womanonfireblog

When you’re up to your tonsils with the bungalow, you can always throw on an ould jacket, pull a comb through your hair, pile the kids into the jalopy and head out the lane to the nearest cinema.

There, in the cinema the bungalow dweller can forget about the linoleum and such other minor details for two hours at least and be happily transported to another realm.

So off we went. My eldest daughter and I headed in to see Brooklyn the new movie starring Saoirse Ronan. The twins and other sister went to see ‘Pan’ and the other boy went to ‘Hotel Trannsylvania 2’. So everyone was happy and I’m telling you that’s rare enough.

Brooklyn is a good, solid, meaty and very satisfying movie. It’s very low key, very undramatic, very Irish and very poignant. Saoirse Ronan is the heroine and heads off to the USA because there’s nothing for her here in Ireland. The movie doesn’t make any sweeping statements about Ireland in the 50s. It’s just an ordinary tale of an ordinary girl, just one of thousands who made the same journey back then to a new world.

The movie made me think of my mother’s family, the Monaghans, from Killeen, Granard, Co. Longford.  Five of her sisters went to America in the late 50s.

My Aunt Barbara left Ireland for Youngstown Ohio in the early 1950s.

The eldest daughter Barbara was the first to leave.  Barbara  was very tall and striking, with jet black hair, looked Italian and amazingly, had two different coloured eyes – brown and blue. Barbara was glamorous to an infinite degree. I still remember her outfits.

My great aunt Marie Columb from Molly Hill in Longford.  Pictured here with husband Alex Molenske and their racehorse.

She went out to her mother’s sister Aunt Marie (nee Columb) – who was married to a wealthy man Alex who worked for the Ford Motor company. Barbara learned book keeping and this kept her in good stead working for big department stores in New York. She commuted from Hackensack, New Jersey her whole life until she retired. Both she and her husband Jim Creegan looked and dressed like filmstars back in the day. George and Amal Cooney, eat your hearts out!

The next sisters to come out were Patsy and Kitty. Patsy was a beautiful dark brunette and had qualified as a nurse in England in London in St Andrews Hospital, 11 Bow St London. She worked as a nurse in the US, quickly met her future husband Jack Murphy from Queens – he was a lawyer and they got married. They are still married nearly 60 years later and as devoted to each other as the first day they met.

Kitty was a stunning flame haired beauty. She laughed a lot and smoked like a trooper. She worked as a waitress in Manhattan. She met Jack Murphy’s friend, Bob Ratigan (worked for AT&T) and they got married shortly after they met too. Bob died of a heart attack aged just 39. Kitty came home and married Roddy Gilpin, a neighbouring farmer from around her home in Killeen Granard. Kitty died of lung cancer 20 years ago. She was really great fun.

Anna Monaghan also came out to the US in 1957. She was a very pretty, beautiful blonde with the face of an angel and she married Kenneth Murphy who worked for an oil company, (Jack’s brother). They are also hale and hearty and still married nearly 60 years later in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Anna is 76 and has never lost her Irish accent. Kenneth is 79.

Molly, the eldest sister, was a nun. She joined an enclosed order The Little Sisters of the Poor in 1944. She was housed in their convent in Roebuck Dublin. She wasn’t allowed out to see her family for the first 20 years. Then, after that she was allowed out after 10 years. She is 90 years old (looks 25) and living with her order in Philadelphia.

My mother Peggy’s wedding day  with her father Bill and sister Anna. My cousin Mary was a  bridesmaid.

The baby of the family was my mother Peggy. She became a teacher and met my father Michael Moroney, also a teacher, from Bruff, Co. Limerick. They met in Clonoose NS, Ballyheelan, Co. Cavan in a two teacher school. They got married too in 1960. And so, my mother escaped the boat, the homesickness, the loneliness and the fear of a new city, a new country and a new life. Her sisters still say that as the ‘baby’ she was spoilt!

However, my dear mother Peggy – never one for nostalgia – came out from the movie ‘Brooklyn’ in tears. She met another woman outside the cinema, also in tears. The movie Brooklyn had had brought back the 50s to their minds. What a terrible time. What a good movie.

Here in the bungalow, you could talk til’ the cows come home but sometimes it feels like no one is listening.

Today and most days I would like to talk endlessly about a bright new kitchenwhich would be next door to a large cosy room with  a stone fireplace and a battered old leather couch draped in colourful cushions from IKEA.

Dream cushions draped casually on a dream couch in a dream room in a dream house

I would like to talk about new flooring, dry-cleaning the curtains that are in my boot for a fortnight, re-grouting the bathroom, buying a new couch for the living room and a new smart TV.

I would like to chat about cutting down the Leylandii forest outside, fixing the piers, sandblasting the ancient gates – carbon dated circa 1961, getting a Bose wireless sound system or even have a wee chat about going to the new TK Maxx in Athlone….

Instead I can blog about it and as they say in all the self-help guides on my bedroom shelf that if you write it, it will happen!!!

I have spent the last 20 years reading self help books. I have read about being a money expert, I have discovered that men were from Mars – (true!), I have  read ‘The Secret’, I have watched Oprah and hoped that some of her grit and determination and dollars would come my way. I have read Fiona Harold and her Rules for Success but my favourite and most compassionate and helpful one was ‘You can Heal your Life’ by Louise Hay.

Louise Hay was born into grinding poverty in Los Angeles in 1926 to a single mother. Her mother married for respectability but her husband abused both her and her Louise. Louise had a baby at the age of 16 and gave it up for adoption. She then left for New York where she worked in a series of menial jobs. She was attracted to the First Church of Science on 48th street by signs in the window saying ‘ you can change your life’. She joined this church and became a teacher. Here she learned the power of transformative thinking.

She published a pamphlet called Heal your Life around this time. Louise hay came to the public’ attention during the AIDS epidemic in the 80s. Her approach to healing got her onto the top TV shows Oprah and Donahue in the same week. Her pamphlet became a book and hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list and is today considered a classic in its category,

I really must take it out again from Arva library.