Fran O’Mara: If I were a Buddhist, & My great-aunt Fannie

If I were a Buddhist
& believed in reincarnation
I would hope to have the gift of song
To have a voice,
to sing anything
in the music line

To play an instrument is fine
I played the clarinet
& the piano somewhat
I sang in the choir and choral groups too
I always desired more of that gift of song

—Fran O’Mara


My great-aunt Fannie was deaf & we talked to her through a horn. She loved canaries & I wanted one too. She went on a trip & my mother offered to take the canary. My job was to keep the cage clean. That was the end of my desire for a canary. She was so deaf, she couldn’t hear the birds sing but she loved those small yellow birds. When one died, she’d replace it with another. I don’t recall if she ever named them.

—Fran O’Mara


My great aunt Lucy had never been married. She lived with her brother, my great uncle Henry, who also never married. They ran the farm... She was a typical old maid and she never wanted anyone to know how old she was. My grandmother kept a family page of all our birthdates in the center of the old family bible and my great aunt erased her dates on the page so we never knew how old she was. She erased it so hard, it left a hole in the page. When she died, they managed to even keep the date out of the obituary

—Fran O’Mara