Six years ago, I didn't even know she existed. Now I spend my summer holidays with her in Lakewood, New Jersey, a pleasant dormitory town about one hour away from Manhattan. She's Stella, the mother-in-law I didn't know I had.
It's a sad story but it has a happy ending. It is the story of many women. It begins in Belfast in 1946, just after the war ended. Stella, 22 years of age, fresh up from the country to find work, meets a dashing American officer. Who knows exactly what happened? Maybe it was a one-night fling, a Christmas party, a bunch of young people determined to have a good time. Stella won't talk about it. But, by the time she discovers she is pregnant, he has gone back to the US. She has no address, so she has lost him.
She is alone in a strange city.
She has a little baby girl. She struggles to hold onto the child. There is no lone parent allowance and very little sympathy for unmarried mothers. Some people, who have befriended her, give them a room in their house and she cleans and cooks for them. But the situation is desperate and after five months she gives the child up for adoption.
Later, in an effort to start a new life, she emigrates to the US. She marries and then discovers she can have no more children. The one child she had, she has given away.
Her husband dies and she is now a widow. Then one day in March 1992, she gets a phone call from Dublin. The little girl she gave up has traced her. She is now a woman with a family of her own. They agree to meet and they become reconciled. The little girl who was adopted is my wife Maura.
The first time I went to see Stella, I was apprehensive. Maura had made the initial trip with a friend and they had got on well together. Stella had filled in many of the gaps about Maura's parentage, except for a crucial one. She refuses to divulge the name of her father.
Stella was more nervous than I was on that first visit. She has never got over the event of Maura's birth and doesn't like to talk about it. She regards it as a black episode in her life. But she is glad that we have come back.
She fusses over us, insists on cooking vast meals that we can never finish and cries bitter tears when the time comes for us to leave. We keep coming back every year and sometimes our children come with us. We have settled into a routine at Stella's house. Lakewood is a pleasant town. We normally go in the spring before the weather gets too hot. I bring a pile of books, get up at 7 o'clock and jog to a nearby park. I pick up bagels for breakfast on the way home. I settle down on Stella's porch to read. At 3 o'clock we have cocktails and at 4 o'clock we have dinner. Maura and I go for a walk when the sun goes down. In the evenings we watch television or rent a movie. Some days we take the bus into New York and walk around Manhattan.
It's a soothing existence, very restful. The weather is always good and I come back with a suntan. In the dark, cold days of an Irish winter, I find myself looking forward to Stella's porch and cocktails at 3.
Eugene McEldowney's latest novel, Murder At Piper's Gut, has just been published by Heinemann
