First Memories

My very first memory is a vivid one and took place before I was two years old on the voyage taking us from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Dublin. My father was to be stationed there for four years and at that time the family consisted of only four children, the youngest, Frank, only a few months old with our nurse Leily in attendance.

All the grown-ups' time being much taken up by shipboard activities, I managed to seize the opportunity of clambering up the hatchway to perambulate on deck alone. What was my chagrin when an officious steward seized me by the legs, rudely pulling me back. Never was a young female more mortified!

This revelation will be the first to make my two adventurous sons [Ron and Bill] realise how much their adventuring owes to their mother.