INTRODUCTION
I never thought much about what my grandmother was like when she was young. I knew three definitive things about her as a grandmother: she liked to give you suffocating hugs, M&Ms, and dental floss. It was ironic that she would give us candy and then a lecture on dental hygiene, but the woman loved candy, as do I, and she then paid the price for it. I think her point was that you can enjoy it if you take care of your teeth after enjoying it. She absolutely hated her dentures.
But then again, I’m not entirely sure the reason she lost all her teeth was that she ate too much candy. She grew up in Ireland when the Emerald Isle was less of a jewel and more of a third world country. They didn’t have very good dental care back then, and I don’t think health care was that stellar either because she always insisted on us having homemade remedies for everything imaginable. It wasn’t until the last resort that you went to the drug store or the doctor. If you had pink eye, you soaked a cotton ball in warm salt water, and dabbed your eyes with it. If you had heart burn, you ate candied ginger. If you had a cold, you drank a hot toddy. My most favorite was that if you had a stomach ache, you jumped up and down. It either made you burp or throw up. Either way you felt completely better after doing so. She also told us once that if a baby has thrush, you need to find the 7th son of the 7th son. I think that is easier to find in Ireland than here. In the US, you would probably have to go to some polygamist colony in Utah.
But we can’t go to her for advice anymore, she now has Alzheimer’s. Today, my mother and I are going through the stuff in her house, trying to figure out what to keep, and what to throw out. She lives in a little cottage like house sandwiched between duplexes, and homes turned into condos.
What I do know about her is that she was born in County Galway, Ireland in 1910, she immigrated to the US in 1958 along with my grandfather, who died before I was born, and my mom and my uncle Pat. The rest of the brood stayed in Ireland which is lucky for me because I have a reason to go and a place to stay. They all settled in Brighton, a neighborhood of Boston where I grew up.
BERNADETTE MULHOLLAND, THE EARLY YEARS
I was an “oops” baby. That’s what they call it when you’re unplanned. I never really knew what people meant when I would be out with my mother, and they would ask her how old her children were, and she would say, “Well, Bernadette is my youngest, she’s five, and then there’s Thomas who is 11 and his twin sister Eve, and Colin is next he’s 14, and Kate is my oldest, she’s 16.” To which the person would reply, “Six year difference? She must have been an “oops” baby!” To which my mom would reply, “She was a pleasant surprise.”
When I was little, I wished I could have a sibling my age. Thomas and Eve were the most present in my childhood because they were the next oldest, and didn’t leave for college until I was 12. I think Kate thought she was my second mother being 11 years older than me because she was always telling me what to do. She is still bossy so may be that’s just her personality. Colin is eight years older than me, and was horrified to have a six or an eight year old sister hanging around when he would bring his friends home. But when he brought a girlfriend over, suddenly we were best pals and he would lift me up in the air when he saw me, and play with me, I think to show his “sensitive side.”
My brothers and sisters all took care of me, and apparently were very excited when I was born. But I feel like I had a separate childhood from them. Sometimes we will all be sitting at the dinner table and they will start reminiscing about a summer vacation they took, laughing all the while, and then they would turn to me and say, “Oh this was before you were born, Bernadette.” Sometimes I was actually present for the event they were talking about and they would turn to me and say that, and I would get really mad and say “No, I was there. I remember that.” And my mom would say “Oh were you? I guess you were!” Was I invisible? I guess they were having too much fun to remember the youngest child was present. My parents and I took separate vacations after everyone else got too old or too busy to go on a trip. We have our own memories, but I don’t have a sibling to laugh about them with. My aunt Lizzie had an “oops” baby too, but then she had another one to keep her company. That “oops” baby was born right after me, and her brother is only a year younger. I think my mother could not handle a sixth child, especially after having a set of twins, and then me. I was a handful.
It wasn’t until junior high when Tim McCarthy who sat two desks down from me in French class told I was probably a mistake. We were plotting out our family trees en Francais and he noticed “mon frere” and “ma soeur” were “six ans” older than me. No one would have four kids and then wait six years to have another. I don’t know how he knew this. His parents had planned on having two children (he has a younger sister), and then that was it. Apparently, that’s what most people did.
Recreating my family tree was quite the project and I was without a doubt the last one to finish. When our teacher passed out a sheet of 8 X 11.5 sheet of paper, I requested a larger piece, to which she sighed, and then turned to the closet to pull out a spreadsheet size. And thus I began, en francaise, the Irish diaspora in America, and the village back home that is my family.
The Mulhollands's
Mon-pere Sean Mulholland
Soeur du Pere Lizzie Mulholland marie James Flynn- les enfants: Michael, Theresa, John
Frere du pere Billy Mulholand marie Aileen Duffy- les enfants: Will, Kenny, Meghan, Elizabeth
Soeur du Pere- Mary Mulholland marie Pat O'Neill- les enfants: Keiran, Olive, Laura, Maureen, Liam
Soeur du pere- Nan Mulholland marie John Reilly- les enfants: Colin, Catherine, Adam, Tommy
The Mahon's
Soeur d'une mere- Bridget Mahon marie Thomas Sheehan- les enfants: Thomas, Elizabeth, Annie
I grew up in Brighton, which wasn’t the biggest neighborhood in Boston , but apparently needed a large high school since all the Irish people that lived there had oops babies. The high school used to be a fort, and it looms above the street like it is going to open its doors any second and eat you. I used to walk by it and stare at it, nervous that if I ever went there one day I would surely get lost.
But,I didn’t go there. I went to St. Joseph’s just like my brothers and sisters. With each new grade I started, a teacher would loom over my desk and say, “Another Mulholland? Tell me you are the last!” My mother had been told on many a teacher-parent night that she had very sociable children, except for Colin. He was and still is the quiet one. As for the rest of us, we liked to talk. I talked mostly out of boredom. School was always very easy for me, and when I wasn't challenged, I was bored. It was only my third grade teacher who inspired me at all, and for whom I was the best behaved. She introduced poetry and writing into my world. I would spend every free moment in class writing in the journals she provided for us. As for my other teachers, they had to endure my arguments and questioning of subjects they were teaching. In the second grade, we were coloring in dinosaurs, and I colored mine pink with purple polka dots. As the teacher came around my desk, she noted that they probably blended in with the environment, to which I argued they have no proof of that. Only their bones were left. May be they died because they were pink and purple and didn't blend in with the environment. In the tenth grade, I argued with my teacher that Virginia Wolff's work in fact did not make any sense and she really was just writing depression-induced rubbish. Despite my dislike of "To the Lighthouse," I also loved to read, and putting a good book in front of me was another way to shut me up. My teachers handed me just about every Newbury Medal winning book the library had in an effort to keep me entertained when I finished my work before everyone else.
Brighton is part of Boston , the western most part before you hit Newton . Everyone always made South Boston to be the Irish-American neighborhood, which it was, but Brighton was the off the boat Irish neighborhood. The mini-marts all sell the Irish papers, Cadbury candy, coarse whole meal for making brown bread, and sausage and puddings. Just about everyone on my street has a Madonna (as in the Virgin Mary, not the singer) lawn ornament, or may be a St. Francis of Assisi and a St. Anthony too. Most of the people my parents’ age are friends with them, either from back home in Galway , or they met each other when they got here. And that’s another thing. In my neighborhood, if you say you are going home, you are going to your house. If you say you are going “back home,” you are going to Ireland.
I shouldn’t say my neighborhood is 100% Irish, because it isn’t. There were Chinese people, one of two Hispanic families, and just plain old American mutts too. Brighton is also home to a lot of college students, but they mostly live over by Commonwealth Avenue. Occasionally you’ll find some near my house, but they never cause much trouble. They just leave a lot of empty beer cans and pizza boxes on the curb on trash day. Whenever my school was having a can drive to raise money, I hit the jackpot at college kids’ houses. I am sure the nuns at my elementary school were horrified when I showed up with a trash bag full of empty Budweiser cans. God knows what they thought of my parents, and it didn’t help that my father owned one of the biggest bars in Brighton.
It used to anger me when people would make jokes about the Irish being drunks, but it was hard to back up my argument that we weren’t all drunks when my father owned a bar, and I could get drunk off of two beers. In college people always thought I drank too much, but they didn’t realize that I had little tolerance. I think they assumed with a name like Bernadette Mulholland, well those that knew I was Irish and not Dutch like they think my last name is, that I could hold my liquor. I am a cheap date, what can I say. And my dad is too. Despite owning a bar, he only drinks on Sundays, no more than three pints, and then walks home and tells everyone he loves them and gives us all a big hug.
Although I longed to have a sibling my age, I did have cousins around me. My Auntie Bridget’s family lived close by in Natick , and her daughter Theresa and son John came over a lot. Theresa was the same age as me, only a week younger to be exact, and John was in the grade below us. I also had kids in the neighborhood I played with. There were the McBride's- Timmy and Tyler, and the Sommers- Julia and Patty. I spent most of my afternoons with Tyler and Julia. We were all in the same grade, except Timmy went to Brighton High, the brave soul, while Julia and I went to St. Joseph's. The three of us were like peas and carrots right up through high school, and while I stayed in contact with them through out college, Timmy and Julia became more of a twosome through college and there after. They were not romantically involved, but Timmy loved Julia and everyone knew it.
When we were in elementary school, we went through a lot of phases in what we played. For a long time, we enjoyed building forts, both inside and outside, depending on the weather. When Nintendo came out, we were inside playing video games all the time, until one of our mothers would kick us out. We liked to play board games, legos, badmitton over the fence that separated my yard from Timmy's, and whiffle ball. I guess you could say I was a bit of a tomboy in that I did not play with dolls much. I think Julia and I would have been more into that stuff if Timmy didn't hang around all the time.
We all played t-ball and soccer together until we got to the age where we have to play in a girls or boys league. As soon as I was in the fourth grade I got to play Camogie which is a the female version of hurling, which is a sport they really only play in Ireland. Imagine baseball and rugby put together, and you have an extremely violent sport that I was allowed to play until my sister Maeve had all her front teeth knocked out during a match. After that, it was back to soccer for me. I also did Irish Step dancing for a while, but my teacher was as mean as could be. and I hated the idea of not being able to lift my arms up.
St. Patrick’s Day
There is nothing more annoying than growing up in Boston, and 1) having people think you last name is Dutch, or Danish as they are too stupid to know that Dutch and Danish are not the same thing, and 2) try to out-Irish you on St. Patrick’s Day. As my name is Bernadette Mulholland, people think I have a French first name and a Dutch last name. It does not matter to people that I am 75% Irish. I do not have an Irish last name so I am not as Irish as their 5th generation Irishness. Mulholland is in fact a very old Irish surname that dates back to the time of St. Patrick- the Mulhollands of County Derry were the “Keepers of the Bell of St. Patrick.” My dad always told me that, but did not elaborate much. The fact that the other 25% of me is English really irks people, and the fact that I get into these arguments with people at all makes me want to move to Alaska where I can celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in peace.
You seriously have to present your lineage to drunk people on St. Patrick’s Day. One of these years I’m going to wear a shirt that says “I’m not Irish but you can kiss me anyway,” and then I won’t have to get into a discussion about it at all. It doesn’t matter much to people that my mother is an Irish immigrant, that most of my family still lives there, or that I spent a whole lot of my childhood with my very Irish grandmother who had all the sayings and nuances of a speak-your-mind Irish matriarch. People love to show off that they know all the words to “Danny Boy” and “Wild Rover,” but do they know the words to “Fields of Athenry?” My mom grew up in the Fields of Athenry for Pete’s sake!
And I do not have red hair. For the life of me, I will never understand why that is what people associate with looking Irish. I have very dark brown, almost black hair, pale skin , and bright blue eyes like my grandmother. I look like a Celt. Sure there are Irish people with red hair, but I seriously know more Jews with red hair.
Boston is a funny place like that.
