Sunday Smatterings

Remember those stories you heard about old women stashing money in odd places?

I've arrived there.

I don't know why I do it.

But view this as a tale from the trenches of old age.

It happens. Eventually.

I received cash for multiple reasons in the last few months and I don't know what to do with it so I hide it. There's quite a bit there (I think - I don't stroke and count it). It just lies there quietly. Waiting for death or dismemberment or fire and flood.

There's an odd comfort to it. I remember Granny digging deep in her underwear drawer and handing me a few notes back in the day with strict instructions to "spend it on myself mind you, not on the childer and not on the husband." I know, she fed me a lot of crazy notions about independence and not having too many children to tie me down. At 32 she faked breast cancer (it was a large painful cyst) to stop the nonsense of adding another twenty babies to her existing six children as her doctor said it would kill her to have more. She lied. But I digress.

Here she is with me on her lap as a baby ( I was her first grandchild and her favourite), my mother on the left of her and my darling Granda at the back. A proud O'Sullivan, his clan originally was from The Beara.

She was originally a Sliney, but word had it very much later on that her mother was the kept woman of the local lord of the manor and her children (or some of them) were in actual fact Abernethys. This bomb was dropped by an aunt at one of the family gatherings.

I need to get my DNA done.

Memory

I am struck so much by memory lately. Not in a morbid way or anything, strictly reflecting on its power.

I read "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" again for my book club. I loved it the first time around (2009) and the re-read was equally delightful.

I had thought in the past that it was such a shame most of us can't plumb the depths of our parents' memories. I spent a huge quantity of time (afternoon upon afternoon) with my mother when she had terminal cancer where she shared so many memories with me. I didn't take notes, much to my regret now, I thought it would embarrass her. But I could have written so much down in privacy later but it didn't occur to me caught up in my own grief and the care of my own two babies. She had fascinating memories. I'm trying to assemble them in a book. For instance, she recalled, in detail, the shock and horror of a barracks explosion in Castlemartyr, County Cork when she was a very small child. And contrary to many others, she remembered the kindness of the Black and Tans throwing her and her sisters English toffees as they rolled by her house in huge, loud trucks on their way to Youghal.

And then this line in the aforementioned book struck me:

"I am betraying you by dying, I am truly causing you to die....must we also put to death those who were still alive only through us."

And I think of living with my grandmother and grandfather for a while in that small village, and watching him, a labourer, set off for work in the morning and coming home at night with sausages in his back pocket (an enormous treat) and me helping him set the traps for the rabbits on the back acre, and tossing grain at my granny's chickens, and being kept up for all hours - don't tell yer mammy sitting on his lap while he and his pals set Ireland to rights and sang impossibly long olachons (laments) in the Sean Nos style. And one time, dancing with my granny while a fiddle and a harmonica and spoons and bones kept time. My granny was old to me then (in her late forties!)and I remember clapping my hands in glee at her agility on the flagstones.

I would be the only one remembering all of that (eldest grandchild)and I suppose, when I go, it'll be a second death for those, now long gone, who continue to live, and so very clearly, in my memory.

Spare Me The Details

I was over at Time Goes By today, reading about childless-by-choice lifestyles.

I just survived a dinner party on the weekend where the guests and hosts went on and on and on about their grandchildren. Some of the stories I had heard two and three times before. These stories were replete with definite predictions about the future careers of the grandchildren - those children showing Picasso tendencies, or surgical skills or even self-chosen clothing styles way beyond their years. An added bonus were all the reasons why laid out for me like jewels on the tablecloth. Geniuses all.

One grandfather, a gifted actor and raconteur, had declined participation in the play I've written and directing as "the weekly rehearsals would prevent him spending time with the grandchildren on the off chance they became available" (they live 300KM away).

Even when my children were small, I never participated in the coffee klatsch thing among the mothers chattering endlessly about the benefits of certain babyfoods and diapers and prams and little Johnny's teething. My friends were all single or married with no children in sight by choice and we swapped books.

Don't get me wrong. I adore my children and my grandchildren and love spending time with them. But for me to drone endlessly on to others about their accomplishments (and they really do have them)is to drone on about stuff that has nothing to do with me per se. Apart from biologically and possibly the nurturing and hereditary factor kicking in.

Plus that grandparent bragging competition replete with photos which unattractively kicks in at some point in the evening can be totally offputting. Like Geezer Olympics.

My eyes glaze. They droop. I stifle yawns into a FAIL. I feel a snore coming on.

But bring up the book you're reading or the play you just saw or why Stephen Harper has to go or the course you're taking, and I'm all ears, baby.