Cabra History.Com

I love this photo of my father and mother on holiday in Blackpool. They were 50 years married and on a second honeymoon, they couldn’t afford a first one. What I really love most of all is that after fifty years and fifteen children they could still laugh together. My father was six years older than my mother and remembered clearly the day she arrived home as a baby from the Rotunda Hospital, their families lived in the same tenement building and my Da’ and her brother were best pals.

Like most other parents of their time they went through good times and bad times. When the going got tough the tough got going, walking away from their responsibilities was never considered an option. My poor mother worked her fingers to the bones and often went without to ensure that we were all fed. My Da’ often worked seven days a week. During the summer he would cycle from Cabra West to Bray every Sunday morning to work in one of those little sweetshop kiosks dotted along the promenade. On Saturdays he was away doing odd jobs for people living as far out as Foxrock and Stillorgan. During the week he cycled through hail rain and snow to his job and never complained. I remember the Ma’ down on her hands and knees in the middle of winter scrubbing the floorboards in our kitchen and I’ve no recollection of her ever moaning or giving out because she had to do it. They both belonged to a generation that we may never see the likes of again.

Now wouldn’t it be a grand thing altogether if somebody had invented a little machine that you could put 50 pence into and it would let you talk to any of your family that’s dead and gone? They could get all the old phone boxes out of storage and set a machine up in each one of them. Now let me see…what will I ask them first? I better go and get a pen and paper to write all my question on…