Janice Dobbie Tell Them to you Children

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.

When my brother and I were researching the family tree, we made a shocking and thrilling discovery. My grandparents had four children; my father, two sisters and a younger brother who died as a teenager. As my brother searched through the microfilm he discovered another grave with a male child in it. No other information. To this day we know nothing more and have no way of finding out. He may have been stillborn. He may have lived a few seconds, a few hours or days. We simply do not know. But he is someone whom I wish my grandchildren to know about.

Our family is quite a mix. I myself am from Co. Antrim and my husband is from Scotland. My children have both married Limerick people so the grandchildren have interesting and rich family history. What stories are there to tell! Some people say you shouldn’t look into the past because you never know what you might find, but I disagree. We need to know where we come from, what our roots are, what we are made of and what we are going to make of ourselves.

My grandchildren might see me as a pensioner stiff with arthritis, but I wonder what they would think when they heard of me as a teenager sobbing my heart out because I was not allowed to go to see my favourite showband playing. It was a cruel trick played on me by my brother but my heart was broken.

All experiences were not childhood ones and all were not good either. Some are better left out. I can hear my son breathing a sigh of relief. However, one incident, which comes to mind, is of a Sunday afternoon when our family were very young and we were walking down by the docks in Athlone. It was February and the river was quite high. The last thing I said to my 2 year old son was “Hold tight, don’t slip off”, as we walked across the old wooden crossing at the lock gates. The next thing I knew was that I was bobbing about in the freezing cold water of the Shannon. My first thought was I couldn’t lose my spectacles or I would be completely finished. I was wearing a wide skirt, which was billowing all around me, my hat still on top of my head and something green floated beside me. I realized it was a piece of algae on top of my son’s head! I managed to lift him up and a friend and my husband grabbed him taking him to safety. All this time my daughter was standing against the wall,

her face as white as a sheet. My next thought was “This is supposed to be quite a pleasant way to die.” I wasn’t worried, as I knew I was ready to meet my Lord. I was still bobbing up and down when an arm reached out and then another. At last I was unceremoniously bundled into the boot of the car and taken home. Once home, we were all dried and clothed, and hopefully in our right minds. The consequence of this is that my son has ensured all his children have learnt to swim, but who has taken them to learn, but his wife.

I thought my life was boring, but as I look back, into childhood, adulthood and even recent years, there is a rich tapestry of events unique to each person. Do not let them be lost. “Tell them to your children, and to your children’s children, so that they may know.”

Janice Dobbie