Mom

Am I ready to do this?  Is it something I should do?  I don't know the life other than my experience of it which is clouded by my re-imaginings of what happened.  
It would be best and most honest to give a full-scale biography, but she did not have much to say about herself.  She was taught very early on to resist self-absorption.  There are no witnesses now to consult, no archives, no letters, just a few photos.  There is the photo of her on the rooftop of Tiffany's where she worked.  She is in the company's uniform and looking seriously at the camera.  She is alone.  There is a photo of her with a group of other Irish immigrants, four of them all crowded on a sofa, dressed in their Sunday Church clothes, highballs on the coffee table, all looking at the camera, some smiling, posed for the photo to show each other and others, themselves on a Sunday enjoying drinks, conversation, and good friends.  They are cousins; she would tell you, you felt she meant 'cousins' because there were so many of them it was hard to believe they were all cousins, but then the Irish had large families.  I had no cousins in or out of photos to point to. [It's hard to resist pushing my way into her story, but that will come].  She would tell you a bit about each of them, this one was a lot of fun [fun was important], and here isn't she pretty [also of importance], then the list of nicknames would come flowing out with warmth and smiles.  "That's Tommy hun [a nickname]", she'd say with pride and maybe she'd mention where the Hun's lived: "down from us" or maybe it was "in Glan by the post road".  I felt the importance of the personal and the place in relation to her life and her past.  I never heard where they lived now or what work they were about or their current families but a lot of their parents and siblings as though I were looking not at four people crammed on a sofa in Brooklyn on a Sunday afternoon but at a room in a small country town in Ireland in the early 20th century.
She saved photos and would take them out and look and talk about them, but always the talk was about other people.  I never heard a word about her photo on the roof of Tiffany's.  She did talk a lot about Tiffany's.
It was a source of great pride.  She was one of two elevator operators.  The other was Mary McGovern, also an immigrant and cousin from home with Mom. [Perhaps the photographer on the roof of Tiffany's].  I believe they knew each other in Ireland but definitely knew of each other.  Years later at a funeral in Riverdale, we met Mary outside of the church and Mary asked my Mom who she was and my Mom told her she was Baby John Einny.

[about the Irish nicknames: just about everyone in rural Ireland would have similar surnames.  In the area where my parents came from there were the Dolans and the McGoverns for the most part.  These names originated from the feudalistic practice of naming all serfs after their owners.  There were a lot of Bridget Dolans, so to distinguish each of them the surname was dropped and substituted by the first name of their grandfather plus their childhood nickname.  Owen was her Grandfather's name, I believe, and Baby was her nickname.  Bridget was changed in America to Beatrice.  Generally, her friends called her Bea.]

Shortly after my mother responded, Mary McGovern asked Mom again who she was.  My Mom laughed and told her again and Mom asked: "Don't you remember me".   Mom knew Mary had beginning Alzheimer's and I was surprised at her response; I worried it would embarrass Mary.  But she got Mary to say her memory was going and they talked a bit, as much as Mary was able.  That style of, what shall I call it confronting awkward moments was very common amongst her and her friends, and when I visited Ireland I found it common there, too. It was done with a jocular intent. One of my cousins, I did actually get to meet some, called me a queer duck.  I was a seventeen-year-old American in rural Ireland who talked and dressed very differently.  Who knows what he meant because I never responded, embarrassed for the wrong reasons perhaps, so we never got to talk ... closely.  Now, that's me again.  Too soon for me.  Let me take a break and come back to her, my Mom.