Conversations with Grandma: Four writers talk feminism and life with their grandmothers
How much has changed in the world for women since she was my age in 1964?
My grandmother weighed one pound when she was born in 1933. One of triplets, she is the only one that survived past infancy.
I’ve always thought of her as scrappy, a fighter, despite her small stature.
Even though I didn’t realise it until recently, she’s always been an example of a very modern woman.
“I always worked, my whole life,” she says.
“And I loved it. I worked in factories, in a fish and chip shop; it was the social part I liked the most, just being out and about every day and seeing people. I was never afraid of hard work, and I liked to be independent.”
Ostensibly today’s visit is to talk about the similarities and differences in our lives as women, in time for an article about Mother’s Day.
How much has changed in the world for women since she was my age in 1964?
At 31, she was married with two children, living in Blackpool in Northern England having emigrated with her husband in the Fifties.
She was homesick much of the time, as were many in an era where signs saying “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish” were a common sight in the UK.
They would return home in the early 1970s when my mother was a pre-teen, and settle on the very road she herself grew up on.
Today, Phyllis Carroll lives in a nursing home just south of Dublin City. Her husband Noel, my grandfather, resides there also but in a different room.
He lost his sight seven years ago and Phyllis, while still relatively alert and astute, has trouble getting around by herself, so they rely upon the care of others.
They’re both happy there, she tells me as we chat for the purpose of this article.
“The only thing is, there aren’t enough visitors,” she says.
“It gets a bit lonely.”
Of course, my parents visit as often as possible and other family members, myself included, try their best. But in an ideal world Nanna would have a steady stream of people to chat to; if she had it her way, she’d never be alone.
In fact, when I ask her what she’s most proud of in her life, she cites her ability to mix with other people, all other types of people, and to get on well with them.
I’ve always known her to be incredibly sociable – the type of person to wax lyrical to whoever she sat next to on the bus, or to while away hours in the front garden chatting to passers-by.
Her favourite activity was shopping; she’d get the bus or walk in to town and spend the day on Henry Street chatting to her friends and acquaintances, picking up the bits she needed (and some she didn’t).
It makes us all sad she’s not able to do that anymore.
I ask her if she knows what feminism means.
While her long-term and very short term memory are sharp enough, a lot of her life past adolescence can be a bit blurry, so I didn’t know if she’d remember the women’s movement of the Sixties.
“It means being for women, that women can do whatever they want.”
Fair enough, I say. Is it easier, does she think, for women today?
“Oh yes, I think so. You have your career and you’re able to do everything, you’re able to do both.”
By both, she means have a relationship and a job I love.
In her day, so many gave up work altogether when they got married, and didn’t have the opportunity to pursue an education.
She says she would have loved to learn more, that she always felt a bit dim, but that she didn’t let it stop her.
She didn’t have to work, Grandad did well; she quite simply felt she had to.
Looking back, I remember retirement at 65 hit her hard.
Conversation turns to my impending nuptials. I ask her what she thinks of me getting married at 31, having lived with my fiancé previously.
“More power to you,” is her response.
I then ask her what she thinks of that fact that I don’t want to have any children.
“I think that’s entirely up to you, I wouldn’t judge. You and Joe get to decide that for yourselves.”
Speaking to her now in this setting, it occurs to me how remarkable she is, and how lucky I’ve been to have such a forward-thinking female role model.
My parents have always been liberals so I guess they didn’t lick it off a stone; it seems my grandmother was too, albeit in a more hidden way.
When I was growing up, I would have thought her far more traditional but perhaps that was just her adhering to the societal norms of her time, or internalising my grandfather’s opinions.
After all, my cousin is gay, and I remember asking her about the marriage referendum back in 2015.
At the time she told me “they should be allowed to be happy.”
I’m not sad when I look at Phyllis now, even though she is frail. She is still a live wire, still bantering with the staff at the home. Always petite, she’s now tiny, but she’s a tough old bird at almost 84.
She’s been through the wars with her health, countless operations over the years, but she’s still trooping. And she still has her sense of humour, and her eye for the fellas.
What Phyllis lacks in stature, she makes up in spunk. And if I’ve half her gumption in my old age, I’ll be doing very well indeed.
My nan was born in 1935 in Cork. The import or sale of contraceptive devices were illegal. It would remain this way until 1980.
She witnessed Senator Mary Robinson, who would later become president, attempting to introduce the first bill in 1971 proposing to liberalise the law, and fail because she was not allowed a reading.
1935 was also the year the Bishop of Galway denounced immodest dress and vulgar films. It was the year my nan started living despite all obstacles facing her as a woman. I ask her what she thinks of feminism.
“It’s much more powerful than it ever was, it’s after waking up a bit,” she responds. I’m surprised at how ‘woke’ she is.
She knew of the few women in leadership at the time but tells me you wouldn’t hear about them.
Her Catholic upbringing meant “you were only learning what was coming off the alter. We listened, I listened,” she said.
“Parents don’t have that much of a say now.”
I press her on why the independence that she had to work for seems like an entitlement for this generation.
“People aren’t dependent on the old ways of learning anymore. People aren’t dependent on books or a sermon, it’s much easier than that now. I need only consult my five-year-old granddaughter about that!” I agree.
Nan spent her late teens and early twenties living with her aunt in Ealing, London. Aged 16 she took the boat from Cork to Fishguard.
I reckon she was nervous but she tells me, “you’d always meet someone on the boat”.
It was an opportunity that few girls of her age were offered and she grabbed it.
“It was unheard of that a 16-year-old girl would do that,” she beams. I can’t imagine my 16-year-old self having the guts.
She attended college in England, an all-girls class because the boys were working. She did both. Working in a department store part-time gave her independence.
“I was too far from the city in Ireland to get work like that. In Ealing everything was down the road.”
She jokes that you would have needed a letter from the Pope to get a job like that in Ireland. She went to Ealing Studios on evenings off and earned money as an extra.
“We always got a couple of bob to stand in the back, we saw a lot of stars at the time.”
However foreign it seemed, she was never far from home, “you’d always meet someone from Cork at the Irish dancing”.
Memories of the years she spent in Ealing in the company of her aunt are a delight to her.
“My aunt was very clever, she used to make quite a few things for me.”
Her aunt introduced her to fashion, I ask her to tell me a story about that.
“I was going to a dance and I saw a dress in a shop window. I loved it but knew I couldn’t afford the likes of that,” she said.
“My aunt made it. She just made it, the same exact dress and I thought it was marvellous. She taught me that these things are possible if you
learn to do them for yourself.”
She taught her to be independent.
“I had to be, fiercely so,” she nods.
Her aunt encouraged her to do things for herself.
“I didn’t get away with anything, you didn’t go to mass on a Sunday and come home and read the paper you had to show you were doing something good.”
Aged 22 she married and returned to Cork to start a family, but never felt any pressure to do so. I ask her what she would have done otherwise.
“If I had never met anyone I would have gone to America.”
She tells me it’s less than €100 now to go to Boston from Cork and that the trip was nearly £200 at the time. I think I may take her.
I ask her about her greatest achievement.
“To see your grandchildren and great-grandchildren be brought into the world, sure how much further can you go? Sure you couldn’t achieve any more could you.”
I think she must have a lot of love for her family, but she surprises me.
“With love can you really just pick out your family? Sure if you were just doing that you’d be doing nothing.”
She tells me I have to have love for everyone like in the prayer ‘Dearest Lord’. She doesn’t remember the words so I Google it. I find it and start reading. She recites the rest from heart and I read from the screen.
I realise she might be right about grandchildren, but that it might be true for grandmothers too. My greatest achievement.
At 84, my grandmother Breda is one of the most liberal people her age I know.
Despite growing up in Catholic Ireland, and going to confession every Saturday morning, she’s one of those people who abides by the motto ‘live and let live.’
When I was younger I did think of her as more traditional, and perhaps she is in some ways, but despite attending mass almost daily she says “no man – clergyman, politician or doctor - should have a say in women’s affairs.”
Sitting down with Granny in her kitchen, there’s always a routine of tea, biscuits, and a chat. I tell her I’m writing this feature about generational differences between us for a Mother’s Day feature, and she laughs.
“I never remember a Mother’s Day when I was young. It crept in gradually. Some people don’t bother about it really, and the man I was married to never took much notice of it either.
“Lord have mercy on him, Michael could answer any history or geography or current affairs question, but he’d forget Mother’s Day. Although in later years he would have remembered and would have bought me a bunch of flowers. Having said all that he had a heart of gold.”
He must have done something right, because they were married for more than 50 years before he passed away in 2011.
Granny met my grandad Michael when she was 18. She had just finished school, and had trained to become a post office clerk. Originally from Limerick, there were no vacancies for female clerks there at the time, so she was sent to Tipperary town.
“The first person I was introduced to when I came to Tipperary was your grandfather Michael,” she tells me.
“It went on for a long time then. He was ‘doing a line’ at the time,” she says.
“It took us a long time then to get together, but we were always very close. Eventually, I don’t know, it just happened. We weren’t long doing a line, I suppose, when we got married.”
Before she got married, however, her job required her to transfer to Waterford for the best part of a year. She had just gotten engaged, and was devastated about the move.
I asked her how easy it was to keep in contact with my grandad while she was away, to which she smiles, “We were good to write at the time. I wrote to him, or I’d be home, or he’d come down for the weekend. There’d be a bit of contact alright.
“Michael often said afterwards ‘I don’t know what was blinding me. I could have just married you before you went and you needn’t have gone at all. It never dawned on me.’”
Why would marriage have changed anything though, I ask, only to discover that females who worked as public servants, or in the bank, at the time had to give up their jobs once they got married.
What’s more is this was the case until July 1973, just 43 years ago. Being a married, female public servant was just one of a number of things women couldn’t do at the time – women couldn’t sit on juries, collect children’s allowance, or get the same rate of pay for a job as a man.
“Then all the children arrived very quick,” she laughs.
She had seven children, six boys and one girl, “I’d say our generation were the last with big families. It’s a bit different now I suppose.”
I ask her if she sees anything similar in society now as when she was younger. She decides on the economy. Just as money is tight for many people today, she says it was just the same when she was growing up. She’s also reminded of the rural to urban migration happening now.
“Where we lived there was only one real Limerick family there, the rest of us were all in from the country. Our parents would have moved in for work.”
While money is still an issue for many today, she tells me a story about what luxury was when she was growing up as a young girl in Limerick city that really puts the change throughout the years into context.
“My mother used to make a nice fruitcake every week, there was no such thing as an iced cake. But one family near us, their mother had passed away, and their cousin used to take pity on them and make them an iced cake.
“I remember it well, the cake was white and she used to decorate it in a lovely purple colour icing. They’d have it in the sitting room and they’d draw the curtains back, and we’d all be brought down to have a look at the iced cake. That’s just how simple things were.”
"His first trip to the island,” she exclaimed with smiles as her great-grandson, Feidhlim was carried into the porch by my sister-in-law, Amy.
My grandmother, 86-year-old Maureen O’Donoghue, lives on her own on Valentia Island, an island off the coast of County Kerry.
‘D’island’ has always been something that has shaped our family’s identity and one of the reasons my brother and I had a perfect school attendance.
“If you lived in my time you’d have to cycle the three miles to Knightstown, hop in the boat, row across to Renard Point and cycle another three miles to Cahersiveen, all to go to school - you have no excuse,” was a sentence I regularly heard from my father growing up.
The bridge, which connects Valentia to the mainland, was only erected in 1971, therefore a lot their family life was spent alongside the Skelligs shouting over to the locals in Portmagee to send them over a boat or if they were travelling to Cahersiveen, they could pay a shilling for the ferry at ‘the foot’ of the island.
Maureen was one of two from ‘Over the Water’ in Cahersiveen. Her mother, a Dingle native and gaeilgeoir, sadly lost two of her children from health complications.
For precaution, my grandmother was born in St. Vincent’s hospital in Dublin, traveled home by train to Tralee and from there travelled by horse and cart to South Kerry.
She finished school at 14 and began work tidying up in a drapery shop before working as a barmaid in a pub now known as, The Fertha.
When I approached her with the topic of careers of women today, she proudly announced: “I didn’t care what I did, once it was near the dance hall.”
Never did the opportunity of becoming a nurse or teacher appeal to her, she was the happiest when she was dancing.
“Just do what makes you happy and you’ll find your way, whatever it may be,” she said smiling over at my nephew.
She met my late grandfather, Joe O’Donoghue while she was working in the pub. He and his friends used to travel the ten miles by bike from Portmagee, to order a drink from her.
One thing we all know, love and admire about my Nan, is her straight talking ability that constantly has us all in stitches.
She has no problem telling us how she feels and it’s a characteristic of hers that really encapsulates her strong character.
I would do anything to have witnessed her working behind that bar.
My grandfather soon bought farmland in Valentia Island and with that, they both set up shop in the breathtaking spot of Feighmane, overlooking Beginish Island and on a good day, you can clearly see Dingle in the distance.
There my Nan worked with my grandfather on the farm, 364 days of the year. Christmas day was the only day she “took off”.
They were a team, my grandparents, both working on the farm from early morning to the late evening before they both took a hand at making the dinner.
Stereotypical roles never played a part in the O’Donoghue household, something they passed on to my father and in turn, he passed on to me and my brother.
When I asked her what the term feminism meant to her she drew a blank and said, “It’s something to do with women”.
After I explained it to her she smiled and said “sure I was too busy working to be thinking of that”.
Feminism is something that never concerned her, there was no doubt in her mind that women can put their hand to everything, and she did just that.
She was there at hand when they moved cattle and tractors via planks of wood, across the 20-person ferry boat, from the mainland up to our farm.
To this day, it wouldn’t be any surprise to us and our family if we arrived at the house and found her varnishing the skirting boards of the entire house.
We chatted about the fact that there was no electricity on the island until after my father was born, “I used to wash his nappies by candlelight.”
Of course, I presumed she took a break from working with my grandfather while she was pregnant but she admitted that she worked on the farm up to the day my father was born, December 22.
After he was born she wasn’t one to stay home and mind the kids, she told me that “Dan [my father] was reared in a field, I got a pram from Mary and he came to work with us”.
I’ve always counted myself lucky to have such a strong female role model in my life and when I found myself living in the Australian outback, I constantly thought to myself, “what would Nan do?” and the answer was always, she wouldn’t let any obstacle get in her way.
Although she may not know what feminism means, she emulates everything I believe it defines. A progressive thinking, hard working woman that lived the life she chose and didn’t care what other people thought of it.
I made a promise right there and then to teach Feidhlim everything that encompasses the legacy that is the O’Donoghue’s of Feighmane, Valentia Island and continue to strive to become even a smidgen of the role model to him that she is to me.
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