Chapter 2 of A Place of Safety...

Inputting changes. Got the first two chapters done, and it's here I made most of the adjustments. This is the first four pages of chapter two, AKA: Child of the Groundhog

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I should mention, my name is Brendan Kinsella, third child and second son of this family line. My day of birth was the 2nd of February, 1956, and it seems my choice of this date brought my Aunt Mari no end of merriment when she heard. She’d been but two years in Houston, Texas, at the time, four-thousand miles and five worlds away. She and my Uncle Sean met when he was at the American Naval Station in Clooney and got themselves wed, then he took her home with him. Ma was not pleased, though it took me years to realize the extent of it.

"Sold herself for another world," she'd once said to Mrs. Haggerty, next door, when they were discussing a second daughter my aunt had borne.

"But couldn't she bring you all over?" Mrs. Haggerty had asked. "It's better opportunities in America than here."

Ma had pointed to her cheek and said, "This come from me suggestion as much to the mister. He thinks the Prods'll think he run from 'em."

"Nonsense. No shame in going where there's work."

"I know that. You know that. But my husband? Even Belfast is too far a jaunt for him. The sooner he's gone from us, the better for us all."

"Bernadette, don't think such things! Say a quick prayer."

"I have, more than once, this day."

And that is how I learned my mother's Christian name isn't Ma. Oh, and to be clear, I was but seven and seated at the table repairing a watch so could hear them both, with no trouble.

Anyway, Aunt Mari had learned of this odd American custom where if a groundhog pops up from his burrow and sees his shadow, it’s six weeks more of winter. She had called Mrs. Haggerty to see how Ma was going, and the midwife had told her I was finally of this world. They shared a laugh at how I’d started to come out in the morning, taken a glimpse of what was awaiting me, and slipped right back into my mother’s womb, refusing to reappear till it was half four and what little sunlight there was had stopped drifting in through the window.

From darkness to darkness only, thank you. Perhaps that's why I always preferred midnight to noon.

Of course, this gave my mother no end of grief, since she’d already been in labor for near thirty hours. If I had thought ahead, I would not have waited, for it gave her something to remind me of it anytime I did a wrong. Usually followed by a thump to my temple.

She was born a Farrell, my mother, off Clarendon Street, near Queen, next to the last child of a woman whose health forbade any future pregnancies. But the church being the Church and men being men, the priest brushed it aside and my grandmother died bringing Aunt Mari into the world. And never was it spoken of without also saying it was God's will.

God's will.

Funny how often that translates into what men prefer and not women. But that's between each and his own soul...and if a man's not capable of accepting a woman's needs are as important as his own, well...that is something I'm sure God will have him answer to when his time comes.

But this is why Ma wound up the mother of six before her twenty-eighth birthday, not counting three miscarriages or the long periods when Da would be in Belfast, working the docks.

That's where he was born, and hated to return there, I found out. Mrs. McCory was sniping at him for coming home parlytic in the middle of the day, and his response had been, "Feck off, ye ol' cow. I'm off t' Belfast th' next bus an' won't have the chance to partake. The bloody nuns'll see to that, while I'm there. Nosin' about. Makin' sure I work to the bone. All women do. To the feckin' bone, an' fer nothin'." 

I was five, at the time, so didn't understand what was being said. It wasn't till his wake, when I saw none of his family had come so sought Mrs. McCory out and asked her about it. After all, in Derry everyone knows your family back fourteen generations, and are happy to tell you about it with even so much of a hint as to being interested. But her only response had been to take me to a wreath that wore a banner saying In Sympathy across it. Then she said, "They're here in thoughts and prayers."

Which told me nothing, because it was from St. Ambrose, not people. Which I pointed out and was told to keep quiet

Which I did. 

For a while.

I was later to learn St. Ambrose was an orphanage near the Belfast harbor, and Da would room there because it was near nothing in cost. He had been left there at the age of five with a note pinned to his ragged shirt -- Eamonn Alwyn Kinsella, borne 9 September 1930. An older couple had brought him to the gate, rung the bell and hurried off. No one knew who they were, and young Eamonn was of no assistance, for he wouldn't speak.

Nothing more was known which, as mentioned, was highly unusual. Some even wondered if his name was truly Kinsella, for they could find no link to any they knew of that name. But still, that is how he remained, and as each member of the family was added, that is how they were listed in the register.