'tis a memoir

And now it's the time for a piece of prose. That's the fragment of a memoir. The author remembers his mother and a special story of hers - an account of a lonesome Irish immigrant's day. Please, pay attention to curious punctuation - in order to show the story as it was said, to make the narration more "real", most of punctuation marks have been omitted.

Well, I was sitting in my apartment and I was feeling lonesome so I went up and sat on one of those benches they have in the grassy island in the middle of Broadway and this woman came along, a shopping bag woman , one of the homeless ones, all tattered and greasy , rooting around in the grabage can till she found a newspaper and sat beside me reading it till she asked me if she could borrow my glasses because she could read only headlines with the sight she had and when she talked I noticed she had an Irish accent so I asked where she came from and she toled me Donegal a long time ago and wasn't it lovely to be sitting on a bench in the middle of Broadway with people noticing things and asking where you came from. She I asked if I could spare a few pennies on a soup and I insisted she could come with me to the Associated supermarket and we'd get some groceries and have a proper meal. Oh, she couldn't do that, she said, but I told her that's what I was going to do anyway. She wouldn't come inside the store. She said they wouldn't like the likes of her. I got bread and butter and rashers and eggs and when we got home I told her she could go in and have a nice shower and she was delighted with herself though there wasn't much I could do about her clothes or the bags she carried. We had our dinner and watched television till she started falling asleep on me and i told her lie down there on the bed but she wouldn't. God knows the bed is big enough for four but she laid down on the floor with a shopping bag under her head and when I woke up in the morning she was gone and I missed her.

I know it wasn't the dinner wine that had me against the wall in a fit of remorse. It was the thought of my mother being so lonesome she had to sit on a street bench, so lonesome she missed the company of a homeless shopping bag woman.

(Frank McCourt 'Tis. A Memoir.)

shopping bag woman = bag lady - kloszardka
tattered - obszarpany
greasy - zatłuszczony
root around in - grzebac w
garbage can - US pojemnik na smieci
she wouldn't come inside
the likes of her - infml jej podobni
groceries - artykuły spozywcze
rasher - plasterek bekonu
had me against the wall - zmuziło mnie do oparcia się o scianę
a fit of remorse - przypływ wyrzutów sumienia