Today we did the final clear out of the
family home. I turned on the alarm and closed the door behind me for the last
time. I said good bye to our neighbors in Landscape Park
Such was the innocence of the fifties; my
mother recalls they drove across town to Churchtown on a Sunday afternoon looking
to buy a house. They turned a corner and saw a new house with a ‘for sale’
sign, so they looked at it and put down a deposit that very afternoon.
So much for a forensic examination of the
schools and bus routes.
The young couples who bought in Churchtown
in the early fifties are now slowly dying off and being replaced by newer
families who will probably get a refurbishment of the house done before moving
in. We of the middle generation bought our second hand houses and made changes over
a period of four decades, living with dust and builders as we did.
I did not expect the morning to be so emotionally
charged. I looked at the simple bedroom and kitchen fittings which were hand
made by my father. I admired the garden so still and private and tranquil.
In the fifties the left hand side of the
garden was dedicated to fruit and vegetables. Potatoes, carrots, cabbages,
apple trees (eaters and cookers), raspberries and strawberries, blackcurrants
and gooseberries, rhubarb and lettuce, in no particular order.
I was but 18 months old when the Murray family arrived from Portumna, Co Galway .
My earliest memory was of getting my foot stuck in a builder’s pipe in the
garden. I cannot have been much more than two.
Fridays were my favorite days when I would
approach the kitchen door (in those days we never entered the house through the
front door) at lunchtime and thank God we were Catholics because Fridays meant
chips and fried eggs to meet the requirements of abstinence.
I have vivid memories of my father sitting
in the back garden in his deck chair while my mother scurried round the garden
with a trowel. In those days mum could not abide being still for a single
moment. Now in her 94th year she spends much time dozing and feeling
no guilt.
My sister Margaret discovered copybooks in
the attic. I found my geography notes from 1969, my father’s notes from UCD
where he studied Social Science at night in 1957, Margaret’s nursing notes, and
notes from my time in the Legion of Christ in Salamanca
and Rome
The sun shone brightly as I locked up the
house. I smiled to myself, I was right! The estate agent had not believed me
when I said the garden was south facing and now the midday sun was blazing
through the window of the empty kitchen.
My neighbors were genuine in their
affection for my mother who had spent 60 years in the house, firstly as a young
mother and wife, then as a young active widow, then as an aging bridge player
and finally as proud defiant independent old lady who stayed until health
called time on her Churchtown adventure.
I reflected on the coincidences that life
throws up. Today, the 8th of July, is the birthday of my sister
Catherine/Kate who died six years ago and who would have been 55 today. She
arrived home with mum and dad to Landscape
Park
