The Hogans of Glenart

The big brown box is marked The Irish Dunlop Co., Lower Abbey Street and on the sides are the words 2 Dozen and Green. I still don't know what was in it originally -- I couldn't imagine a tyre fitting into it, even though it is large and shallow, not like the deep boxes we used as children to bring the groceries home from Connolly's Supermarket on Patrick Street. It was kept on the top shelf of the wardrobe in my bedroom -- the little bedroom -- and, as I was the youngest in our family and one of the youngest in our generation, I don't remember seeing the contents until I was in my teens. I had never even peeped into it -- there was almost an unwritten rule that the box was too special to be touched.

As the next generation began to be born, so the box began to appear regularly. Each birth set off the same process. Down came the box. The lid was lifted off carefully and the blue tissue paper was checked, to ensure that it was still in mint condition. "That's to protect them -- to keep them white," my mother explained. Then singly, the contents were lifted out, uncovered and revered. First came the under-slip, made from an older robe. It was almost more ornate that the outer garment. White of course, no sleeves, broderie anglaise on the bodice and pin-tucks on the skirt. It was laid down on the bed and examined minutely. "Perfect". "Beautiful" "What's that mark? Oh, it's just the shadow." "Spread it out -- isn't it beautiful?"

Then it was the turn of the robe. Given to my maternal grandmother when her first child, Uncle Arty, was born in the Coombe in 1915, it has done us all. Tiny white sleeves. A little picot edging around the neck. More broderie anglaise. The very full skirt. So elegant. I wonder did the midwife who gave it as a present to Nana ever imagine how many babies would be baptised in it. All the Lynches and lots of the Cloney neighbours. My generation -- more Lynches, the Hogans and the O'Hogans. The next generation -- more Hogans, O'Hogans, and you, Oisín and Eoin Donnelly. And now, we've even got to the fourth generation - Elaine's little babies, Jack and Holly Hanley wore them for their big days in recent years.

My mother was Keeper of the Robes. She guarded them jealously. I think she secretly relished the fact that she had been entrusted with the power to lend them or not -- and of course, she always did lend them. But she made sure she still held the reins -- my grandmother only lent them on condition that they were returned to her unwashed. My mother continued that tradition. No mere mortal was going to damage those robes -- she was the expert.

She was delighted when we told her we were going to have another baby -- and that turned out to be you, Eoin. We told her the good news in October. News of a baby meant that it was time to start thinking about getting the robes ready again -- the systematic checking, admiring, washing, starching and ironing would begin all over again. But then, Mammy had a stroke and never saw you.

I didn't collect the box from the empty house until August 2001, just before the Christening -- you were four months old, it was eight months since she had died and nine months since we had told her we were expecting you. I knew the box would be in its place, and everything within in place. What I didn't know was that she had left a note in it, sellotaped to the bottom and hidden under the blue tissue-papered robes. It told me what I have told you here -- about the robes being a gift for Uncle Arty, about the neighbours borrowing them, about all of us wearing them for our Christening and, most especially, about not allowing anyone else to wash them.

The note finishes, "Take good care of them. Halloween 2000. Mammy." She must have known.