In 1968, thirty-one years after my mother first came home to Henry Street, I walked through its door for the first time. I was 6 and on our first trip home to Ireland. We stayed at the Fennell home for our whole trip — the house where our mother and her twin Mags were raised as the youngest of the family, though a little baby boy came after them, unnamed, as he died at birth. On the trip was my mother and my siblings Geraldine and Deborah. I am the eldest, named Terry after my mother's best friend Terry Rush. It was my mother's first trip home with her young family. Dad had to stay in New York for work. He bundled us off to JFK airport and off we went.
My whole six week experience was wonderous, scary and magical all at the same time. Scary because we were meeting family for the first time and they all had strong Irish brogues. While our own mother spoke with a soft Irish brogue, her siblings and mother were very different. And the food was so odd! Definitely not what we were used to. My aunts were quite disgusted with the jar of peanut butter that my mother carted across the ocean so that we had one familiar thing! Uncle Jack developed a game he called Mouses In The Houses to trick us into eating. That’s such a special memory, it deserves its own chronicle later!
As we entered through the main door, it was unlike any of our houses in New York. It was a long hallway, with a long closed shop on the left. As a child, the hallway seemed so long, it was like a city block! In reality, it was probably 50 feet or so? Half way down the long walk towards the kitchen, the heart of the home, was the staircase to the upper levels. The whole journey down it seemed dark with the only light coming from the front door, now closed, and the light in the kitchen.
Entering the kitchen, the first thing I remember is where Granny sat. Her chair was on the far left, close to the old-fashioned stove, as if that spot had been chosen long ago and never reconsidered. Sitting there, in her corner, was Granny—my mother’s mother. She would have been in her early seventies, though to my young mind she seemed very old. Her long, thin hair was pulled back into a bun, always neat, always the same.
I remember that we couldn’t really understand her. The brogue was very strong. My own mother spoke with a brogue softened by years of living in New York, so Granny’s voice felt familiar but not quite clear. My cousin used to laugh and say it was because she didn’t have her teeth in, but I don’t think that was it. I think it was simply the strength of the brogue, thick and steady, like something that had never needed to change.
That kitchen was also the first place I smelled a peat fire, slowly burning in the stove. Just like music that grounds you to a space and time, that peat smell grounds me to Henry Street.
Along the wall beside her ran the sink and the old washing machine, both worn but still in use. Above, stretching across the ceiling, was a series of hangers for drying clothes. As a child, I noticed them often, the way they cut across the space overhead. They made the room feel full, even when it was quiet.
I loved that kitchen. It was small, but it held everything. A large table sat in the center, taking up most of the space, making it feel like a place meant for gathering. Around the walls were cupboards filled with teacups and saucers, more than seemed necessary, set close together as if there was no room left but still no reason to take any away. Near the window was a more modern stovetop and a small desk or work area, added later, as needs changed.
At the far end of the room stood the large press, solid and heavy, opposite the stove. It held clothes, and like everything else in the room, it felt permanent. The whole kitchen was a mixture of things—a bit of everything gathered over time. It wasn’t arranged so much as it had grown that way, piece by piece.
At the time, I didn’t think of it as unusual. It was simply how Granny’s kitchen was.
Off the back door of the kitchen was the outhouse, yet another adventure we were not prepared for! We had only one toilet and bathroom in our New York house, but it was inside.
Going back out into the long hallway, we made our way upstairs to the rest of the house. The second floor was mostly taken up by the sitting room. I can still picture it clearly, with Granny’s things set out where they could be seen. There were photographs on nearly every surface, along with a piano and the fireplace that seemed to anchor the room.
The sitting room didn’t change much, at least not in any way I noticed then. The furniture stayed where it was, as if it had been decided long before I ever came along. There was a large wooden cabinet against the wall, dark and polished, with a mirror that reflected the window across the room. I remember the way the light came through the curtains and landed there, making the glass dishes on the cabinet shine more than anything else in the room.
Some of them were pink, a color I didn’t see often anywhere else in the house. They were set out carefully, close together, as if they belonged in those exact spots. There were also a few photographs, though I didn’t always know who the people were. I understood they were important because they were kept there.
The fireplace was across from it, and that’s where my attention usually went. The mantel held a row of small things, but I always looked at the two matching vases first as my anchor into that space. Because this was the fanciest of rooms, we never spent much time there, but I loved everything about it. Most of our time was anchored in the kitchen space.
There were bedrooms on that second floor, one or two. The third floor was where the children slept including us. One distinct memory is the chamber pots under the beds, to avoid late night toilet situations and having to go all the way downstairs to the outhouse!
Back downstairs was the wonderfully mysterious and now closed shop. I can remember peeking through the curtained windows, longing to go inside. I now know that that shop functioned as both a boot shop and a family grocer in its existence from about 1928 after my grandparents married until my granda’s death in 1960.
When the end of our six week adventure came to a close, we gathered in the kitchen to say our goodbyes. Much of my Irish family was there; granny, Jack, Mags, some of my cousins. It was terribly hard and I did not want to go back to New York. I had fallen in love with my second home. I remember starting to cry and dashing back down that long hallway to the stairs at about mid point and hiding to cry my eyes out. Mom followed me quickly, trying to give me comfort about the need to leave. I was so focused on my own distress, it’s only with this writing that I realize how hard it would have been on her to leave her mother one more time. Everything else is really a blur about that day. What stands clearly is the emotion of my pain on having to fly home and leave this new place that I loved so well.
We did not return to Ireland for another 6 years, this time bringing my youngest sister Laura and our father with us for their first visit to Ireland. But that first memory is always with me. In 2013, on a later trip home, Laura snuck up the stairs to grab some photos while I kept Uncle Jack busy in the kitchen. The stairs were quite unsafe at this point in the life of the house, and no one really went upstairs. But I wanted something tangible in photo form to remember the sitting room. Those photos are now a treasured item in my collection. With Jack’s passing in 2015, the house was sold.
It’s been more than 58 years since that first visit and the memories still bring me to tears. Happy memory tears. That six week visit was foundational for me. I can still picture everything in my mind. And that’s a good thing…
About the Author
I'm Terry Fitzgerald, raised in New York with deep family roots in County Clare, Ireland. I was six years old when I first walked through the door of the house on Henry Street in Kilrush — my mother's birthplace — and fell in love with a country I immediately knew was also home. That first trip in 1968 shaped everything that followed. I wrote this to preserve what memory holds of that house, that kitchen, and the grandmother my own children's generation never knew. The smell of a peat fire still brings me straight back.