Castle Writers
Out of the Cocoon
Athlone 2020
TELL THEM TO YOUR CHILDREN I have a wealth of unique experiences in my life now and the question is, what am I going to do with them? The idea from America is scrapbooking but that does not really appeal to me. I think the Bible people had it right when they were told “Tell them to your children and to your children’s children so that they may know.” The reasoning here is if they are not told the children will not know. This fascinated me and as I began to think about it and compare how different my life growing up was to my grandchildren’s life is now, I determined to put pen to paper. I want to tell them about the day the oil tanker exploded in the lough and we were evacuated from school; about all the hard work at Christmas time, when 14 adults and 5 children all squeezed around the table for Christmas dinner. The table was a door kept especially for the occasion and brought downstairs with great ceremony to be covered with a pristine white sheet. My eldest granddaughter needs to know especially just how like her great-grandmother she is. How her paternal great-grandmother loved dressmaking and even though she was not allowed to pursue this when she left school, took evening classes and became very professional eventually achieving her dream to open her own business. This took great determination and through it all she met my father! Life could be hard. Children today have no comprehension of having to physically get up to switch on a television or to change channels never mind running in and out of the bathroom because it was so cold, that is if there was a bathroom. I remember as a child going to the outside toilet, armed with a collection of magazines as it was the only place where I could get peace to read them and not be disturbed. I know very little of my own grandparents and feel deprived almost bereft. It is no-one’s fault. My paternal grandfather died before my father was married, and grandmother had died many years before. I have a few photos but not much more. For this reason I do not wish my grandchildren to feel the same. I want to give them as much information as possible about our family, what they do with it is up to them. 37
