What Was Your Dad Like?

What was my Dad like when I was a child, a question posed by StoryWorth? I suppose the overriding sense would be that he was a father figure, but not a father. I have no memory of him ever reaching out to me or touching me, or really even talking to me. My mother of course was the dominant figure in the house, organizing daily life and even long-term life. I’m sure this completely suited my father so that the house full of five little kids running around didn’t impinge upon his lifestyle. He ate breakfast with us in the kitchen, but his lunch and dinner were taken in the dining room, from which we (the kids) were excluded.

An abiding memory was the constant, everyday hassle that accompanied him getting the car out of the garage to drive Mammy to school. He was the slowest driver in the world and we were always, always late. The drive every day was punctuated by Mammy repeatedly saying to an unmoving Daddy “for heaven’s sake Seán, will you speed up!” Driving anywhere with him was pure torture. When we went to Limerick, some 120 miles distant, the trip took the best part of the day and was punctuated by many stops. Another unforgettable experience was going to Lansdowne Road where rugby internationals were played.

Mammy must have persuaded him to take me to see Ireland play, which I’m sure didn’t suit him. In any event, to avoid any hassle, he would park miles from the stadium and we would then set out silently for the long walk.

Of course, he had his kids later in life. When I was 10 years old, he was already 54. In a strange way, he was the last of the Victorians (when he was born in 1902 Queen Victoria of the UK was not long dead and Ireland was part of the British Empire. He was a conservative Catholic, which was probably typical of his class in Ireland at that time. I think also by the time he married at age 43 he had led a fairly full social life! He was a member of a Catholic sporting club. He had been on walks in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland and had actually attended the 1936 Olympics in Berlin! He was still handsome in middle age.

I believe his friends would have found him charming. I think as he aged he probably grew somewhat mellow. Unfortunately, that happened after most of us had grown up and left home. Miriam, though, apparently shared many comfortable chatty evenings with him when he was in his 70s.

I definitely never did, and the best that I can probably say is that as I moved into my 20s I did at least gradually think that maybe he wasn’t quite as unloving as he appeared to be to me while I was growing up. He died in 1980. We were in Abu Dhabi then and unfortunately distant from his medical deterioration.

I came across the photo on page 31 of Daddy’s daddy (my paternal grandfather) while researching the Limerick ancestors.

He was born in 1866 and died aged 68 in 1934. His nearest family lived in Co. Limerick and I believe were descended from two brothers. One family stayed in Ireland, while the other came to America. The American O’Connors live in Massachusetts and are in fairly frequent contact with my siblings.

I think my grandad O’Connor had a somewhat challenging life, though probably not that unusual in the second half of the 19th century. His first wife (my grandmother) and the mother of my father Sean, and his siblings Jerry and Kathleen died when the kids were young. I think they may have been split up and placed with other families and institutions in care. This would be how my father was dispatched to relations in Limerick. No doubt this childhood influenced his demeanor later in his married life.

The woman in the wedding photo (granddad’s second wife) lived with us when we were little. We called her “granny” and she spent most of her time in bed. I never did see her on her feet. We were a little afraid of her. But the positive memory of Granny that I have, is that on many Friday afternoons she would give me sixpence to buy acid drops for myself from the little shop up the road. I had to go and offer her one in her bed when I came back.

She died when I was about 9 or 10, which was probably just as well because her room was needed for Dermot, Colm and Kevin!