In 1955 my mother, my sisters and I went back to Belfast, Northern Ireland for a visit with my grandparents and all of our other Irish relatives. I was 11 years old. We were away all summer and had a wonderful time. We faithfully wrote letters to my father and this is an excerpt from one my mother wrote (Pegs was our golden retreiver) :
June 7th 1955
Dearest Daddy and Pegs,
Here I am again and a little bit overdue at that, but as you know we’ve been having a hectic time. It’s about 9 o’clock now and Cheryl is drawing up dress designs. She got tired of knitting. Valerie and Joan are still at theirs.
It rained all day today and this afternoon they played up in the attic with big hats and high heels and shawls with fringes plus Grandma’s old dresses and handbags….
One of my favorite memories of that summer were the days we spent at a real thatched cottage in a little seaside town called Donaghadee.
We swam in the icy water and made sandcastles on the beach and collected little snails called willeks (not certain of the correct spelling). We would collect as many as we could in a little bucket and take them back to the cottage where my auntie would boil them up. We’d pick them out of the shells and eat them with bread and butter! Yum! Sort of poor man’s escargot, I guess.
We had those rosy cheeks that all little Irish children are famous for and were probably healthier than ever that summer.
I never went back to Ireland, although my sister Valerie has made several trips. I just remember the
Razzmatazlady 
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