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Breast Cancer Treatment, Breast Reconstruction, Chariots of Fire, Coming Home, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Mastectomy, Michael Phelps, Olympic Games, Shirley Valentine
On a mission – Michael Phelps and God and me.
I came into the pool on a mission, and the mission was accomplished ~ Michael Phelps. Watching Chad Le Clos watch Phelps go on to victory and a twentieth Olympic gold medal, I found myself thinking back to 1982’s Oscar winning best film, Chariots of Fire, and its depiction of Eric Liddell, who stunned everyone with a world record breaking gold medal win in the 400 meter…
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Aging, Awesome Women, Castledawson, Coming of age, Family, grandmother, Irish culture, Irish mammies, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mother's Day, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, Themes of Childhood
for my mother on her birthday
Another long-distance phone call and the miles between my mother and me fall away. With the phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear, she is rescuing sheets from the clothes-line just before another downpour. Next will come a bit of ironing and then the folding, a precise ritual, my father her partner in a dance handed down from one generation to the next.…
