Cabra History.Com

‘This is a photograph looking up our stairs at home in Cabra West. On Christmas Eve in 1945 my mother was eight months pregnant. As she walked out of the bedroom she thought one of my brothers, who was two years old at that time,  was about to fall down the stairs. She reached out and pulled him back onto the landing and overbalancing, she fell down the stairs. My father came running out of our kitchen and lifted her up off the floor. So, with coats, hats and scarfs on my mother sat on the crossbar of my father’s bicycle and he took her into the Rotunda Maternity Hospital. Early Christmas morning my brother Noel was born. My mother told me that when she arrived at the hospital the Matron said “You’re only coming in here for your Christmas dinner“. The next morning, being Christmas Day, my father took the rest of the children to Mass. He then left the children with one of our neighbours and went in to see my mother. When he arrived home the neighbour had his dinner ready for him on the table and a bottle of Stout to wash it down with…’