THE HOUSE ON THE CORNER OF HARRINGTON STREET
By Veronica Breen Hogle
I arrived early in the morning from the USA
A taxi took me to the corner of Harrington Street
To an old Georgian house near the center of Dublin
The home where my Aunt Gretta
Has lived for over 60 years
The place where my cousin Padraig and I
Arranged to meet
So he could give me the house keys
And then I could come and go
as I please
As I pushed open the heavy iron gate
I heard its high-pitched, aging soprano sound
And the hums of the double-decker buses
going to and fro
They seemed to pause and take their time
To give a familiar greeting to me
But as I walked up the short stone path
Gravel stones were all my eyes could see
They covered the places where grass used to be
And hosted golden dandelions
Aunt Gretta made into Lion’s Tooth Soup
I climbed up the three stone steps
Pressed the brass bell into a long sharp ring
And looked up the street and all around
But my eyes were pulled back
To the graveled ground
Where daffodils used to dance in the spring
Pink and red roses nodded their jeweled
Rain-drenched heads
And on windy days
Pansies and petunias bumped their heads
In their crowded border beds
When Aunt Gretta was out in her garden
Passersby stopped to ask
“Do you know the time? An' is it goin' to rain?”
She looked up at the sky and told them the hour
As well as the weather forecast
“Ah yes, if ye rush, ye’ll still catch the train”
Then she bent down to pick plump dandelions
And went inside to make Lion’s Tooth Soup
I walked through the hallway with stairways
going up and down
And at the top of the high ceilings
My eyes saw colored glass statues
on the ledges of ornate windows
I walked past the oak stand
Where umbrellas
Coats and hats used to look so grand
And decended two sets of stairs
Through glass doors into the kitchen
The wall-sized carved mahogany dresser
With its smoky mirror was in the same place
A jutting shelf held an unopened official letter
Another oval shelf had a little framed photograph
Of Uncle Joe’s tombstone on a memorial card
“He stole away quietly,” the writing said
Reminded me of Aunt Gretta’s shock
When she found her husband dead in bed
“But he is reunited now with their son
Keith, who as a baby
Also died quietly in his sleep
They're united again now in heaven”
The little card read
Another shelf had a smiling face of a young girl
With dark brown curly hair
In a small picture frame
Of their only daughter who lives in England
Frances is her name
The large faded portrait
Of Aunt Gretta's maternal grandparents
Hung on the wall beside the window
Aunt Gretta often talked
about how much she loved her
grandfather and the great times
she had in his old barracks of a house
The Stanley Cooker was still to the good
In days past, it warmed the kitchen
Dried the clothes, and simmered pots of
Lion’s Tooth Soup.
On a shelf above the cooker were porcelain Siamese cats
Mugs with pirates’ faces
And blue windmills on ceramic place mats
That Aunt Gretta and her family
Brought back from foreign places
I looked through the double glass door
Into the scullery and the years rolled back
In my mind’s eyes
Aunt Gretta was standing near the sink
Conjugating verbs from
A ‘How To Learn German’ book
That was propped against a full quart glass bottle of milk
And when baby Padraig tottered into her skirts
She picked him up and tousled his curly head
“Just look at this boy! My little caboose! Isn’t he a beaut?”
And the two of them looked at me with glee
“Yes he’s a beaut! The whole world will agree”
Then she gave him a slice of buttered bread
She waved the wooden spoon at my Godson Damien
Who was doing his sums at the kitchen table
And spoke to him in Irish
"After Ye've finished your school work
Ye can have your dinner and eat as much as ye are able of the
Lion’s Tooth Soup!”
Now this was first time for me to be
In Aunt Gretta’s house
When she was not there
Apart from odd creaks when I opened the doors
and little groans when I walked on the floors
The old place was as quiet as a mouse
But her presence was in every corner of the house
I sat at the table where I used to sit
And stared at her empty chair
Where she always sat and looked up and out
Through the divide in the lace curtains on the window
And watched throngs of Dubliners pass by
She listened to the church bells
When they rang out the Angelus
At noon, six and the hours in between
The animated voices of school children
Dressed in navy and white uniforms
that looked pristine
She smiled when people stopped
To smell her roses
That stood like sentries
Inside the iron railings
And guarded the grass
Where dandelions grew
Their brilliant yellow heads
shook and shimmered in the dew
becoming just right to be picked
To make Lion’s Tooth Soup.
The next day
I visited her in the hospital
And found her sitting in a wheel chair
Outside her curtained cubicle
In a room where three other women
Were deep asleep in bed
“Aunt Gretta?” I called
And she cocked her head
“Who’s there?” she asked
“It’s me, Vonnie,” I said
But her hearing aid was in her pocket
And glaucoma clouded her eyes
I took her face in my hands
And repeated her name and mine
Then she cried with delight
“Ah! Is that you Vonnie!”
Her fresh face and mop of steel gray hair
And matching gray eyes gave a youthful look
To the woman who will be 96 in June
I told her she looked smashing
She laughed and said
“Ah! It must be because I ate so much
Lion’s Tooth Soup!”
I told her I remembered the Saturday
Night one November
I arrived unannounced at her door
With a suitcase in my hand
The year I was seventeen
She already had ten children of her own
Still she said,
“Come in. Ye must be hungry. Sure what's one more...?
As long as there’s a light
In the kitchen window
There will always be a welcome
At the door”
And she gave me my first bowl of
Lion’s Tooth Soup
She reminisced about the family
As well as people from olden days
And the years when I was young
“When I heard stiletto heel shoes clatterin'
Down the outside cement steps into the kitchen
I knew it could me no one else but ye
And that ye would cut, perm, or color my hair”
She brought up the great times we spent in Paris
“But as good as the French are at cookin,” she said,
“An' I adored their skinny, long, crusty loaves of bread
But still I have to say that while in
Gay Paree, I could never find any
Lion’s Tooth Soup”
I brought her a stash of Baby Powers whiskies
And with the face of a child she asked me
To put one under her pillow to have before bed
And one in her drawer to help her pass the long hours
She clasped one in her hand and said
“Get some water. We’ll have a little party
An' share a few Powerful moments”
While we drank the little bottle
She whispered in my ear
“A Baby Power is -- as good –
If not better-- than
Lion’s Tooth Soup!”
When I left the hospital, she was all aglow
I rode on a double-decker with screeching brakes
Back to the house with the talking gate
And took a rest on the sofa
My eyes gazed up at the ceilings
That were as ornate as iced wedding cakes
In the home where she and her husband Joe
Reared a family of one daughter and nine sons
While he worked on the railway
On a hot coal fed steam engine train
Aunt Gretta ran a boarding house
With her daily refrain
“Would ye like to try a bowl of
Lion’s Tooth Soup”
That evening at twilight
I sat on the stone steps outside
The old house on the corner of
Harrington Street
And watched the crowded double-decker buses
Thunder to and fro
Silhouettes in taxis
And lovers laced at the arms
Went by with an air of people
with somewhere important to go
I ate fish and chips
Soaked with malt vinegar
The sun began to sink in the sky
Suddenly, street lights in fancy globes
blinked on
And shone bright and cold
On the gravel stones
That buried the place
Where there used to be flowers
The church bell sounded sad
As it tolled out the hours
I sat there until dark and recalled
All The good days that are gone
Just then I remembered that under the eaves
That very morning I heard blackbirds
Thrushes and robins sing
Their sweet, mellow tones
Gave a big welcome to spring
And my heavy heart became glad
I laughed to myself
As I remembered Aunt Gretta
And her efforts to educate the neighbors
About the benefits of dandelions
The time she caught them
Throwing weed-killer
Over the railings
Onto her dandelions’ heads
“No. No,” she protested
“Dandelions are good you see
They are full of vitamin A, B, C, and D,”
The people didn’t answer
They went back inside their house
“Dandelions also have iron
Potassium and zinc”
She called to their closed door
She cupped her mouth
And shouted once more
“An' they make the most nutritious
Lion’s Tooth Soup!”
It was a little after five in the morning
Through the crack in the curtains
I saw that a grey dawn had spread
her cloak over the City of Dublin
I stayed snug in the hollow of the old bed
and istened to the songbirds
On the roof above my bedroom window
It was time to get up
and head to the airport
and return to the place where I now reside
in the City of Buffalo, New York, USA
I walked down the steps
Pulled the old iron gate open
And heard the old soprano's
familiar refrain
“Good bye girl, take care of yourself,
Come back again soon”
As the heavy gate clicked shut
It started to rain
I felt an emptiness in my gut
While the taxi driver loaded the luggage
I walked back and
Grabbed the iron gate
and peered through the railings
At the gravel stones
Where flowers used to grow
And my eyes welled up with tears
Then, I saw the light was still on
In the kitchen window
The sight of it brought
Back all the happy years
Especially the November night
over half a century ago when
I knocked on the door of this house
On the corner of Harrington Street
And Aunt Gretta opened it
“Come in. Ye must be hungry. Sure what's one more...?
And she gave me my first bowl of hot,
strange tasting, golden soup
"Eat it up girl, it's good for ye!" she said
It was the first time I had Aunt Gretta's
Lion’s Tooth Soup.
– The End -