Welcome back to Ancient Wisdom, our series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Last week, Michael Friedman, 82, wrote about dealing with the grief he has felt since losing his lifelong soulmate, his wife Harriet. This week, John D. Spooner, 88, explains why knowing your family’s stories, and passing them along to the next generation, enriches everyone’s lives.
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Let me tell you a story.
I grew up in my maternal grandparents’ house in Boston. My grandfather started a business with a partner in Chinatown in the 1930s manufacturing maternity lingerie, mostly slips. I was the only child in the house of five adults that included my mother, and Katie, our cook. Katie was from Ireland, one of seven children, from a little village in Connemara. She arrived in America at age 18, escaping a famine there. She came here with one possession, a gold sovereign coin with the visage of “Bertie”—the King of England, Edward VII—stamped on it.
Katie gave me the coin on my 21st birthday. I had it put on a gold chain, and I wear it every St. Patrick’s Day.
Katie was one of the hundreds of young Irish women who worked in the houses of well-off Bostonians, and she became the most important woman in my life. She was there to help with my first steps and my toilet training. She spoon-fed me my first food, applesauce, and sang lullabies to me in Irish.
Katie taught me how to step-dance and sing along with her in her native tongue, songs like “Finnegan’s Wake” and “Whiskey, Yer the Devil.” She told me my first risqué joke and taught me how to swear in Irish. It was like she raised me as an Irish boy in a Jewish household in America. I was Johnny in English, but always Sean or Seaneen to Katie.
