Happy Days!

June 10 is full of memories as it was Father’s birthday. He was born in 1919 in Kilrush, Co. Clare ~ a place that remained incredibly special to him right up to the day he died in 2010.

Today, I think of his mother, a woman he absolutely adored and who died when he was a young teenager. I can just imagine them looking adoringly into each other’s eyes for the first time on this day 95 years ago. He was her second child and her first son.

Father’s Beloved Mother

I’m so glad that he kept her memory alive through this photograph which had a prominent place in the sitting-room of the various houses in which we lived. It never failed to spark him into talking about his happy childhood and indeed about the importance of building happiness into every single moment, however mundane the moment might at first appear.

Yes, Dad, I’ll be having that ice-cream in your honour today ~ cut from a block with a warm knife and sandwiched between two wafers.