childhood

My childhood is ''an epic of woe.'' Besides my father who drank away the family's meager food money. My mother who was reduced to begging, i had  three siblings who died in infancy from illness. 

 My family were too poor to afford sheets or blankets for their flea-infested bed, too poor to buy new shoes for the children. Also, we were too poor to get milk for the new baby. A boiled egg was considered a luxury, a bit of discarded apple peels a coveted treat. 

My parents started out as immigrants in New York, but America hadn't turned out to be the promised land they'd hoped. Not only was my family trying to cope with the Depression, but  my father Malachy McCourt also had a way of taking his sporadic paychecks to the local bar and not returning home. It wasn't long before the family was headed back across the Atlantic to Ireland, where there were relatives who could help with the four children. 

My father tells me about ''the old days in Ireland when the English wouldn't let the Catholics have schools,'' and he tells him about the world beyond the shores of Ireland where men like Hitler, Mussolini and ''the great Roosevelt'' make history. He bequeaths to Frankie two things: a childhood of awful, bone-chilling poverty and illness, and a magical gift for storytelling. 

Kakutani, Michiko. “Generous Memories of a Poor, Painful Childhood.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Sept. 1996, www.nytimes.com/1996/09/17/books/generous-memories-of-a-poor-painful-childhood.html.

Grimes, William. “Frank McCourt, Whose Irish Childhood Illuminated His Prose, Is Dead at 78.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 July 2009,