My Mother Told Me Stories

      I could imagine that other children at my age were being told the same Mother Goose tales, or the same fairytales that had been told for generations. But my mother was not of that sort. She didn't have to be. She had better stories to share,  brought forth from a land rich in creating them. She told me stories of her childhood in Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland.

      She came to America during the 1950s. She met my father and had four children. She did not leave Ireland by choice, her mother persuaded her. Yes, she left Ireland, but Ireland never left her. In her heart she still dwelt there and her memories became fertile ground for the magical stories she told me.

      She didn't tell them in a newspaper article fashion. Instead she relayed incredible moments in her childhood of things that could never happen in a tenement building in Irvington, New Jersey. She told me of the winter storms that would blow the thatched roof off her home. She told me of running through grassy meadows that seemed to stretch on forever. She told me of Christmases where she truly "decked the halls with boughs of holly" and ivy. Christmases, where the highlight of the day was not the presents under the Christmas tree, (They had no Christmas tree) but the celebration that ensued at her local parish.

      She shared songs that made her cry, told of nights at the local cinema listening to the young men in the audience offering up wolf calls and whistles at a Jane Russell movie, the poverty and the riches of the people that made up her community and the yearning for the land that haunted her until her death in 1981.

      Now it is 2003 and her daughter has 3 children of her own. My children know many stories, some true, some not. But among the stories I have told them, sweetest of all are the ones my mother told me, ones that she didn't live long enough to tell her grandchildren. She instilled in me a longing for a place I have never been, A place she never returned to upon entering the shores of America. A place I hope to come to in honor of her memory and to find the fulfillment for the yearning she has firmly set inside my heart. For Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland.