Loosing Little Things With Mammy

Loosing Little Things With Mammy

By Paul McCann

 

Loosing things is always a worry .

Like the day I lost my Mammy in the C & A department store in the town . I was not even knee high and it was nearly christmas . All the stores were packed with shoppers . Mammy was looking for some Christmas presents , I was looking all around me . One minute Mammy was there and the next minute she was gone . It was like the ground just opened up and swallows me , my whole world had disappeared . I started screaming and crying .Traumatised at three years of me age is not a thing you forget easily . Thank God Mammy found me so I never became an orphan .

Then there was the day I lost my appendix . That was an experience I’ll not forget . It’s not like I had any choice , in what happened . They chose to leave my body . So I woke up as I did like any other day. . I got ready for primary school and had a bowl of porridge ,

Mammy walked with my sister and I to the nursery school down Cambria Street with another wee baby in the pram . I remember her whispering under her breath ,

“Jesus we’re going to be late again” and she held on to my hand as we made our way past the  corner near the pawnbrokers  

“Good morning “

said one of the three men who would always be standing

on that same corner .every single day .

“Mammy always nodded and kept walking . After dropping off my sister at the nursery school we went back down Flax Street past the mill where mammy worked and I still remember her say ..

“ Is your stomach still sore son ?“

“Yes “ I said .

“ Well you better not go to school then , you can stay in your grannies, until I finish work ok .“

So she took me and the baby in the pram to my grannies house in and then she went on her way to work .

That morning all

I could do was throw up . I was sent to bed and my Aunt went rushing to get Mammy out of work and she got Doctor Murray to come .

“His appendix needs to come out Mary ‘

He said .

I was taken in an ambulance to the city hospital . for an operation .

As soon as I got there every thing seemed to be done quickly and in desperation . There were other wee boys in there screaming and carrying on .

That evening they took out my appendix and asked if I wanted to take them home in a jar . I wasn’t sure what to say so I asked Daddy when he came to visit me and he said he would take them home in the car .

I didn’t realise that they were all just taking the mickey as there was no need to hang on to my appendix .Next day I left the hospital and was soon back to myself again after a couple of weeks .

After I had lost my appendix I started to wonder what was the next thing I might loose .

I hoped it wouldn’t be my marbles cause I had some smashing buller’sand multicoloured sharp shooters .

Then it happened another thing got lost but thank God it wasn’t attached to me .

As Mammy and I were off to the town she closed the front door all of a sudden she had this worried look on her face . I asked her what was wrong . Then she said she had locked up the house and left the key in the kitchen . So the two of us walked through the gap between McAteers and Joe Soaps house , to the back entry and then into our back yard . The door was never locked . She looked at the top scullery window that was left open .

“Do you think you can get in that window son .“

At the back door , Jacky McAteer from next door came into our back yard and said ,

“Hello is everything ok Mary ?”

Poor Mammy was embarrassed .

“ I locked the house and forgot the key .”

She said and Jacky seemed a wee bit concerned but offered no thoughts of what to do so I climbed up the drain pipe to the window sill then scurried through the window there that was open and falling softly into the kitchen sink inside the house . I felt just like a burglar .

I opened the back door .Mammy was glad she didn’t have to break the window pane .Jackie seemed relieved and content that the problem was fixed and went back home again .

Jackie came over later and said to Mammy ,

“Could wee Paul get in the scullery window for me?”

“Sure what happened ?”

Mammy asked .

Jackie replied

“I locked the house and forgot to take the key too . "

It’s funny how other people loose things too cause then you see you’re not alone

One thing I’ve never lost sight of is how beautiful mammy was .

Even though she has passed away

I have never lost her . She is always in my heart .

 

The End