Mona a story through time

M O N A

By Bernard Wheeler

Mona. 'Muadhnait' Monath (Moon)

A prologue

1994 Rimney Oregon

I guess telling you who I am, is the best place to start. I was christened Tate Paul Andrews, and in May of this year I reached that age of eighteen, which I thought would bring immeasurable knowledge and wisdom. I reveled in the idea that now at last I was an adult, which along with my other misconceptions, must be the final teenage deceit. I had honestly believed that I was on the threshold of a newfound freedom as a young adult. Of course, I am now beginning to understand, it's not like that at all.

Let me tell you a little of my younger days, of the places I lived and the people I knew, the influences of my early life; and some of the many now faraway memories locked away in a child's mind and perhaps imagination.

I was born in the early hours of a warm May morning, in the ancient town of Ardfinnan by the river Suir, near where my maternal grandfather was born, and his father before him. Their formative years were spent in Tipperary, southern Ireland, by the lee of the Comeragh Mountains. These were the rough and tumble times where they played in the heather clad hills, climbing among the gorse and glistening sphagnum moss. Soddy, woolen socks would be crestfallen, round freezing white bare legs, in their hardy britches. Young and foolhardy, covered in cuts, bruises and grime, they were not so different in their spectacular behavior. They would chase the wild beasts through the whirling cold pools, over slippery silver and gold lichen rocks. Their manner boastful and outrageous, boasting of the new things they had seen and done, as they swapped their new finds, much as other kids did, with their bubble gum and old woodbine cigarette cards.

It was a setting of brilliant skies, warm and sometimes wet summer evenings, overlooking a south westerly landscape. It was land of harsh realities, and great kindness, which molded my father, and his father's, wicked Gaelic humour. An Irrepressible people, whose anecdotes are clearly the stuff of legends,

I was told they were schooled by the fierce Christian brothers, in draughty peat fired halls and classrooms. White knuckles would be clenched at desktops alongside inkwells, shivering as the winds of winter, whistled up through the Victorian floorboards. They would tremble, as much from the cold and their empty bellies, but more from the sometime terrible voices of authority, booming out over young and impressionable heads. The priests in their vestments taught what mattered most, which was the order of things.

Through my early years in the seventies, I lived with my parents, Martin, an Englishman, and Mona, my American mother, in this riverside town of Ardfinnan, southern Ireland. It was said of this land to have kissed the devil on one side and hugged God almighty on the other.

I would watch the gallop of boys and girls on their horses, encapsulating the Irish love for them, and perhaps belief that it was a divine right to own such an animal. They would charge, unsaddled, up and down the streets outside our house, racing each other while those looking on would scream their bets. Sometimes the Garda and veterinarians would confiscate these animals from the hardy boys and girls. To be honest, it was hard to tell who were the wildest.

I used to sit on my father's lap when I was very young, as he tried desperately hard, despite the constant coming and goings of others, to complete some article, or do some reading for research, for the magazine he co-wrote and edited. Shamus and Nick, our friends and neighbours, called me their mardy lap cat, as I was always crawling between my father's legs, or trying to sit on his lap.