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Máire Uí Mhaicín | all galleries >> people >> A la recherche du temps perdu > Alice
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Alice

My maternal grandmother Alice was born in 1879. She had a large family of siblings, most of whom lived and died in Ireland, and one of her brothers emigrated to Australia where his descendants continue to live.
Alice had not an easy life. She became a primary school teacher, a career she worked in until her retirement in her late sixties, when I was a child. She married my grandfather John when they were both in their early twenties and she bore nine children. She saw five of her children go to their graves before her: three claimed in early childhood, two in adulthood. She was widowed in her early forties, and left with a young family, her husband's business and her own career to manage. She did this with the assistance of her extended family,and she was devoted to an elder sister, with whom she spent a lot of time after she was widowed. When she retired she sold the business and moved her home to Dublin, where she lived with one of my aunts for over a decade and a half before she died at the age of 87.
She was a graceful lady, always well dressed, loved good clothes and had a fine selection of earrings and pendants. She spoke with a firm voice, and the teacher in her was always to the fore. My earliest memories of her are of her teaching me to read before I started formal school; her insistence on seeing my music and elocution exam results; her rewards to me in letters of encouragement which might frequently have a ten shilling note tucked inside.
Every year she would make the two hundred mile journey back to our home in the west for a month. She always had two bags. One full of her own clothes for the month, the other full of gifts for us, her grandchildren. New dresses,a jumper, a blazer, trousers for my brother: she never came empty-handed. During the month her days would be spent visiting all her old friends: as if she were storing up conversations and memories for yet another year.
The arrival of television in the early sixties perplexed her. The notion of such instant visual communication in the living room was one she never really came to terms with; yet in her lifetime she witnessed the increasing use of its preceding marvels: the radio and the telephone. I don't think she ever learned to drive: I always remember her in the seat of honour in any car I ever saw her in. She became somewhat deaf in her latter years, and wore a hearing aid, which was always tucked neatly behind her ear, and its string camouflaged by a necklace. We always thought she suffered from selective deafness as she could hear what we didn't want her to hear when we thought she had the hearing aid turned off.
I was in my first year in university when she died, on Christmas Day. It was the strangest Christmas we ever had as a family. We had to rush our Christmas Dinner, then bundle everyone into our car, and head off on the two hundred mile journey to Dublin. The normally-busy roads were almost deserted. When we finally arrived in Dublin we had to scatter ourselves to stay with various family friends, and then prepare for the long journey back in a funeral cortege.
Alice was buried beside her beloved sister Fanny. I still think of her, and am reminded of her every time I see her only surviving daughter, who bears a close resemblance to her.


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Marisa Livet30-Nov-2009 13:22
A strong tempered lady and her life story well described by her granddaughter.
It could be one of the characters of a classical Irish novel.
globalgadabout29-Nov-2009 19:11
an arresting portrait of this remarkable person..V
laine28-Nov-2009 22:24
Thanks for sharing your wonderful Grandmother with us, Máire. Your story has so many familiar rings to it that I am reminded of my own loved ones. Do you know where in Australia your others are ?