Sláinte

52 Kendall St, Brookline, Mass.  I searched for an image of it today and look what I found!

Grammy's house.  In which she gave birth to and raised 13 children.  That house, with its scary basement and one bathroom and the wonderful smell of Grammy's Irish soda bread baking. 

I remember walking in that side door to the right (the one to the left was an extremely mysterious situation:  dark and leafy and foreboding to this pipsqueak), which led right into Grammy's kitchen, and right to Grammy, waiting for us to arrive.  That tiny kitchen, with the washing machine  next to the sink, that cool old white stove, Ivory dish soap on the sink to wash the dishes by hand.   Grammy would make her Irish soda bread in a cast iron skillet and we'd eat it with sugary tea at her kitchen table.  We'd wander through the house, imagining our mom growing up there amidst all those brothers and sisters in that modest house with one bathroom.  How did they do it? 

Margaret and Patrick Flatley

Grampy died the year before I was born.  Mom says he was quiet, moody, strong, and he played a mean "squeeze box."  I wish I had known him.  But my Grammy?  Grammy we knew.  And we loved.  She exuded warmth and love, with her sweet Irish brogue and her easy, hearty laugh.

Born Margaret Kelly in Bekan Parish, Ballyhaunis, County Mayo, Ireland.  She married my Grampy, Patrick James Flatley, on April 25, 1927 and they left the next day for Boston.  The letter announcing their arrival, to her brother, arrived on the boat with them.  It's unimaginable to me, all of it.  Leaving the country you grew up in in search of opportunities, leaving everything you know, never seeing your parents again.  They bought that little house on Kendall Street and they brought up their 13 children there and they made a life and left a staggering legacy of spirit, faith and the importance of family.

Take a look.  These pictures are beyond awesome, aren't they?

Bill, Peggy, Fran, Elda (first in-law), Jim, 

Tom,  Paul, 

Moni, Grampy, Grammy, Ellen (mom), 

Brian, Kevin, Ginny, Kitty & Mary

My Aunt Moni got her BA from BC years after her children were born.  She went back to school and studied Irish history and interviewed my Grammy for a class called The Social History of Modern Ireland.  She shared that paper with us and I re-read it yesterday and was blown away reading about the life my grandparents lived, and left behind, in rural Ireland.  Grammy's dad died when she was three and her grandmother raised her, to give her widowed daughter some relief.  She sounds like quite a woman, my great-great-grandmother: she raised 9 children of her own and her seven sons then emigrated to Australia. She worked the family farm but also acted as the village midwife, leaving the house at all hours to deliver neighborhood babies.  When my great-grandmother  remarried, she and her new husband maintained their own farms so they could hang onto them and, eventually, pass them on to one of their children.  School was taken quite seriously but there was no high school:  you finished in 6th grade then went to work on the farm full time.  Grammy felt fortunate to have been able to stay through 8th grade.  Church was the center of life in rural Ireland in the early 1900's.  Grammy and her siblings were delighted when their grandfather was able to buy a sidecar so they no longer had to walk the four miles to church.  Four miles!

It was a life full of hard work but simple joys.
Aunt Moni wrote: "She often talked about how the little pleasures they had in life -- sometimes even a Christmas orange - meant so much to them.  She often mentions feeling sorry for the children of our times who seem to need so many material things in order to be happy."

One passage of Aunt Moni's paper that struck me, and slayed me, is this:
"The strength of the Irish woman -- especially the Irish mother- had to have been sorely tested by the tragedy of the emigration of the young.  I cannot recall ever hearing of another society in the world where the young were brought up to emigrate. My mother speaks of the pain of the parting with her mother - whom she never saw again - and I think of the pain of the mothers of the entire rural Ireland who labored long and hard to bring up their families and yet had only enough farm land to offer one child."
 

I've talked of my amazing, huge Irish family before.  Of Thanksgiving dinner and the joy and delight of getting the 66 cousins together every year, of the lovely traditions this group fostered.  But when I think of this amazing family now, I think of the character of its members.  Caring, strong, joyful, faithful, resourceful, resilient.  Not wed to material possessions.  Supportive.  And fun.  So very fun.  I'm so grateful to Grammy and Grampy for having the gumption to get on that boat.  Would I have been that brave?

 I'd like to think so.  I'm Irish. 

Grammy's Irish Soda Bread (dictated to my Aunt Kitty Peters on 2/13/77)

"stick of butter the size of an egg"
"almost" 1C. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 "heaping" tsp. baking powder
"flour and milk" (about 1.5-2C. each)
"Beat butter and sugar, salt, baking powder and egg. Add flour and milk alternately until the batter is thick. Add 2 handfuls of raisins.
Bake at 375 for 20 minutes, and then at 300 for 10 minutes."

Grammy's Irish Soda Bread (c/o my Aunt Monica McIntyre in 1998)

2 1/4 C. flour
1T. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2T. softened butter
1 1/2 C. milk
1C. sugar
1 large egg
1 1/4 C. raisins coated in flour
1T. caraway seeds
Beat egg, sugar, butter together in large bowl. Blend flour, baking powder and salt in separate bowl. Add this and milk alternately to the first mixture. It will be very thick, do not overbeat. It should remain really doughy, not soupy.
Spray pans, but keep below 1" of the pan. Bake at 325 for 1 hour.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone.

Sláinte