finding home: aughkiltubred, 1969

University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)

Finding Home: Aughkiltubred, 1969Author(s): James MurphySource: New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 12-17Published by: University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20557948 .

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James Murphy

Finding Home:

Aughkiltubred, 1969

September, 1930. Age sixteen, my mother, Kathleen Sloyan, the second of eight children, leaves her home in Ballyhaunis, County Mayo. She will marry, raise

three children, and die in Brooklyn, New York, at age fifty-three, without ever

returning home.

We have no photos of her as a child.

With my first wages as a paperboy, I bought her a 78-rpm record that had

"Mayo" in the title. Her hug was a full world. Her eyes filled, and for years I

bought her anything that had Mayo in the title. I still love the sound of the word

Mayo.

March, 1924. Age twenty, my father, Patrick Joseph Murphy, the fifth of thir

teen children, leaves his home in Cloone, County Leitrim. He will return forty five years later, a year after the death of my mother, many years after the deaths

of his own mother and father.

We have no photos of him as a child.

This is the story of his journey home. I went with him and met myself.

In the Brooklyn world of my childhood, Ireland was always there on my men

tal horizon?in the rhythms of speech and turns of phrase of Irish people about the house; in the ballads about the old country and a moonlight in Mayo that could bring my mother to tears; in the Friday night card games in which a

priest visiting from Ireland might occasionally loosen his collar and mutter a

sort of curse when the Lord failed to fill his inside straight. Ours was a world of aunts, uncles, cousins; the calendar had its comforting

rhythm of gatherings for holidays, baptisms, communions, graduations. And

the funerals. Always uncles, John, Michael, Frank, each death strange in its own

way, each one driving my father deeper into himself.

I was eight when Uncle John fell over the banister on his way up to his apart ment, dropped three stories, and broke his neck. I didn't really know him, but

I can still see him falling.

NEW HIBERNIA REVIEW/lRIS EIREANNACH NUA, 8:} (aUTUMN/f?MHAR, 2OO4), 12-1/



Finding Home: Aughkiltubred, 1969

Then, I was nine when Uncle Michael fell under the wheels of an IRT sub

way car. The family said it was the heart that gave way, dead before he hit the

tracks, others whispered that he had jumped.

My Dad said his brothers had bad luck. Mikey must have had the old heart

attack. John, another story, let him be, no point in going on about it, let it be,

drop it.

Then, my godfather, Uncle Frank the bachelor, a large man with gruff man

ners whose hand swallowed mine when he shook it, his breath spoke of ciga rettes, whiskey, and anger. I felt bonded to him as my godfather and a bit afraid

of him at the same time.

He drank himself to death. I was thirteen when he died; my father was fifty and was burying his third brother in America. Years later, I would begin to

understand his loss and the pain that he kept inside as the funerals kept com

ing. But then, I was young and my father's losses were distant. I went to my

uncles' wakes and funerals and then came home, tired after a day of play with

all the cousins.

I remember a deeper sense of loss about Uncle Frank's death than about

John or Michael. Perhaps because I was older, the idea of death had begun to

have meaning, but I also think that, despite my youth, I sensed Uncle Frank was

a lonely and unhappy man, moving in a world too far removed from our Christ

mas dinners for me to understand.

He remains very much with me, since he is in my parents' wedding picture, the best man. The picture is on a table in our bedroom, so I see it at some level

of my consciousness every day.

A lovely picture, taken in New York in a studio, light years way from Leitrim

and Mayo. The whole picture speaks of Ireland, of emigration, and of change,

especially the poses of the four men?my Dad, Uncle Frank, Mark Cummings, and John Foley, my Dad's best friend and himself off the boat like the rest of

them. There they are in their rented tuxedos, probably for the first time in their

lives, looking stiff, awkward, proud of themselves.

Emigrants to a new world, just starting out, so far from their homes. Why this formal studio photo session? I now realize that it was to send their word

home that all was well, that they were prospering in the New World. The photo sent home says, "Not to worry, all's well."

In Aughakiltubred, parish of Cloone, County Leitrim, what could my grand

parents, John Murphy and Bridget Maguire, possibly have thought when this

picture arrived in the mail? There they are?two of their sons, Patrick and

Francis, long gone from home and not likely to return; dressed in tuxedos for a

marriage, one of their sons marrying a woman they would never meet, a formal

occasion at which parents should be honored and basking in the glow of the

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moment, but there are no parents in these wedding photos. These parents are

an ocean away from this wedding and will not be seen again by their children,

and will know many of their grandchildren only in the stream of photographs that will try to shrink the distance.

I now know that such photos were

regularly sent home to Ireland from the

States-?a steady chronicle of marriages and births. How many of these photos

came in the mail over the years? And then, the stream of photos of grandchil dren, an expanding family in America and Canada known to them only in

these photos. Hard to imagine their sense of separation.

The distance between these two worlds of our family came to me one day when I came home from school and my Dad was there, home earlier from

work than was normal. My intuition said that something wasn't quite right.

News from Ireland?my grandmother had died. Naive, I don't think I had ever

thought of my parents having parents. 1 really couldn't grasp the whole idea of

it?my father had a mother, but she lived far away in this mysterious place we

talked and sang about. I had a grandmother, she had died, my Dad would never

see her again.

He sits there, silence fills the room, and I try to understand this mystery.

My Dad went home for the first and only time in 1969. My Mom had died

the year before, and my sisters and I were especially aware that she had never

managed a

trip back home, so we gave the trip home as a Christmas present.

Since he wouldn't risk such a journey on his own, I was more than willing to be

his partner. A very exciting prospect for me, a chance to close the distance

between the Ireland of my imagination and the reality. But, while I was excited, I can't say that "Daddy," as we called him, was at first

thrilled at the prospect. I think, in fact, that he may have been a bit intimidat

ed by the whole idea. Since he hadn't been a letter writer, the links to Ireland had

been maintained more by and between our aunts who passed the news on to us.

After the deaths of his brothers, all his links to Ireland had closed down. Aunt

Catherine called it a hopeless place. Aunt Rose had gone home once, come

back, and said it was beyond hopeless. My Dad was a warm, loving man, full of

sharp humor, always humming tunes he composed as he went along, but at the

same time he was a man of few words, at least in terms of his personal feelings

and experiences. I suspect that is, at least in part, an Irish trait, especially on the

male side of the fence, but planning this trip energized him in a special way. He

began to speak more about Ireland as the trip approached, he had lots of ques tions. He wanted to look good, so off we went to Sears and Roebuck on Bedford

Avenue, our idea of high fashion. He was clearly nervous about the whole thing.

1 don't think I fully understood his emotions at the time. Ours was to be a

five-week trip, visiting Ireland and England. In each place, he had both his own

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Einding Home: Aughkiltubred, 1969

and my mother's family to visit. Only as we talked on the plane did I realize that

much of his nervousness came from worry that he might not like all these peo

ple. There he would be, for five long weeks, "at home," but in a world of

strangers. So again, the distance that was so much a part of the lives of all the

Murphys in America came to the fore, now a very real emotional reality. What

would he have to say to his brother Eddie and to his sister Ellen? After all, they wouldn't be interested in baseball, one of his passions that was a sure indicator

he had become a yank. Would he like the world of in-laws he was about to meet

for the first time?

As it turned out, there was no need to worry. Ireland fit him like a glove. He

settled immediately into its rhythm, his brogue increasingly ever so slightly. After a few days visiting with my mother's brothers and sisters in Mayo, it

was off to Leitrim, the real goal of the whole trip. As we neared his home turf,

he began to recognize landmarks, houses, churches. Now we didn't need the

maps I had been studying so carefully since Shannon Airport. He became the

guide.

We were closing distances.

"Turn here ""Make the next right" "If you turn here, you'll see Reynolds's

place," and, "The next house should be John Lee's." Much had surely changed in

forty years, but he knew this place; its houses and turns of the road had histo

ries that he was remembering, this world of rough, marginal farmland, clearly not prosperous, was the place of their beginnings?all the Murphy boys and

girls who wound up in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Canada, Rhode island, California,

England, in jobs and worlds far removed from their parents who worked this

stubborn Leitrim land to feed them.

When we came to the turn for Aughkiltubred, Daddy said we should keep

going a bit further, make a few turns. He said there would be a place a bit up the

road where we could buy some beer and stout to take up with us. Partly, he was

testing his memory; partly, he was stalling. His memory was good. There was indeed a place that was not really a pub

in today's terms; rather, it was a sort of general store that also served as the post

office and pub. Brady's, rough cement floor, and a few makeshift seats.

Only a few people in the place, and they watch us like hawks as soon as we

come in. Daddy doesn't introduce himself, there is a deep quiet, we order two

pints, tourists passing through.

I still feel his tension. He has gotten the place right in his memory; he has

found it after all those years, but will this place know him? Then, some small talk

about the weather: "Grand day," "Lovely," "Oh, it was bad this day a week."

We order twelve bottles to go, itself an insurance policy against

disappointment.

15




And then a moment that closes all distances.

One of the men looks up and says, "Is it Packy Murphy?" There he is, Patrick

Joseph Murphy, looking all too American in his Sears and Roebuck best, but he

is surely close to home.

"Packy?"

No hesitation. "John Francis?"

Obviously, Daddy had recognized John Francis Mulvey or, at least suspect ed that he did. No dramatic hugs?a quiet handshake, and Mulvey, "We knew

you were coming home. Eddie's expecting you above."

A remembered conversation, hopefully close.

Perhaps this moment is more in my own memory than in reality. Nonethe

less, I remember it as a great release for Daddy. If he was OK with John Fran

cis, surely he would be OK with his brother and sister. A few pints and some

memory-lifted laughter helped to loosen his mood. Then, off up the hill to

home.

When Uncle Eddie came out to greet us, I realized that this was surely an

uncle. He and Daddy were so

clearly brothers, their features so similar that

they were as one, much more so than I remember any similarities between

Uncle Frank and Daddy. Even before any words were said, their facial resem

blance alone shocked me into memories of long dead uncles in America.

Great distances were closed in that meeting of two brothers who hadn't seen

each other in forty years. Their greeting itself was not dramatic in any gesture or outward emotional demonstration. Brothers in more than looks, they

deflected emotions, keeping their inner worlds to themselves. For all anyone could tell, they might have seen each other last week.

A handshake, no hugs. "You're welcome home ... a fine day... Here, sit by

the fire_"Whiskey all around?the only public acknowledgment of a special occasion.

I count myself lucky to have been with my Dad when he finally went home.

Little did I know on that special day, but in two years he would be dead. Eddie

is now gone as well.

I like to remember the two of them, slowly and a bit awkwardly coming to

know each other again. Aunt Maggie giving us a bit of tea, Daddy gradually set

tling into a rhythm of memory and laughter as old friends came by and nostal

gia filled this small, warm, secure place. He was home, a circle had been closed.

He had lived his life far removed from this starting place, and now he was

back?forty years after his starting out on the road to America. He had married

and buried a wife, seen his three children grow up and do well in a world of

baseball and rock n' roll; he had coaxed whatever he could out of a backyard

Brooklyn garden, and he saw himself as quite the barbecue chef. He had labored

16




on a bread van, tried his hand as a union organizer and, once, he had received

a safe driver award that we all knew must have been a mistake.

That was his world as I thought I knew it.

But, as the days passed in Ireland, listening to him talk and remember with

his friends, hearing the laughter about some forgotten wildness when they were

all young bucks, watching him walk the fields with his brother, seeing the easy

way he had with cattle, I realized that I had always known instinctively about

this other world. Without my realizing it, Ireland had been one of my parents'

gifts to me; perhaps without their even intending it as a gift, but here it was.

A whitewashed cottage in Leitrim, no running water, three rooms, a central

fire?in this place, my Dad and the aunts and uncles of my growing up were all

born.

All along on that trip, I had thought I was taking my Dad home. Now, I

know he was showing me my own starting place. He took me home.

^> VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY

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finding home: aughkiltubred, 1969

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