Christina Ryan. An Appreciation. #37 #cong24 #legacy
Synopsis:
So what do we leave behind? Memories. Mementoes. Family. Feelings. Keepsakes. The mundane and yet also the ineffable. Legacy, like all of Congregation’s topics, is imposingly huge. But like all huge topics it’s composed of smaller pieces. My Grandmother was one of those smaller pieces. And this is about her.
Total Words
Reading Time in Minutes
3
Key Takeaways:
- What we leave behind – objects, memories, feelings – is like a set of clues.
- From the seemingly insignificant you can extrapolate a life.
- No life is unexceptional.
- Take my Grandmother, for example.
About Richard Ryan:
I am an advertising copywriter who lives in New Jersey with a wife, three daughters and a rotating cast of dogs.
I work at a NY agency called Something Different, where I write mainly TV commercials, for which there had been slowly reducing demand, until the streaming companies decided that making money was probably a good idea after all. So, if you chose the Disney+ subscription with ads, my family thanks you.
This will be my second Cong. I have spent the last year enthusiastically talking about it to anyone who agreed to listen – and many who did not.
After 30 years in advertising I have yet to write even one memorable jingle, so my own legacy is unclear.
Contacting Richard Ryan
You can connect with Richard via email
By Richard Ryan
Chrissie, my Grandmother, hid bayonets inside her bed posts, keeping them from the Black and Tans. I think it’s okay to admit that now – the Good Friday Agreement and all.
She worked hard. Multiple jobs. Mostly cleaning.
She used to come to our house on Wednesdays for dinner. She did not approve of frozen Brussels sprouts. And – to her daughter-in-law’s mortification – she could always tell.
Special occasions she was fond of a TK American Cream Soda – a strange tasting drink they don’t make any more because Europe.
Chemicals weren’t an issue back then. Nor health.
Once, as she sat at our dining room table, her 80-year-old smoker’s lungs audibly wheezing, my Dad became convinced there was a cat outside. He had us all stop and listen. She held her breath as long as she could, but you can only do so much.
Her husband died. Young. But not as young as her first child – Michael – at 9 months. Or her second Eileen – who was 11. Two sons lived.
Later she had a friend named Mick. In hindsight, he might have been more than a friend. But apparently he took more than he gave. So he may also have been less than a friend.
She lived just on the edges of the inner city. Drimnagh. Rialto. Corporation house. Hard.
When I brought home a girlfriend, first question she asked me was “what time do her parents want her home?” Like many Dublin women I’m guessing she was smarter than she looked. Which was – as I see her – a curly head with a triangular scarf, deeply creased face. No body as I can recall. Though I heard that, once, a famous American painter came to her school and had her model for a portrait – An Irish Cailín – that hung in the National Gallery for two weeks.
She gave me money and would buy me slightly cooler presents than she bought my sisters. I seem to recall that. But not with the embarrassment I should. The Warlord Annual every year. Selection box. Once, a Matchbox Loop-the-Loop Stunt Track.
She brought me to see Star Trek The Movie. In the Adelphi. It’s the first film I remember seeing. I don’t know if she liked it.
After she died, my Dad, when he saw the body, said it wasn’t her. That she was gone.
So, legacy:
One quarter of my genes are hers.
I have a mass card with her picture on.
A sense of having come from something solid.
And all I just shared. Which is everything I remember.
It’s not much. Considering.
