MY SECOND MOTHER

MY SECOND MOTHER

- By Veronica Breen Hogle

I recently spent hours reading and rereading seventy-one precious postcards that belonged to my Grand Aunt Christina Fitzpatrick, and I chose five of them to have framed.

“They were hand-embroidered by French and Belgian refugee women during World War One. Soldiers fighting in the trenches sent them home to their dear ones,” she told me.

During WW2, my parents separated. I was two years old. She and her husband took me under their wings. Without any legal transactions, she became my second mother. She was 52 years old and from having had several strokes, she was an invalid. One stroke left her mouth crooked; another left her unable to walk. Her loud wheeze and struggle to breathe kept us awake many nights. When she felt poorly, I’d stay with my grandmother.

But there were long stretches of time when the castanet sounds of her steel knitting needles told us she felt well, and she’s sit in her wheelchair knitting jumpers and matching knee socks for me. While her husband cooked over the coal fire, they talked of the news about Ireland becoming a republic. Some times she made apple dumplings with cinnamon, or a rhubarb tart with custard. She looked lovely dressed in a lace blouse and a tartan skirt when friends visited. Her velvet brown eyes, dark hair and heavy dark eyebrows gave her the look of women I’d seen in books about Flamenco Dancers. When she felt well, she’d say,

“Let’s see what the pig and the goose are up to in the farmyard today,” and she’d read, ‘Curly Wee and Goosie Goose,’ the cartoon that appeared daily in the Irish Independent newspaper. My eyes followed her finger as it moved under each word.

Some rainy days, she’d say, “Jump in my boat and we’ll go to Bombay.” Her bed became our ship and we sailed to India in search of noisy bazaars, spices and silk. We sailed up the Ganges River to see the Taj Mahal and we visited the temples in Khatmandu.

“A bit of travel broadens the mind,” she always said when we docked back in Dublin Harbor at teatime.

She often told me stories of when she was young. She loved to sift through her box of old postcards. Some had pockets and flaps embroidered in the colors of the British, French, and Belgian flags. She told me my Granduncle Jack was buried in Flanders Fields and she recited, “In Flanders’ Fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row.” The card she read most often said: “A Kiss From Belgium” with the word “Remember” in blue. It was from her husband, when he was fighting in Ypres, Belgium in 1915. He wrote in pencil on the back: “Dearest. Roll on. When I get back we’ll pull up for all this time. Goodbye my love. Say that prayer for me.”

By reading the postcards and the cartoons to me, I could read before I went to school. My love of travel started on our imaginary voyages. When I was fourteen, she died suddenly from another stroke, and I went to live with my mother.

She kept Aunt Christina’s 71 cards until I brought them to America in 1965. I also inherited her hand-embroidered Irish linen tablecloths, a shaded lilac cushion cover, a china tea set she received as a wedding present, a rippled forest green biscuit barrel, and a cranberry cake stand.

When I look at the newly framed postcards, I remember the woman who was my second mother, playmate and teacher for twelve years. I remember her sitting in her wheelchair, reading her love cards, especially “A Kiss From Belgium." It's now 92-years ago. The penciled love message on the back has not faded at all. The word “Remember” is still vivid in blue.

Note: This story was published in the Buffalo News on Memorial Day 2007. It was also published in the August 2007 edition of Ireland's Own Mgazine under the title: "An Exceptional Woman: Veronica Breen Hogle remembers with warm affection the wheelchair-bound woman who was her second mother."

Story ID:	2108
Written by:	Veronica Breen Hogle (bio, contact, other stories)
Organization:	Irish Cultural Events
Story type:	Story
Writers Conference:	$500 2007 Family Memories Writing Project
Location:	Bagenalstown County Carlow Ireland
Year:	1942
Person:	Christina Walshe Fitzpatrick