blog 10

If you head to 7241 S. Franklin St in Littleton, Colorado on St. Patricks day you will find an old brick house with green leprechaun footprints leading up to the door. When you walk in you will smell cornbeef and cabbage and the bottom floor will be filled with close to seventy people. There will be seven children with their wives and husbands. There will be twenty-three grandchildren with their wives and husbands. And there will be twenty-four great grandchildren searching for someone who is not wearing green with their little fingers ready to pinch. Before dinner they will all join hands to say the Lords prayer. Then they will sing happy birthday to the woman who made their existence possible; their mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, Patricia.
Later, everyone who is at least close to age will get a little drunk by making their after dinner coffees “Irish.” And Pat will be the one carrying around her garden hering saying “sheranbegargen” or she will bring the garden hose inside to start a real irish waterfight. But later she will tell you that being irish has nothing to do with drinking. In fact drinking is kept for holidays here. She will tell you that being irish is being strong. “The strength to survive is in our blood.”
Her home is filled with knick knacks. By the backdoor ther is a blue circle sign that says “tu it” in it signifying that she will get around to it. above the encyclopedias on the shelves in the living room there are Broncos memorabilia and old fashioned Crush bottles. Pat is usually found in the kitchen cooking something for her many kin or in the family room playing her piano. When you walk in the front door the first thing you will see is a large picture of the sacred heart. It has thirteen names written in the heart and each name has a cross next to it. Pat will tell you it was in her parents house and that it was blessed. The names are hers and her brothers and sisters and the crosses signify their deaths.
“Why is there a cross next to your name?”
“When I was two I nearly died because I had blood in my kidneys. My mom wrote the cross then. I think she had given up on me,” she laughs.
“Are you the only one left?”
“I am and I am determined to live.”
Pat is seventy seven years old. But to look at here you would think she was fifty. She has short curly red hair. She is extremely thin considering how many children she has and she has the brightest green eyes I have ever seen. She comes from Dublin, Ireland. Her parents marriage united two separate Gauggen clans; the shanty irish and the white irish. But Pat claims to be the shanty irish; scrappy with a kind heart. Her family came to America landing at Elise Island because of the potato famine in Ireland that had left little work. The family moved inland ending up in Colorado. Out of thirteen kids six of them survived and it wasn’t long before pat’s parents followed their other children.
“My daddy was a smoker. He died when I was five. And mommy died when I was twelve from ovarian cancer. I can still see her standing in my door way with a black hat that had yellow flowers on it. she always wore that hat. I can still hear her ‘Patsy if you don’t take that medicine I’m going to leave.’ I guess I must have taken the medicine.”