelyn Walsh, Christmas 09}

So our Juders, it’s all your fault I am a moanin’ Minnie. But I am very glad you are my sister – let’s blame the parents!!

One Good Teacher

The infamous ‘they’ say all you need in life is one good teacher. Someone to ignite a passion in you for something that will succour you through dark days and make good days even better. I’ve been lucky, I had several excellent teachers. My mother, of course, was a marvellous mentor and in my formal education a few stand out - Mrs Curran in Mother Of Divine Grace Primary School in Finglas, Mrs Rigney and  Miss Ryan in the Dominican College in Eccles St.  Top of the class for me though was my beloved Miss Kirby (later Coffey) in sixth class.

It cannot have been easy being a teacher in ‘60s/’70s Ireland. Schools were run with an iron fist by religious orders, class sizes could reach fifty in crowded urban areas, corporal punishment was commonplace and the curriculum dripped with De Valera’s image of Ireland. It bore little resemblance to life lived in suburban North Dublin. The State Censor made sure our little minds weren’t polluted with any foreign filth. Schools had many teachers who were, quite simply, in the wrong job. Economic necessity and lack of opportunity trapped them in classrooms with children about whom they cared less and less with the passing of each bitter year. It is hard to inspire when you don’t give a damn yourself. Control was the key in getting through the day.

Some people are born to teach though. Miss Kirby was one of those wonderful people. She came into my life when I was eleven, on the cusp of that leap from what once was to what may someday be. She saw my potential, offered me more challenging material, brought me books from her own collection to point me in the right direction. She was from (I think) Co. Kerry and her tastes were more rural than mine, but I enjoyed the books she brought me, I particularly enjoyed the way she spoke to me – as if I was already grown-up. I blossomed under her tutelage.

In October 1973 she set us English homework. We were to write to her as if she were a visitor from another country, and tell her something about St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We had been working on a project about it and I had become fascinated with Jonathan Swift, St Patrick’s most famous Dean. I sat down with my copy and pencil. I loved, still love, the sound of a pencil scratching across the blank page, and I wrote and wrote.  I described a time travelling adventure I had with friends, Andrea and Ken Kelly; how we had travelled back in time and been befriended by Jonathan Swift (who asked us to call him Jonath). We lived with him for a while, met his lady friends Stella and Vanessa, toured about early eighteenth century Dublin with him and he discussed his writings with us. Ten copy pages later cramp in my hand forced me to time travel us back to 1973 and The Ha’Penny Bridge. I was amazed that almost two hours had passed since I began and was enormously proud of myself. I hoped I’d get a gold star for it.

I had to wait a few days for the copies to be returned to us. Miss Kirby placed it on my desk and patted the cover. I can still feel the butterflies I got as I opened the copy. At the end of the essay were THREE gold stars, and in red pen underlined twice Miss Kirby had written ‘Come to me, CHILD!! For your just reward!!! Find out who painted Stella’s portrait.’  I glowed.

Miss Kirby made the most enormous fuss of me. I was sent to each fifth and sixth class to read out my essay. I died inside at this, but did it. Miss Kirby asked one of the mothers, who worked in an office, if she could type up my essay. Ken Kelly, who was a talented artist, sketched St Patrick’s on cardboard and we cut it out and stuck it onto the typed pages as ‘illustrations’. Ms Kirby sent the essay to the Dean of St Patrick’s, and told him about our project. He visited the class to look at  our work and to shake my hand. He was a lovely man and we were all surprised. We thought Protestants were completely different to us, but the Dean looked just like everybody’s Grandad! He was a kindly gentleman and enthused greatly over our work.

I went off the boil intellectually in secondary school and I didn’t return to creative writing until I hit my forties. But I have never forgotten Miss Kirby, her interest in me and the love she gave me for the written word. One Good Teacher.

On snoring.....................

I love the Jemser dearly. He loves me even knowing all my bad bits. What's not to love in somebody like that? But SLoDG I may yet do time over that man's snoring.

Lots of people snore. I've even been told I snore myself on occasions. But the Jemeser is the King of the Snorers. If Snoring was an Olympic Sport then the Jemser would have brought home gold for Ireland for the last forty years - that's rougly ten gold medals - guaranteed. When we moved in together first I found a quick puck on his shoulder was sufficient to turn him over and give my poor battered ears some respite. He was a slender man then and, despite a broken nose and a deviated septum, his not carrying excess weight meant the snoring was more or less bearable unless he'd had a fierce feed of drink,

But as middle age approached he started to put on weight and ended up with a comfortable pot belly. The snoring got worse and it was musical beds in the house most nights, one or the other of us always ending up on the couch. If he'd been out for a few drinks he didn't even bother climbing the stairs, knowing he would be booted out of the bed within minutes of landing in it. I used to get frightened some nights listening to him. He might be lying on his back and snoring really loudly. Then he would stop breathing. Like - completely. His mouth would hang open for a few seconds and then his jaw would start to move like a fish's does when it's out of water. He'd then start to draw his knees up towards his chest (disturbing my nice little nest in the process). Just when I'd be about to belt him to make him wake up and breathe he would emit this awful gagging ack-ack-ack sound followed by an auk-auk-auk and his knees would slide back down the bed again. Then the whole process would start over again.

So, almost a decade ago, he went to a specialist who arranged for him to have a sleep test. The nurses were horrifed by what they heard and I instantly had their sympathy. He was supposed to go back and arrange to get this machine that helped you breathe properly at night and he was told to lose weight. He did lose a good bit of weight and as the snoring lessened again he didn't bother about the machine. If the snoring got bad on occasions I'd buy him a steroidal nasal spray which seemed to lessen the noise

In the last two years though he regained all the weight he'd lost and the snoring is the worst I've ever heard it. I cannot stay in a room when he is snoring. The noise penetrates my skull and I find it the most irrritataing noise ever. I swear, I really do feel like stabbing him some nights. Anything to make that infernal racket stop. It's so bad I can hear it all over the house at night - no matter what room he is sleeping in. Then I'm cranky because I can't sleep with the noise and he's not getting a decent nights rest becuase he isn't getting enough oxygen into his system to make him feel rested. So you have two cranky middle aged people sniping at each other all day.

 So he took himself off to the specialist again last month. He's been told to lose weight again; they now realise that the vast bulk of snoring and sleep apnoea problmens are caused by weight issues alone. In conjunction with that he is to be ftted with an orthodontic gumshield that will hold his mouth in such a position that it is impossible to snore. I cannot wait for this device to arrive, it's going to cost in the region of a thousand euro but, you know what - it's cheaper than a divorce! And we can hopefully share a bed again.....................