My Grandmother's Lasting Gift

At first, I thought I would die of loneliness, because there were no other children around. When I shouted outside, “Who wants to come out an’ play with me?” the only voice that took its time to come back over the green fields, and gray rock walls, was mine. We had no electricity, only a big brass oil lamp in the kitchen, and we depended on the light of the moon. We had no running water either. On my way to the outhouse at night, I was petrified of the trees groaning and shaking in the wind. I was also terrified of the bull grazing in the field I had to cross to get water from the well. That was over half a century ago, when I lived with my widowed grandmother for two years, on a small isolated farm at the foot of Mount Leinster, in Graiguenamanagh, County Kilkenny, Ireland. It's a little town where a 13th century Cistercian Abbey dwarfs the one major street.
“Listen to hear if the cuckoo is back from Morocco!” Gran said, her eyes dancing, while imitating the low call. “Count the lambs. Gather the windfalls from under the plum trees. Tell me who is riding at the head of the fox hunt,” gently engaging me. I loved to hear the nib squeak across the paper as she wrote often to the family to say I was a great help to her, watching for Pat the Post to come up the Wood Road, and keeping an eye on the clockin’ hens. When she cooked rabbit stew, or a lovely jam roly-poly in iron pots, the windows steamed up, while I turned the fan for the open fire. Without noticing it, I became content by myself, at nine years old.

In 1949, because of a family illness, I was sent to live with my grandmother. A slight figure, with clear gray eyes, she always wore black, a hint of lavender, and she wore her long silver braids, wrapped like ram’s horns, around her head. When visitors were expected, she aired the beds, cleaned the house from top to bottom, polished the brass lamp, and she wrote lists. She looked smart in her Napoleon-shaped hat, and a silk rose-colored scarf pinned with a cameo brooch, when we went to the town for provisions to stock the larder. While scrutinizing the haze on the purple mountain, she predicted the weather; and from living skin-to-skin with nature, she knew of cures from leaves, herbs, honey, plants, and nettle soup, that kept the doctor away. The midwife often sent for her to assist in long difficult labors.

At night, we sat at the fire, while the porridge simmered for the morning; and I brushed her silver mantle, in the light of the oil lamp.
“Who is the man in the red trousers?” I asked her.
“That is your grandfather!” she said, looking at his portrait dated 1909.
“How did you meet him?” I wanted to know.
“I was in charge of the family’s grocery and bar. He was on leave from India and he walked in the door. He was in Prince Albert’s 11th Hussars, and cut quite a dash on horseback, in his crimson trousers, braided tunic, tassels and plumes! Well, I took a shine to him right away. Within a month, he proposed to me on the Bridge of Kilkenny Castle, and I became Mrs. William Earls before he went back to India in 90 days!”

She told me the stories of their seven children, and about my mother, the third child, who was born during the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Dublin, while grandfather was fighting overseas. “It was a terrible time to be alone with a newborn and small children ..... while the country was fighting in two wars.......,” looking deep into the fire.

Every night we went out to the henhouse and she had a ritual of counting the hens over and over, and they clucked back. She called it 'putting the hens to bed.' She would bank the fire and say, “Now you take the clock, an’ I’ll take the light ,”and we went upstairs and got ready for bed by candlelight. When she was 82, she traveled the roads to attend the three-day farewell party and to see me off when I left Ireland for a new life in America. She gave me the money from under her mattress to have just in case I needed to come back home.

My grandmother lived fully for 91 years. From her, I discovered simple joys, like listening for the cuckoo, and hearing stories around the fire. I learned the habit of writing letters, and how to put the red carpet out for visitors. Through her influence of example, I inherited the lasting gift of being content.

*This essay was previously published in the The Buffalo News and Carlow Nationalist - Ireland

Story ID:	61
Written by:	Veronica Breen Hogle (bio, contact, other stories)
Organization:	Irish Cultural Events
Story type:	Story
Location:	Graiguenamanagh County Kilkenny Ireland
Year:	1949
Person:	Mrs. Earls