When I close my eyes outside the white door in Stella Gardens and listen to the sea gulls squawk, I smell the air and am instantly brought back thirty years. I’m standing at the counter in Lily Bon-Bon’s shop waiting for my quarter of apple drops.

I’m waiting for the green man to cross over to Scotchie’s chipper for a one and one. The street lamps are warming up throwing a light orange glow around the flats.

I’m skipping through the lane getting ahead of her to see if there is a bus coming. I’m waiting outside the pork shop. I’m outside Cleary’s waiting for the No. 3 with bags of vegetables from Moore Street and meat from the butchers. I’m full up from my lunch in Arnott’s.

I’m in Tom’s shop for a few slices of hard cheese and a quarter of corned beef. She’s bought me a pink balloon. There are pig’s feet in the pot. I’m poking the daylights out of her open turf fire. I’m in the big feather bed with lots and lots of blankets and those soft, stripy flannel sheets.

I can see the orange street lamp from the bed. I can feel the warmth of her body as I snuggle in on a cold night. The bucket is in the room for the occasional wee– it’s way too cold for a young wan like me to traipse out the back on a winter’s night. ‘Chucky’ egg mashed up in a cup with butter in the morning and soldiers of toast. Gay Byrne on the old wireless and the smell of brasso wafting up the stairs.

I’m playing with my cash register and she’s cleaning, sweeping the ‘carpet’ always on the move, folding, ironing, wringing out God knows what over the old enamel sink. She’s watering the geraniums.

I’m ‘doing-her-up’, brushing her hair and smearing old lip stick over her lips. She’s letting me do it with no fuss. She’s making the dinners for Dolly, her sister-in-law who lived alone in Ringsend Park Cottages and walking there through the park every day to feed her.

I associate food and comfort and warmth and love when I think of her. When she went all modern and got the electric fire, I’d hold the knife through the grids with bread on the end making toast on the fire. Toast has never tasted so good.

These are my memories of growing up with my Granny. Margaret Kilroy. Born in 1908 and now in her 100 year. I want to give you a sense of her first. The sharpest mind I have ever in my 36 years encountered, never forgets a name or a face or a date.

She’s as strong a woman as there can be and a true fighter in every sense of the word. Strong. So strong. The original independent woman long before Destiny’s Child ever told us about independent women! And now in her 100th year she resides in Sir Patrick Dun’s.

She started there as a day patient with Sr. Eileen Kilkenny 10 years ago and eventually went in as a full time patient 18 months ago and Eileen has been like a daughter to her. All the staff are fantastic.

So what’s her life story? Margaret Miley was born into 59 Townsend Street on 21st March 1908. She is the eldest girl in a family of eleven children and the only one left with us.

She married Laurence Kilroy in 1928 and had 3 children, Kathleen, Michael and then seventeen years later Noeleen. She lost Kathleen to TB and then Michael (Mick).

Margaret’s Father and brothers Paddy, Terence and Michael were all well-known Dockers. Margaret moved to Stella Gardens in the 1950s and soon after became the first woman to work in the ESB Generating Station on Ringsend Road, later moving to Pigeon House Road, where she worked until she retired in her seventies!

Margaret has nine grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren. Along the way she has met the great James Larkin, James Connolly and Countess Markievicz, along with the last three Presidents of Ireland.

Happy birthday Granny. We love you.

Above: Margaret is pictured with with Noeleen and Caroline.