From the deck of the Mauretania
Nano had her last glimpse
of her beloved Ireland.
The young man visited her
relatives, asking about her,
but she never saw him again.
Her sister kindly wrote to her
for more than fifty years,
often sending the Holly
Bough at Christmas,
but Nano never saw
Ireland again.
Photo: Susan Traxler Martin
Nano, Part VI.
In Nogales, Arizona,
there was little need
of French, and the only pianos
were in saloons.
Nano lost her brother,
and then her mother.
She taught school
in the dusty, desert town,
so unlike Ireland.
The only thing she found
familiar was the Latin
of the Mass.
Nano, Part VII.
In Arizona, Nano married
a miner and storekeeper who
was twenty years her senior.
He drank too much, once threw
a frying pan at her, and even
shot at her, as she ran
from the house.
But she would give him
children, and when
the Easter Rising came in
Ireland, she was pregnant
with her first son.
Nano, Part VIII.
Nano struggled as the
years went by, in
Arizona and then
in California, where
she married another man.
He was a gambler,
an artist,
a musician, and
a serial deserter of
his family.
While the children
continued to come,
Ireland, at least most
of it, became
an independent
country, one that
Nano would
never know.
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