Pathways through memory — Frances Moloney time travels
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| On the far bank of the river, pathways of memory are hidden in development and nature's growth. |
Your conversation about your laps of the garden was brilliant: instead of moaning about limitation, you have come up with a workable strategy and shared it. 'Cocooning' presented as a life affirming activity and dominoes as were never used by old Italian men, drinking bitter espressos in Italian cafes that may be visited when this is over ...
My initial reaction to your piece was to remember the path in the grass from my back door in Logstown to the back door of my neighbour, Maura Dowdall, patted out one short doggy leg after another by Ruby, the brown corgi-labradors mix who was the dog of my children's childhood and a dog, who though unequivocally loyal to our family, could always share her largesse with anyone who would give her a tasty tit-bit. Breakfast was shared upstairs with Dolly Lynch in her bedroom, and Pat in the kitchen below always put on an extra rasher for Ruby. No physical evidence in the landscape but in the shared anecdotes of neighbours.
When Ruby died, we held a wake, and she rested overnight in her bed in the corner of our kitchen for one final night before taking up her final place of rest, in the back corner of our garden.
As the weeks passed, her path disappeared, and it was only when it was gone I realised we had no photo of it, but it is forever in my head, a testimony to ten years of shared canine love and an indelible connection between neighbours.
And now, with my brain free to wander, as I am detached from the normal quotidian tasks that no longer have me running up and down the dual carriageway to deliver my own brand of education to the lads of Dublin 12, and restrictions prohibit me from physically visiting the homes of my family members, I find myself with time to remember and think. The pathway that may or may not be in your garden has brought me to so many pathways:
From the back of Sunnyside, my grandparents' house, there was a path worn out by my Grandfather's cattle, that meandered across in front of Kinloch Brae, Aunty Mary and Uncle Bernard's house, through the Long Field, across the Five Acres, turning right at the ruins of the cottage at Logstown. Straight ahead would lead to the Meadow Field, where haymaking has gone on for my entire life, originally by my Grandad (Tom 'The Boss' Berney) and after him, my cousin Howard. The path continues across the top of the Inch, where through a gappy hedge lay Mrs Brennan's inch, which was another land (in which there was by repute a fairy fort but never in childhood did I go there) and finally down through Berney's Inch, past the marsh that in spring is full of frogspawn, to the water's edge, where the imprints of the cows in the mud captured the cool river water such that it was warm when we as children walked through it, to get to the river to paddle or swim.
At the river's edge, the path diverged. Fishermen went left, we tended to go to the right, liking to sit high on the river bank, where the rapids catch the glint of sunlight and create a pleasant cacophony of sound. Slightly further along, beside a hawthorn tree, was the place where my Grandfather swam, the water deep and dark. In our family album, there is a picture of my Grandfather in his late seventies, mid dive into the water, a precious moment in time captured by my Uncle Bernard. The image is all the more precious to us because of the absence of the beloved man who was captured in the photograph and the beloved man who knew enough to capture it. As I follow the path in my childhood head, heading back towards town, the graveyard — then innocently empty of any I loved —would be across the river to your left, while in front, the massive edifice of the Church of the Sacred Heart and St Brigid. There are some who find this grey, forbidding, and reflective of the Catholic church's involvement in their lives. For me it is simply part of home and fond memories of time spent in the girls school behind it.
Leaving the Inch, I arrive in my mind's eye into Lawlor's field, where there was a hidden spring coming out at the river's edge, channelled by unknown hands through a piece of guttering, sticking out of a moss-covered leafy bank. The next field was O'Connell's, where the kids from our end of town were taught to swim by older children, and finally away from the River, back up past the John F Kennedy Hall, where Geraldine Clifford ran Saturday morning dancing classes for a very small fee, paid weekly. The final leg of the journey went past Lander's house on the left, and the side of what was 'The Shamrock Bar' or 'Uncle Patrick's' or 'The Sinking Ship', subsequently Berneys and now Fallons. I have an impression of walking into sunshine as I rejoin the living town.
As a child of the town there are also paths through town in my head. Along the side of the bridge before it was widened, there was a little trail in the dust. Depending on the time of the year, occasional weeds would poke their heads up and the memory can be provisionally dated, as a young child, by size and company. Young children would have their hands held, as the bridge was being crossed, the young child always placed between the wall and the adult for safety, until old enough to go to school alone and one could finally see over the top of the wall. (I was very small so I actually don't think I could ever see over the wall of the bridge, in its original form.)
Great adventures were had in the old Valley, when there was just a single path through the 'Jungle', entered at Molloy's farm gate. Some adventurous did stray far from the path. This path through the Valley led to the Mass Path to New Abbey, a path that goes straight from today right back through centuries.
Further adventures were to be had in the 'Crocks', a patch of land behind the Ball Alley, where, if you knew your way through the jagged metal, there were cocoons of safety: a tiny path in the middle where one child could sit on soft grass and look up at the sky. For me it was 50 yards from home and yet a universe away. If you made your way through the Crocks, there was a patch of grass about six feet wide, overlooking the stream of water, diverted to turn the mill wheel, the edifice of the Mill on your left.
At the back of Miss O'Kelly's Liffey Bank, there was a very little-known path that started through a door in the corner of her garden, that led past the old sewage works, through the field across from Castlemartin, and the swimming place called 'The Rocks' to a place in the woods called Poolmoorish (as Miss O'Kelly called it in her very Anglo-Irish way). I suspect it was possibly Pol Mor Usice, and was in fact some vestige on the landscape from Ice Age times.
There was also another path through those same woods, called Brennan's Woods by my parents, accessed through Jim and Anne Byrne's farmyard, (where there is still a stile though access is no longer available). But as children we often never went further than the woods because there was such magic in them.
Pathways, life ways, links to our past, links to our future. My life is a tapestry of metaphoric and real pathways, a safety net that has always kept me where I needed to be.
Thank you for a morning spent in fond reminiscence, with the Mass in Irish from Cul Aodh in the background,
Regards,
Frances Moloney.
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