The
Sullivan Family

Gran — You turned ninety-one in March and you told Mum on the phone that you "didn't want a fuss, just August." You said it like they were the same thing. For you, I think they are. I drove up the night before to help set up, the way I have every year since I was old enough to drive. The screen door squeaks on the left hinge now — it has since I was twelve — and I have never once said anything to anyone because fixing it would feel like losing something. Sixty-two Augusts. You are the reason every one of us, no matter how far we've gone, still thinks of this porch when we think of the word "home." I love you very much. — Bridget, the one who made this wall and drove up the night before

Gran, sixty-two summers at this house and I still can't remember a single one where you weren't already up when I came downstairs. Not one. I don't know what time you go to bed. I'm not sure you do sleep. I think you just stand at the kitchen window watching the dark until the birds start. You have made more breakfasts in that kitchen than any of us can count, and you have never, in sixty-two years, used a recipe card for anything except the brown bread, and even that one you hold up and squint at like you're reading a foreign language you've mostly forgotten. The brown bread is the best bread I have ever eaten. Do not ask me for evidence. — Patrick, your youngest son, age sixty-eight, still the baby

Grandma — I am twenty-three and I moved to Boston in September and the first thing I did when I got there was find the coffee that tasted the most like what you make in the morning. I have not found it. I have accepted I will not find it. That is fine. That's what August is for. This is the first August where I've been here as an adult and not as someone's daughter, if that makes sense. I kept looking at the porch from the field on Thursday evening and thinking: this is the thing. This is the exact thing. And I could feel how much it was going to matter later. I love you very much. I'll be on the porch steps with my coffee at seven. Save me the spot on the left. — Niamh

Mam — Sixty-two years of every August, you have had the dinner on the table at half past six, the porch swept before nine, the linen pressed, and something in the oven that made the whole house smell like it was supposed to smell. You never used the word "tradition." You just did it, and then you did it again, and then you did it again, until it was the shape of the year. That, as far as we can tell, is how you build something that lasts. Ninety-one years old. Still the first one up. We love you more than there are words in any language, including the Irish. — Colm and Siobhán

Great-Gran — I am seven and a half. I know you are VERY old. Mam says ninety-one. I asked her how many that was and she said it was a lot. You don't look that old. You look like Gran. You always smell like the brown bread. I like it when we sit in the field and you tell me the names of the birds. You know all their names and you say them in Irish too which is VERY cool. I only know one which is "lon dubh" which means blackbird. I know it because you told me last August. Will you tell me more bird names this August? I will remember them this time. I love you so much Gran. — Finn (age 7 and a HALF)

Margaret — Father Declan here, from the parish. I have baptized four generations of this family in this church, and I have been welcomed into this kitchen in August for longer than it is polite to count. You make the best brown bread in the county, and you have, without exception, sent me back to the presbytery with half the loaf every single August since 1989. I shall be at the gate at four on Sunday. The half-loaf tradition, I hope, continues. With all good wishes for the reunion — Fr. Declan

Aunt Bridget — You know I am not really a "reunion person" normally. You know I had to drive six hours and that I nearly didn't because of the thing with the car in June. But I am glad I came. I am glad every year, after the fact. I always forget, between Augusts, how it feels to be in this house with all these people and to remember that there is somewhere you belong that has nothing to do with anything you've accomplished or anything you've got wrong. Gran knew that when she started this in 1964. You know that too. That's why you keep making it happen. Thank you. — Aoife

To my whole family — Bridget told me she was making this wall and I said "I don't know what that means" and she explained it and then I sat down and thought about what to write for three days. Sixty-two Augusts. Six children. Seventeen grandchildren. Four great-grandchildren so far, with Niamh's cousin expecting in November. I started this because my own mother did it. She didn't call it a tradition. She just said come. I said come. Now you all come. I would like you to know that every single August, the morning before you all arrive, I sit on the porch by myself with my coffee and I think: here they come. And every single August, that thought is the best thought of the year. The brown bread is on the counter. The screen door is open. Here you come. — Mam