“Don’t be mad, Jean, sure fat people don’t get wrinkles”. That was my Granny Nancy’s response to my mother’s concerns over her perceived ageing face. You can always count on her for a laugh. I must point out that my mother is neither fat nor wrinkly but, rather, has inherited the youthful essence of Nancy.
My grandmother’s sharp tongue and quick wit are forces to be reckoned with; she has held the fort in Barnaboy, Ballaghaderreen, for more than 60 years now, drawing our extended family to gather around that old Stanley range.
Her quick-fire wit is characterised with honesty and complemented by her kind heart; her love of life and elegance are admirable. She knows just how to turn on her left foot and swing for a jive, she has an eye for beauty in the ordinary and is a dab hand at painting bucolic watercolours from recognisable Barnaboy scenes. She revels in the sight of January snowdrops marking the end of winter and the turn of a new year, and has been known to hop barbed-wire fences to retrieve a bunch.
Her love for her husband, John, who died more than 20 years ago, seems one of the purest I could imagine. I hear her speak to him in her prayers, and she often loses herself to memories on special occasions. She tells of the day she was leaving for England, her suitcase packed. She had stopped in a pub in town for a farewell drink with her father, when John, desperate to keep her by his side, raced to the pub and asked for her hand in marriage. She never left for England that day. Perhaps if she had, I wouldn’t be here today. A marriage followed, a new house in Barnaboy, my mother and her five siblings – and Nancy, the matriarch. She has been to New York, London and the south of France. She visited Amsterdam with my aunt Catherine a few years ago, and marvelled at the ladies in the red boxes, whom she reckoned were “sitting on a fortune”.
My Granny Nancy has kept us young, reminded us always of how to enjoy what life gives, and has kept us laughing all along the way. She is our matriarch; our “Godfather”.
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