THE PATTERN Little has come down to me of hers, a sewing machine, a wedding band, a clutch of photos, the sting of her hand across my face in one of our wars when we had grown bitter and apart. Some say that's the fate of the eldest daughter. I wish now she'd lasted till after I'd grown up. We might have made a new start as women without tags like "mother, wife, sister, daughter," taken our chance from there. At forty-two she headed for god knows where. I've never gone back to visit her grave. First she'd scrub the floor with Sunlight soap, an armreach at a time. When her knees grew sore she'd break for a cup of tea, then start again at the door with lavender polish. The smell would percolate back through the flat to us, her brood banished to the bedroom. As she buffed the wax to a high shine did she catch her own face coming clear? Did her mirror tell what mine tells me? I have her shrug and go in knowing history has brought her to her knees. She'd call us in and let us skate around in our socks. We'd grow solemn as plants in an intricate orbit about her. She bending over crimson cloth, the younger kids are long in bed. Late summer, cold enough for a fire, she works by fading light to remake an old dress for me. It's first day back at school tomorrow. "Pure lambswool - Plenty of wear in it yet. You know I wore this when I went out with your Da. I was supposed to be down in a friend's house, your Granda caught us at the corner. He dragged me in by the hair - it was long as yours then - in front of the whole street. He called your Da every name under the sun, cornerboy, lout; I needn't tell you what he called me. He shoved my whole head under the kitchen tap, took a scrubbing brush and carbolic soap and in ice-cold water he scrubbed every spick of lipstick and mascara off my face. Christ but he was a right tyrant, your Granda. It'll be over my dead body anyone harms a hair of your head." She must have stayed up half the night to finish the dress. I found it airing at the fire, three new copybooks on the table and a bright bronze nib, St. Christopher strung on a silver wire, as if I were embarking on a perilous journey to uncharted realmss. I wore that dress with little grace. To me it spelt poverty, the stigma of the second hand. I grew enough to pass it on by Christmas to the next in line. I was sizing up the world beyond our flat patch by patch daily after school, and fitting each surprising city street to city square to diamond. I'd watch the Liffey for hours pulsing to the sea and the coming and going of ships, certain that one day it would carry me to Zanzibar, Bombay, the Land of the Ethiops. There's a photo of her taken in the Phoenix Park alone on a bench surrounded by roses as if she had been born to formal gardens. She stares out as if unaware that any human hand held the camera, wrapped entirely in her own shadow, the world beyond her already a dream, already lost. She's eight months pregnant. Her last child. Her steel needles sparked and clacked, the only other sound a settling coal or her sporadic mutter at a hard place in the pattern. She favored sensible shades: Moss Green, Mustard, Beige. I dreamt a robe of a color so pure it became a word. Sometimes I'd have to kneel an hour before her by the fire, a skein around my outstretched hands, while she rolled wool into balls. If I swam like a kite too high amongst the shadows on the ceiling or flew like a fish in the pools of pulsing light, she'd reel me firmly home, she'd land me at her knees. Tongues of flame in her dark eye she'd say, "One of these days I must teach you to follow a pattern." -- Paula Meehan, born 1955 Dublin.