That's a Good Thing

My mother Marion spoke of her Aunt Breda with the reverence usually reserved for saints or movie stars. The way she told it, in Breda's presence, everything had a touch of regality.

''She always had great style'', she would say, her eyes distant with admiration. I would imagine a young Breda walking down Barrack Street, like a Corkonian Brigette Bardot, peoples heads turning to do a double take.

They had shared a bed in a house referred to as 'the square' - a tiny 2-up-2-down terrace house in Prosperity Square in the heart of Cork City - the kind of place so small you could hear your neighbour's thoughts. Nine people lived in two rooms, breathing each other's dreams. It was the kind of intimate living arrangement where you'd brush your teeth with someone else's elbow in your ear, and a sneeze in the kitchen could be blessed from the upstairs bedroom. Privacy was theoretical, like quantum physics or the existence of leftovers.

When Breda left to get married, my mother described it not as a wedding but as an ascension. But Breda's departure left a void in the bed and in my mother's life that apparently nothing could fill - except, of course, Breda's hand-me-downs.

For the rest of Marion's days Breda would visit with presents. ''That's a good thing,'' my mother would say each time Breda bestowed one of these treasures. She said it with such conviction that, as a child, I thought ''That's-a-good-thing'' was the official name for anything previously owned by Aunt Breda.

When I was twelves, Breda gave my mother a handbag that, to my eye, looked like something found rather than purchased. The leather was cracked in places, and the clasp was scuffed. ''That's a good thing,'' my mother said, running her fingers over it was if checking a rare book for a first-edition mark. Then she brought the bag to her face, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply with the reverence of a sommelier sampling a vintage wine. ''It's real leather. You can always tell by the smell.'' ''But it's old,'' I said, with the casual cruelty that children specialize in. My mother looked at me as if I'd suggested the pope was a protestant. ''It's from Breda,'' she said, her tone changing to fury, as if that explanation should satisfy any reasonable person. ''And it's a good thing.''

Once, Breda gifted my mother a mahogany dining table with six matching chairs. One chair had a 'weak leg', but this minor detail did nothing to diminish its preciousness in my mother's eyes. ''That's a good thing,'' she declared, running her palm over the table's surface. ''Pure mahogany'' then proceeded to keep it covered with a tablecloth-as such interior glamor was so evidently out of place in a kitchen come dining room with such heavy footfall it could have doubled up as a community centre.

The ''weak''-legged chair became what I called the ''stunt chair.'' It was positioned with its 5 comrades looking perfectly whole until some unsuspecting visitor like my childhood pal Martha would attempt to sit on it much to my amusement and nearly topple over. My mother would swoop in with remarkable speed: ''Oh not that one, love! Take this one instead.'' It maintained its position of honor at the table for years - a throne no one could sit on but everyone should admire because after all it was part of a set, and ''it was a good thing.''

But my mother's favorite stories about Breda weren't just about the hand-me-downs, but about their conspiracies. ''Breda would come to the school,'' she'd tell me, eyes bright with remembered mischief, ''and tell the nun that I had a doctor's appointment.'' The nun, according to my mother, would eye Breda suspiciously, but ultimately surrender Marion to her care. ''And then,'' my mam would say excited still so humored decades later ''Breda would take me to the pictures!''

To Marion, in her telling even 60 years later these cinematic escapes were acts of almost revolutionary defiance. She would describe the joy of getting one over on the nun, Breda's movie start stature taking her by the hand into the Savoy - as glamorous in the yes of young Marion as any actress they had paid to see.

Years later, after my mother died, in the corner of our living room stood a wing backed armchair, newly upholstery with elegancy in its line. When cancer had taken hold of my mother and pain became difficult, Breda had arrived with this chair in tow. Even then, ravaged by illness and exhausted from treatments, my mother's face had lit up like a child on Christmas morning showing the endless streams of visitors this chair. ''That's a good thing,'' she'd say, her voice weaker but her conviction unchanged, as if the cancer was merely an afterthought to this magnificent acquisition.

I remember finding it almost jarring-how could a second hand chair matter when her life and the nucleus of our world was slipping away?

But watching her run her fingers over the armrests, I realized that in Breda's gifts, my mother found something no medical intervention could provide: normalcy, continuity, the comfort of their shared history continuing despite everything else falling apart. That chair was a reminder of how Breda deeply loved her. The same love that 7-year old girl in the square had cherished sharing a bed with her cool aunt, believing that proximity to her might somehow rub off on her if she just stayed close enough, or just held on long enough to those good things.