Cabra History.Com

Do you remember your first day in school? The night before I started in the convent school on Rathoath Road the Da’ was telling me that I was a ‘Big Boy now’. I didn’t really understand what he meant at the time. Then the next morning the Ma’ had me scrubbed and polished like a new pin. She used to spit on her on hand and flatten down my hair with it. The rest of my brothers and sisters galloped off up the road ahead of us whooping and screaming like a tribe of Commanchees after a wagon train. Let me tell you that the walk from Killala Road to the convent school was miles long, me poor little legs were almost falling off me. And the Ma’ couldn’t put me sitting on the pram because there were already two of my sisters in it. I remember I had a little brown schoolbag with a pencil and a blank copy page in it on my back. Halfway to the school the Ma’ teamed up with a group of other mothers and their little ones all heading in the same direction. When we eventually arrrived at the school the nuns tol the Ma’ what classroom I was to go into. Then with a gently push I was there and the Ma’ was gone. I looked around the classroom at the group of other boys, some were crying and others like me where just ‘Lost in Space’. I remember turning towards the window and seeing the Ma’ and her pals smiling in at us all. My teacher’s name was Miss Courtney and she looked older than my mother but was most probably about twenty years old and a student teacher. I think after about two hours we were collected by our Ma’s and taken home. But I loved it and couldn’t wait to get back…