alcohol, so what was the use? It was time to go and he died in the Royal
Victoria Hospital.
My mother, the former Angela Sheehan, grew up in a Limerick
slum with her mother, two brothers,Thomas and Patrick, and a sister,
Agnes. She never saw her father, who had run off to Australia weeks
before her birth.
After a night of drinking porter in the pubs of Limerick he staggers
down the lane singing his favorite song,
Who threw the overalls in Mrs. Murphys chowder?
Nobody spoke so he said it all the louder
Its a dirty Irish trick and I can lick the Mick
Who threw the overalls in Murphys chowder.
Hes in great form altogether and he thinks hell play a while with
little Patrick, one year old. Lovely little fella. Loves his daddy. Laughs
when Daddy throws him up in the air. Upsy daisy, little Paddy, upsy
daisy, up in the air in the dark, so dark, oh, Jasus, you miss the child on
the way down and poor little Patrick lands on his head, gurgles a bit,
whimpers, goes quiet. Grandma heaves herself from the bed, heavy with
the child in her belly, my mother. Shes barely able to lift little Patrick
from the floor. She moans a long moan over the child and turns on
Grandpa. Get out of it. Out. If you stay here a minute longer Ill take
the hatchet to you, you drunken lunatic. By Jesus, Ill swing at the end
of a rope for you. Get out.
Grandpa stands his ground like a man. I have a right, he says, to stay
in me own house.
She runs at him and he melts before this whirling dervish with a
damaged child in her arms and a healthy one stirring inside. He stum-
bles from the house, up the lane, and doesnt stop till he reaches Mel-
bourne in Australia.
Little Pat, my uncle, was never the same after. He grew up soft
in the head with a left leg that went one way, his body the other. He
never learned to read or write but God blessed him in another way.
When he started to sell newspapers at the age of eight he could count
money better than the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself. No one
knew why he was called Ab Sheehan, The Abbot, but all Limerick
loved him.
My mothers troubles began the night she was born. There is my
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