Re: an A-PARRRRT-ment

"Cat(h)" <cathy_ie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:bd81a9fb-c495-4ee0-bb5e-dfbc2bfeb329@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Dec 5, 3:44 am, K E Dennis <denn...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It was in a long-ago early March – too long ago for my memory to reach much past the walk
into town from the B&B out by the Charleville Castle gates, the cold, cold night before,
waking to the sound of cattle jostling their way out of the yard at some early hour,
omigod I’m really here after all – when I turned in at the door of the Tullamore Tribune
office, & asked herself there behind the desk are you Mary Bracken? For I’d been told if
I was seeking a flat in town, she’d know where to send me.

For all the years since then, Mary’s oft repeated version of the story was how this young
American girl [all right, I was still in my 20s then, you could stretch the point] sallied
in to ask about “an A-PARRRRT-ment” & had mentioned being an ant’ropologist. The story
went on: how she’d asked Geoff Oakley, the editor of the Tribune, what was ant’ropology, &
what was an ant’ropologist to do in Tullamore, would he think?

Mary would then recite how Geoff set Séamus Dooley [cub reporter] on the task of
interviewing this exotic alien, & arranged for Richard May to snap her pic for inclusion
in the next Tribune [& if you pushed me hard enough I could drag out of my files a very
yellowed copy of the aforementioned article, featuring a very young Yank indeed] & then
would point to the pair of us & say, triumphantly, weren’t we all very good friends since
then, & wasn’t she [yrs truly] one of our own any way?

Of course, who am I to spoil a good story by insisting, in return, that as I’d lived in
London nearly 2 years by the time I walked in to chat with herself, I knew well enough to
ask for a flat, not an apartment?

In any case, Mary sent me to Mrs. McNally, wife of retired Garda Sgt. McNally [RIP the
both of them, long since gone] & thence to 12 Church St., a place I could no more have
resisted than I can dark chocolate or a good research paper, a gorgeous poem or a Chopin
ballade, or any no. of the other fine things in life.

Built in 1745, a classic Georgian Irish country row house with the iconic arch above the
colonnaded door; deep reveals to the windows, perfect for sitting in even when the rain
was bucketing down out of grey March skies; neck-break steep stairs & one bathroom for the
whole house [one of my neighbours, a sweet young fella from somewhere out the country,
later was dumbfounded when I told him I bathed every day]… & a fireplace, a real
fireplace, in which Sgt. McNally kindled my first ever turf fire, explaining with care how
one banked the peat to keep it smoldering the night through, & that the pressed briquettes
were worth the price, really, though not so sweet-smelling, & mind I should tell the
fellas down at the yard to bring the peat right up the stairs, they won’t think anything
of it.

It was a natural enough thing, given that I walked up Church St. nearly every day on my
way to various destinations, to wave as I went by, or put my head in the door to say hello
& pick Mary’s brain about any no. of topics: hell, I know a good informant when I meet
one. Between herself & Séamus I was introduced all over Tullamore & environs [& beyond],
& benefitted from a running commentary/translation of everything. In return, of course,
Mary had a lock on the answers to many a curious local’s reciprocal queries about me, &
gloried in her power.

So from my first weeks in Tullamore, I was inserted right into the social networks of the
town, about which I learned a lot from Mary, as I learned a lot about the power of chat;
about the importance of having your own party pieces to sing, recite, or recount when
called upon in parlour or pub; & about the delicate balance of playing your part & not
calling too much attention to yourself. I learned as well an enormous amount about the
experience of people who themselves may never have lived more than a few hundreds of
kilometres from where they were born but have close kin in every corner of the world - &
about how vast & small that makes the world seem.

Most of all I learned how real friendship can grow despite differences of nationality &
age & rural vs. urban upbringings; how it can persist over decades & time zones. & how one
can be kept continuously part of that web of relationships despite all these things, so
that I no longer feel completely self-conscious & fraudulent when it is proclaimed that
sure, she’s one of our own.

Mary retired from the Tribune some years ago, but that didn’t even marginally slow her
command of the social information flowing through Tullamore – or her immense pleasure in
other people’s company, which accounted for her phenomenal network of friends. Among whom
I counted myself, gratefully, all the years since that day I strode into the Tribune
office in search of – o hell, all right, an apaaaaartment - until another chilly March
last year, when we all lost her.

At her month’s mind in Tullamore that Easter Monday - about which Mary would certainly
have had something to say – the church rang with laughter, with one tale after another
from the long, long list of Mary’s own oft-told tales & favourite anecdotes & pithy,
hilarious observations.

& the thing is, I still hear her laughing, telling those stories, which is what she
would’ve wanted. She’d have been exasperated beyond measure with me that the approach of
her birthday last year left me speechless & sad, instead of joyfully thankful for the many
years of deep friendship, good crack, & of course constant social commentary.

I couldn’t begin to do justice to all the ways in which she became a given in my life, so
it still seems to me that she must, in fact, even now, be holding court at 19 Marian
Place, ordering her guests to make themselves tea if they want it & having a grand ol’ chat.

Nor could I possibly do justice to one of her monologues in writing: lacking her narrative
skills & deft conversational timing [not to mention that twinkle in her eye], I’d just
make a hash of it & be haunted ever after by the image of herself wryly skewering me w/
her trademark sarcasm.

So I’ll have to content myself w/ sharing this poem, which one of our mutual friends has
pointed out closely reflects Mary's own very fervent faith in a thoroughly approachable -
& joyful – God… the sort who would be as delighted w/ each new bloom in her garden as she
was herself, & wouldn’t be too proud to make himself a cuppa at her command.

In memoriam, Mary Theresa Bracken (ní Dalton)
5 Dec 1927 – 6 March 2007

I met God the Father in the street
And the adjectives by which I would describe him are these:
Amusing
Experimental
Irresponsible –
About frivolous things.
He was not a man who would be appointed to a Board
Nor impress a bishop
Or gathering of art lovers.
He was not splendid, fearsome or terrible

And yet not insignificant.
This was my God who made the grass
And the sun
And stones in streams of April:
This was the God I met in Dublin as I wandered the unconscious streets.

This was the God that brooded over the harrowed field -
Rooney’s – beside the main Carrick road
The day my first verses were printed -
I knew him as was never afraid
Of death or damnation;
And I knew that the fear of God was the beginning of folly.

~~~
FROM: A View of God & The Devil
Patrick Kavanagh
The Complete Poems of Patrick Kavanagh
Kavanagh Hand Press, 1996
~~~

respectfully submitted,

| K. E. Dennis <denn...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
|
| Maireann lorg an phinn, ach nímhaireann an béal a chan
| The trace of the pen lives on, but not the mouth that sang
|
| A little bit of Culture...
|http://frontpage.montclair.edu/dennisk/poetry/home/index.html

You've made my (birth)day with a great story (which put me in mind of
my first appart.. er flat in Naas) and a great poem.
RIP Mary.

Caít()


Ah, now, you've both gone and made me cry. Thank you, Karen, and happy birthday to our Frankish Irish person! May you have MANY more and may your amusing god grant you both poems of your life.

Doc

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: an A-PARRRRT-ment
    ... omigod I’m really here after all – when I turned in at the door of the Tullamore Tribune ... resisted than I can dark chocolate or a good research paper, a gorgeous poem or a Chopin ... which accounted for her phenomenal network of friends. ... I met God the Father in the street ...
    (soc.culture.irish)
  • an A-PARRRRT-ment
    ... Mary would then recite how Geoff set Séamus Dooley on the task of interviewing this exotic alien, & arranged for Richard May to snap her pic for inclusion in the next Tribune & then would point to the pair of us & say, triumphantly, weren’t we all very good friends since ... I met God the Father in the street ...
    (soc.culture.irish)
  • John 15:15
    ... Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned ... EVROUL, called in Latin Ebruifus, was born at Bayeux, in 517, and was of the ... esteem nothing great but what is so in the eyes of God. ... By reading the lives of the saints they mutually ...
    (alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic)
  • Re: Where is the outrage? by Garrison Keillor
    ... > people die in the crash -- oh God, ... > as a director of Silverado S&L, bestowed enormous loans on his friends ... Mr. McCain now decries greed on Wall Street and suggests ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Two Poems
    ... "How the First Helandman of God was Maid of ane Hors Turd in Argyle" ... Qwod God to the helandman quhair wilt thow now ... The second poem is from William Soutar one of my favourite 20thC poets. ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)