A letter to my mother
Sunday, March 14, 2010 Emmanuel Keogh writes to Lily Mooney
Lily Mooney grew up on Erne Street in central Dublin. Her father was a coach painter. She began teaching piano after studying at the Royal Irish Academy and later ran her own dancing school, retaining her maiden name of Mooney.
With her husband, Charles Kehoe, she staged many concerts and shows in the city from the 1930s to the 1950s. She had one child, Emmanuel, and died of breast cancer in 1954, aged 46.
Dear Lily,
Just to say thanks. Do you know that, dying when you did, you unburdened me of the heavy prospect of having an Irish mother?
It meant I would be forever free of Mother Machree. Because I hardly knew you, I wouldn’t go into the adult world looking for someone just like you to marry, knowing that you’d be worrying that I’d never find anyone good enough for your son.
I used to lie awake at night wondering if the notes of that old black piano of yours would suddenly respond to a ghostly touch.
Your spirit was everywhere in that house.
You had been the life and soul of the family, with your piano lessons and dancing school, and all those shows and pantos you put on in the Queens on Pearse Street and in halls and schools around the country - and your ambition, above all for me. Much of it was never realised. My father played the music, laboriously copied out everyone’s scripts, helped with the staging and even sang the part of Father Tom in The Lily of Killarney.
The song went out of him when you died, and out of your sister, Dolly, and your mother, Margaret, too. Luckily for me we all lived snugly together, just as we had before you died, and those women and my father smothered me with love. But for what seemed like years, it was as if the whole house was muffled in black crepe.
Your mother, being a Victorian with an equal love of risqué music hall songs and heavy mourning, had, after all, lost her husband and a daughter in the space of a year. It took us awhile to get over that, and even at six years old I wore a black diamond on my sleeve.
When Papa, your father, died, I’m told you all worried about getting his coffin around the turn of the stairs. They didn’t have that worry about you; because you, of course, died in the Mater Hospital.
The found that tiny statue of Martin de Porres tangled in your hair. You had great devotion to him at a time when Irish people chose saints in the way that they pick allegiance to Premier League football teams now.
I was asleep in Dad’s arms when your brother, Eddie, came to us early that August morning. He said: ‘‘Charlie, Lily’s gone.” I have an absolutely clear recollection of that, and of Dad getting me dressed, but I am absolutely sure that I wasn’t at all aware of what he was going through. The love of his life devoured by death, and there he was, fumbling with buttons, wondering how in the world he would face the eternal winter ahead.
For that was what it was for him. He never got over your loss. I, at least, had growing up to do, which gave me something to think about. He was 87 when he died, in the Mater Hospital too, exactly 40 years to the very day after your death. Poor Dolly, who took your place as no other could have, saw something in that.
My last image of you is on your way to hospital, framed in the doorway as I stood on the stairs. We waved to each other and you were gone. The box camera photographs don’t do you justice, I suspect, but I like the one of you and Dolly like a pair of gypsies after a swim off a Galway beach in the 1930s.Or the last one of us together, the summer before you died, sunlit on a donkey cart with my cousin Mairead.
Oh, by the way, you have four grandchildren now, and I think you’d have liked the woman I married. Oddly, those who knew you said she reminded them of you.
Jokes aside, your disappearance from my life when I was six had its deep psychological downsides, which, if you’ll forgive me, I’m not going to thank you for. I suspect it generated my excessive fatalism; my insecurity; a disturbing sense that things never last; and the feeling that, when God closes one door, he locks it firmly from the outside and throws away the key. Emmanuel
Fiona Ness writes to Margaret Ness
Margaret Ness was born into the post-war steel working community of Motherwell in Scotland. She retired this year as principal of St Aidan’s Primary School in the neighbouring town of Wishaw.
Four years ago, she was recognised as one of Britain’s top educators by the then prime minister Tony Blair at a reception in 10 Downing Street.
She married her childhood friend David Ness when she was 21, and they have two children, Jacqueline and Fiona, and three grandchildren, Jack, Molly and Sadhbh. Fiona Ness is editor of The Sunday Business Post’s Agenda magazine.
Mum,
It’s not you, it’s me. You want to talk emotions and I’m not that daughter; I don’t even try. I’ll say I’m more like my dad - reticent - and you really like him, so maybe that’s why you put up with me. But with a supreme effort I’ll concede that despite what I might (not) say, I wish I could be more open, like you.
Like most daughters who go on to have their own children, I wonder often - especially when I feel I am failing miserably at motherhood - how you managed it all.
You spent your 20s and 30s teaching, scrubbing, cooking, knitting, rearing us and enjoying it, without a night out on Dawson Street or a Jimmy Choo shoe to your name.
We even put a stop to your amateur dramatics; no matter how much syrup my dad put on our supper, we just couldn’t do without you on a Tuesday night.
You never seemed to miss your girlhood independence, or if you did, you never showed it. Except for that one time, when we were knocking lumps off each other - again - and you put on your pink raincoat, told us you were leaving, and went outside and sat on the back step and wept. And you not yet 30 years old. You came back in, of course.
You got me loving poetry (maybe not yours), creating art, baking cakes, singing Abba on our upturned baby bath, for swearing junk food. You were the dancing queen, a dark-haired Grace Kelly.
I worried that some man would run away with you down Wishaw main street.
I wish you lived closer. I see you everywhere - in this WWI poem by Mary Wedderburn Cannan:
One said to me ‘Seek Love for he is Joy / called by another name’,/ A Second said ‘seek Love for he is Power / which is called Fame’.
/ Last said a Third,’ seek love his name is Peace’ / I called him thrice,/ And answer came,’ Love now is christened Sacrifice’.
Thank you mum,
Fiona
Miriam O’Callaghan writes to Miriam O’Callaghan senior
Miriam O’Callaghan senior, the daughter of a Garda sergeant, grew up in Ballylinan, a small village in Co Laois. She had five children -Margaret, Miriam, Anne (who is deceased), Kathleen and Jim.
She worked as a national school teacher all of her life, the last 20 years or so as the principal of St Brigid’s Girls School in Cabinteely. She is now retired. Her daughter, Miriam, is a current affairs broadcaster and presenter of Prime Time on RTE, and Miriam Meets on RTE Radio One.
My dearest mother,
You are probably wondering why I am writing this letter, as we talk to each other every day. It is just that I have been thinking, of late, how often we end up chatting about things that don’t really matter, and things that matter greatly go unsaid.
So forgive me if I take this opportunity to put down in words why you mean so much tome.
You are quite simply the most wonderful and extraordinary woman I have ever met. Extraordinary in the way you handle the very ordinary; wonderful in just so many ways. Kind, caring, thoughtful, loving, funny, clever, unbelievably hard-working and utterly unselfish. You come from that generation of Irishwomen who lived their lives largely for the benefit of others. You are also very beautiful, but enough of that, I hear you say.
You are a whole lot more, though, than the sum of your parts. Everything you did, you did for us.
Everything I am, I owe to you and my father Jerry. He adored you, the jewel in his crown.
You and I have never had a row, never even a crossword - hard to believe, but true. That’s down to you - your respect for others and your passionate dislike of confrontation.
Thank you for teaching me this life-lesson, which saves me a lot of grief on a daily basis.
Above all else, though, it is how you dealt with tragedy that made me realise what a truly exceptional person you are.
To lose your precious, beautiful daughter Anne to cancer at such a young age was incomprehensibly cruel, but then for your husband to die so unexpectedly and be snatched away from you just a few weeks later, was a blow of such magnitude that many people would simply have been crushed; broken-hearted beyond repair.
But not you. Stoic and unselfish, you never allowed yourself one moment of self-pity. You picked yourself up, dusted yourself down, put on a brave face for us and the rest of the world, and carried on being the best mother and grandmother anyone could ever hope to have.
So thank you very, very, very much, for everything. I love you. Your ever-grateful daughter,
Miriam
Fiach McConghail writes to Máire Mac Conghail
Máire Mac Conghail (née Ní Dheoráin) is 69 years old, a mother of four sons and a daughter. She has 14 grandchildren, and is a foster parent to many dogs.
She is a graduate of UCD, and has been a genealogist for more than 40 years. Her son, Fiach McConghail, is the director of the Abbey Theatre.
Mam,
Seo ían chéad litir a scríobh mé chugat le chúig bhliana fichead .
Ná faigh taom croí! Nílim ag lorg aon rud! Tá a fhios agam gur chrá má túgominic. Ba mé an duine ba shine ach gan mórán suime agam an fhreagaracht sin a ghlacadh orm féin. Faoin am go raibh tú tríocha bliain d’aois, bhícúigear clainne agat agus níor thuigeas an t-ualach a bhíort go raibh páistí agam féin. Dhein tú éacht.
Go raibh maith agat as ucht an ord a chuir túar mo shaol. Spreag túmo shuim sa drámaiocht sa pholaitíocht agus sa Fhraincís .
Is cuimhin liomtuíag labhairt fraincíse agusmé i mo bhuachaill óg agus chuaigh an fhuaim gomór i bhfeidhmorm. Sheol túgo Páras mé mar ‘au-pair’ agus dá bharr sin mhuscail sé suim ionam sa chathair sin go deo.
Thug túceadmo chinn dom agus mé sa chúigiúbliain, chuaigh mé ar chamchuairt ar fud na tire gach aon deireadh seachtaine le Gael-Linn ag plé le stáitsíocht. Is túa thug go hAmharclann na Mainistreach mé do’n chéad uair, ag drámaGaeilge sa Phéacóg.Tá a fhios agam ó do chairde go bhfuil bródortmé a bheith i mo Stiúrthó ir ar an Amharclann sin anois.Táim gomór faoido chomaoin.
Bíonn mo chairde ag magadhfúmtoisc an suim abhíonn agami stair and i nginealais gach éinne a bhuailim leo. Meastúcá bhfuair mé an tréith sin? Go raibh maith agat as a bheith do mhamó iontach do Shíofra agus Luisne.
Fiach
Mam,
This is the first letter that I have written to you in over 25 years.
Don’t get a heart attack; I’m not looking for anything. I know that I was a pain sometimes for you. I was the eldest in the family, and had no interest in taking on that responsibility. By the time you were 30 years of age, you had five children, and I never understood the responsibility until I had my own family of two! It was an amazing and brilliant thing to raise the five of us.
Thank you.
Thank you for the order you put into my life, and how you encouraged my interest in theatre, history and all things French. I remember when I was a young boy, listening to you speaking French, and the music of the language enthralling me.
One of the best things you did for me was to get me to Paris and France as an au pair one summer, and it sparked my passion for that city ever since.
In fifth year in school, you gave me my head as I toured around the country with Gael-Linn to work on all kinds of theatres and stages.
You encouraged me to go to plays all the time, and took me to the Abbey for the first time. I know from your friends that you were proud of me when I was appointed director of the Abbey Theatre.
My friends tease me, when I meet people for the first time and try and work out their ancestry and history. I wonder where I got that from?
Thank you for being a wonderful grandmother to Síofra and Luisne. I owe you a lot. Fiach
Olwen Fouéré writes to Marie-Magdeleine Mauger
Marie-Magdeleine Mauger was born in Camaret-Finistére, Brittany and arrived in Ireland in 1948 with her husband Yann Fouéré, who cofounded the Celtic League.
They moved to Aughrusbeg on the west coast of Ireland in 1950.They have five children: Rozenn, John, Erwan, Benig and Olwen. Their youngest daughter, Olwen Fouéré, is a performer, writer and theatre artist, whose most recent production is Sodome, My Love, in the Project Arts Centre in Dublin until March 27.
Mamy chérie,
I hope you are well and happy, and that I will see you very soon.
I think of you often, and send you big hugs and kisses whenever you cross my mind. It is mother’s day (la fete des méres) here in Ireland so I will think of you especially today.
I found a great photo of us gambling with pennies at the Omey Races on Omey Strand when I was about three. You look gorgeous; no wonder all the men were mad about you. I remember it vividly, as I do so many of our good times growing up in Aughrusbeg. I hope we can bring you there this summer, if not before.
Everyone has been asking for you. They often talk about what a great swimmer you were, rain, hail or snow, summer or winter. Do you remember the day you jumped into the sea to rescue Tom Coyne as we were approaching home, on our way back from Inisturk south with the boat full to the brim with lobsters?
We were only a few yards from the pier, but the water was very deep. I can see Tom’s hat floating on the water.
Then both of you in the kitchen, dripping wet and drinking whiskey to get warm. It is one of my clearest memories, with all the fear and drama and laughter.
You always had a powerful life force, even in the darkest of times. I hope I have inherited that. I try to imagine everything you had to cope with during and after the war.
Many of those cruel events have left their trace and I can still see what it has cost you. I often wish you had written about your extraordinary life. Perhaps, one day, we will gather everything together from our huge extended family scattered around the world, and from the many letters in the archives going back to the day you were born.
You will be 93 in June this year! And Pa will be 100! If he makes it until July. . . I am glad we managed to bring you to see him last June. It was a great reunion - you would have run into each other’s arms if you could have! Hopefully, we will manage another reunion for you soon.
That’s it for now, dearest Mamy. Take it easy, and do not worry.
Lots of love and kisses , x Olwen
David Norris writes to Aida Norris
Aida Norris lived at Wilfield Park in Ballsbridge until she died on January 2, 1967, aged 66. She had two children, John and David Norris.
David is a senator in the Seanad and a human rights activist.
Dear Ma,
(Sorry, I know you preferred ‘‘Mother’’, but I was always more at home with Ma.) As I write this, I’m on my way down to stay at Roundwood House in the foothills of the Slieve Bloom Mountains.
A’la recherche du temps perdu.
I am glad that I told you from time to time how much I loved you, but I am only sorry that I didn’t do it again on New Year’s Day 1967, the evening before I found out that you had died in your sleep.
But I suppose you know all that, so I had better give you an update on what’s been happening since you moved on.
I lived on in the house with John for a year or so, and then we sold it.
Mrs McDonald kindly took Patch the dog, and I lived first in Dundrum and then down in Greystones, where I restored a nice Edwardian property on the Burnaby.
But my heart was in Dublin, as you know, and 32 years ago I bought a rundown 18th-century house in North Great Georges Street. We have a great preservation society now, chaired by one of my neighbours Muireann Noonan, and we have rehabilitated the whole street. Imagine how lucky I was to be there during the recent bad weather.
There are big rooms in the house, and I had a brainwave a few years ago. I held a Wilfield Park reunion, and well over 30 people came. One of our old neighbours actually returned from England for it. We had a really lovely time, and we’re all now still in touch from time to time, so the Ballsbridge connection is maintained.
I needn’t tell you that your sister, Elizabeth Constance FitzPatrick - my beloved aunt Corky - has now joined you up there, but not before I shared her life for five years in Sandymount Avenue. She lived to 103, fulfilling her ambition to live in three centuries.
All your generation are now gone, although there was a report of a great old girl down in Cork the same age as yourself who has only just moved on and who was walking down to the local library when she was over 100 years old. As you would say, it must be the country air.
I hope you will be glad to know that I am a member of the Senate.
Perhaps you might even be proud of this fact, even though I know that you disdained modern Irish politics.
The best news, of course, is that John settled down, worked exceptionally hard, married a wonderful wife, and is just on the point of retirement into the bosom of his lovely and talented family. I know that would mean more to you than anything.
I am grateful to you for your courage, your goodness and your courtesy, as well as your good humour.
I feel more and more that you are part of my mind, so thank you for continuing to accompany me with your wisdom and sense of fun on my journey through life. David
Orla Flanagan writes to Joan Flanagan
Joan Flanagan grew up in Donabate and then Bray, Co Wicklow, the oldest of seven children. She married Brian and raised four children - David, Orla, Julie and Martina.
Joan died in October 2006, after valiantly fighting cancer for almost two years. Her daughter, Orla Flanagan, is general manager of Fishamble: The New Play company.
Dear Mum,
For the past four years, I have blocked Mother’s Day from my mind. In your absence, it became like a national holiday where I was an outsider. It is a day usually about treating and fussing over the woman who is often the nerve centre of the family, but so rarely the centre of attention. It is a day that, sadly, was struck from my family’s annual calendar.
I wish that you were here to celebrate with - our loss is still felt so keenly. I can, of course, be thankful today that you were such a generous, stoic and committed mother - and that I have 27 years of your care to remember.
One way I often relish your memory is when I spot traces of you in my family - be it the laugh of one of your siblings, or the way my sister uses her hands to animate her stories, in those moments becoming a carbon-copy of you.
Or in myself, the way that I furiously write lists to keep all my daily tasks in check. After your death, a friend had told me that you would carry on, in some ways, in me. I understand that more now.
This year marks a special change in our family, as my dear sister-in-law will celebrate wearing two hats on this day for the first time, that of daughter and mother. I see with pleasure the copper halo of fuzz that has been passed down the line from your side to little Hazel, eight weeks old.
Again, little traces of you that I savour.
So perhaps, in future years, on this day, I will focus less on the card I cannot send and the time we cannot spend, and more on the remnants of you that have been passed on to us, even in your absence. Orla
Charlie Connelly writes to Valerie Connelly
Valerie Connelly was born in east London at the height of the Blitz. A retired local government officer and the mother of two children, she now lives in the West Country with her husband George, where she writes fearsome letters to the local newspapers.
Her son, the author and broadcaster Charlie Connelly, has written a number of best-selling books, including Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round The Shipping Forecast. Born and raised in London, he moved to Ireland just in time for the recession, and lives in Dublin with a large collection of ukuleles.
Dear Mum,
Technology is a wonderful thing. These days, I can get away with an e-mail or a frantic visit to the Interflora website when, as usual, Mothering Sunday has crept up and glared at me through a lorgnette when it’s too late to send a card.
There were days when, with furrowed brow and tongue sticking out of the side of my mouth, I’d take out my crayons and carefully make you one.
You’d have a massive smiley orange head from which spindly arms and legs protruded, and there’d be the words ‘I love my mummy’ in big spidery writing underneath. Granted, I was 22 at the time, but the thought and effort were there.
Now that I don’t have crayons immediately to hand I’ve come to rely on technology instead. I love the fact that you’ve begun to embrace this too in your late 60s, especially as we now live in different countries.
I love how you’ve not really mastered your mobile phone - the text messages all in capital letters; sometimes half a text message where you’ve hit ‘send’ accidentally.
I love the random photos that arrive of your finger, the inside of your handbag, or dad’s ear. I was even impressed when you started using text language, though I hate it myself.
I love the phone calls I get when you’re in a bookshop and you’re telling me how many copies of mine they have on the shelves, and I realise that the reason you’re talking so loudly is that you want everyone to know that those books are by your son.
I love the e-mail jokes you forward tome, even though most of them are so bad they actually make me shout at the screen. Oh, and by the way, those ones about Paddy and Mick? They really don’t go down at all well here.
I love the way you send my girlfriend YouTube clips of babies and small children doing cute things. I love that your hints are as subtle as a stocking full of wet sand to the back of the head.
I even love it when you complain how ‘‘the only way I can keep up with what you’re doing is on that rotten Twitter thing’’.
Now that we’re in different countries, your chances of getting a card are even slimmer, but you’re still a brilliant mum .Thanks for everything. Or, in the manner of one of your texts, ‘‘THNX 4 EV’’. Charlie
Jennifer O’Connell writes to Sheila O’Connell
Sheila O’Connell is the mother to four children - Michael, Jennifer, John and Stephen - and a grandmother to eight. She trained as a teacher and worked in the school for the deaf in Cabra, before moving to Waterford, where she combined occasional teaching with caring for her children.
She now divides her time between the family home in Waterford and abroad. Her daughter, Jennifer, is a columnist with The Sunday Business Post.
Dear Mum,
Roughly 34 and a half years ago, or so you tell me, I arrived into your life with such drama and at such high speed, that hours later you were still convinced there had to be another one of us hiding inside. I like to think I’ve made up for it since with my calm, measured approach to life - but we both know that’s not entirely true.
Like every other recent convert to parenthood, I’ve only been able to appreciate in roughly the last three years and eight months what I put you through that day, and many other days afterwards.
The 20-minute labour; the three nappies prescribed to cope with my hip complaint; the tears before school; the teenage tantrums and constant dramas; the insistence that I was going to be a journalist even though you’d have liked me to have done something much more stable.
Maybe it was because we were the females in a house of men, but we somehow always managed to stay friends. From the time I could talk, you taught me to say ‘us girls must always stick together’.
It’s only now I realise that you were still just a girl yourself, when you had me and the boys, and that you must have had regrets from time to time about everything you sacrificed to make sure you were always there when we got in from school. But if you did, you never showed it.
Now there are three generations of us girls sticking together: you, me, and my Rosa.
I sound more and more like you these days - a resemblance I am keen to cultivate.
In time, I plan to pass on many of your other important life lessons to my children: a baby is not an unexploded bomb; outward polish is the precursor to inner calm; if somebody’s mean to you, they’re definitely jealous; if you look hard enough, you’ll see the ridiculous in any situation; the starving babies aren’t going to get the rest of that lasagne anyway, so don’t eat it if you don’t want it. I love you, Mum.
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