Image borrowed from BingMy grandmother was a beauty, apparently. She was six feet tall and had jet black hair and brown eyes. She lived in the North west of Ireland in a beautiful mountainous place called Donegal, where they speak in a lilting accent that contains woodsmoke and mountain air. Even today, it hasn't changed much.
Mary-Anne was a beauty inside and out. We never met unless you count the hours I gazed upon her photos, sepia coloured Mary-Anne. As a child, I always wondered what she would look like in colour? Why was she trapped in forever 'sepia'?.
Mary-Anne was a great story-teller, in Irish a 'seanachai'. She would walk miles to visit family and friends and knock on the door and spend hours at other people's fires spinning tales and making people laugh and cry with her stories.
She married a soldier located in the barracks close to her home, a grey stoned building overlooking the wild Atlantic ocean. 'Next stop, New York', the locals would say.
She married my grandfather, a blue eyed soldier and they moved inland. He was an orphan and had been raised by what people referred to as a 'spinster aunt' in those days. She had been a nanny in the States and returned to take over his care. Mary-Anne became his family, this beautiful, warm-hearted girl with a wicked sense of humour.
On her grave, each spring, daffodils grow. Even in death, Mary-Anne brings joy.
I imagine her somewhere, sitting by a fire, spinning tales and mischief making.
I hope I can continue her story-telling here, I think Mary-Anne might have liked that.
I think she would approve of a little mischief making.
Brigid O'Connor
Posted over on her site Sort Of Writing
Listed as #11 over on Magpie Tales 49
1 comment:
dionThanks Glenn, this story that entices a real person into the real world from a sepia photograph, was worth a second reading.
Post a Comment