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A Call, Coming of age, Death of parent, Dennis O'Driscoll, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Father Daughter Relationships, Father's Day, magic and loss, Saying Thank You, Seamus Heaney, The Diviner, Those Winter Sundays
what love sounds like – for father’s day
We knew love. It wasn’t a matter of declaring it. It was proven. ~ Seamus Heaney I am part of a tableau of ordinariness in which a cold beer sweats on the kitchen table, and an artichoke simmers on the stove. A man who makes me smile checks for doneness. Again. It is not quite ready, so his daughter adds more water. Laughing and lovely and impatient to eat, she spies…
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Coming of age, craic, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Northern Ireland Culture, St. Patrick, Sunningdale Agreement, The Troubles, United Workers Council Strike 1974
by the wayside again on st. patrick’s day
I’m a bit ambivalent about St. Patrick’s Day. What is it about March 17th that renders so many people Irish or some version of it that I do not recall from living the first twenty-seven years of my life in Northern Ireland? Everywhere I turn tomorrow, there will be Americans proclaiming their Irishness , some in T-shirts emblazoned with a command for everyone…
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Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Cadillac Ranch, Coming of age, Drive All Night, The Price You Pay, The River, The River Tour 2016
“And that’s the river . . .”
I bought Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” when I was 17, and I played it until I had memorized every song. Mr. Jones, my English teacher, introduced me to The Boss sensing perhaps that his plainspoken poetry would appeal to my blue-collar sensibilities. He knew I had never seen a Cadillac or a State Trooper – most likely he hadn’t either – …
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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
far away on mother’s day . . .
Having worked in schools for thirty years, it is not uncommon for me to encounter former students, all grown-up, some of them married with careers and children. Surreal to find myself standing shoulder to shoulder with these adults who, just a twinkling ago, were scribbling in composition books about who they might become. They are often incredulous to discover I am now the mother of a…
