Category Archives: Irish Diaspora

Etched in Stone: An Irish Oasis in the Desert

06 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by in Arizona, Blog Awards Ireland 2018, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Ireland, Irish American Connection, Irish American relations, Irish Cultural Center, Irish culture, Irish Diaspora, Libraries, Mary McAleese, McClelland Library, Memoir, Phoenix Landmarks, Phoenix Sister Cities, Seamus Heaney

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*A version of this blog post originally appeared in The Irish Times on October 1, 2018

With family and friends just a mouse-click away, we might be forgiven for believing we can feel at home wherever we are in the world. Migration seems less complex and consequential given the abundance of opportunities for virtual connections to home, but “the ache of the uprooted plant,” persists, reminding us that sometimes there is no substitute for a real social network in a physical space. For the Irish Diaspora or for anyone seeking to connect or reaffirm a connection with Ireland, an unlikely opportunity exists in Arizona’s Valley of the Sun, best known for its 299 days of sunshine each year and its multi-city sprawl – each of those cities boasts a sister city in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Just north of downtown Phoenix, stands the McClelland Irish Library, a latter-day 12th century Norman castle. Such an architectural juxtaposition may seem incongruous in other urban landscapes, but not in Phoenix, a city that is barely 150 years old.

Although considered a new city, its network of canals – more miles of waterway than Venice and Amsterdam combined –  are reminders that Phoenix was built on the ruins of the ancient Hohokam civilization.  With sticks and stones, the Hohokam carved almost a thousand miles of canals into the desert, creating the most advanced irrigation system in the New World to deliver water from the Salt Water river to their crops.  After tending fields in their desert oasis for more than a millennium, the Hohokam civilization disappeared in circumstances that remain a mystery for archeologists. The Valley of the Sun lay empty for 400 years, just waiting for European settlers, the pioneers who would uncover the ancient Hohokam water routes to shape the canal system and the city that continues to rise from the ashes of its mythical namesake – Phoenix.

Phoenix is a big city, the 5th most populous in the United States with over 1.6 million people, 10% of them claiming Irish ancestry. It is big but not entirely urban. Surrounded by mountains, the neighborhoods of Phoenix are various and distinct, some separated by over thirty miles and more than one freeway, some sprawl across acres where citrus groves, horse pastures, farms, and fields of flowers once flourished, all coaxed by canal waters.  Phoenix is also a city of newcomers, that, according to U.S. Census Data, added 220 people a day in 2017.  And although it has been synonymous with suburban sprawl for decades, more people are flocking to the city. Downtown Phoenix, Inc., a think tank established to encourage more businesses, residents, and visitors, reports that in 2018 Phoenix has already seen an 85% spike in its downtown population.  People want to be less dependent on their cars; instead walking or taking the light rail to restaurants and cultural destinations. This bodes well for recent Irish emigrants in search of the craic – they might just find it in a place like the  Irish Cultural Center and the McClelland library – a bold expression of Irishness in the heart of a desert city.

The library bears the family name of Norman P. McClelland who passed away in 2017. He was the son of W.T. McLelland, an immigrant from County Down, who settled in Tucson in 1912, about a month before Arizona became a state. In many ways, Norman McClelland was typical of the Irish in America, who Eileen Markey characterizes as “tenacious in in their cultural identification, claiming an Irish identity a century or more after our forbearers stepped off the boat.”  This tenacity is reflected in McClelland’s genealogical research, painstaking work that would lead him to envision. a library that would also provide access to dynamic Irish culture, arts, and education for the entire community.  Head Librarian, Chas Moore, explains that “Norman researched and published four detailed family history volumes, one on each of his grandparents who grew up within a ten-mile radius in County Down, N. Ireland. His dedication to family and helping others discover their roots and write their family histories is what guided his huge investment of the library that bears his family name.” McLelland’s active involvement in the Irish Cultural Center of Phoenix and his eponymous library is what Arizona Senator John McCain described as “a testament to Norman’s steadfast leadership and genuine dedication to serving his community whilst paying homage to his Ulster roots.”

The largest of its kind in the Southwestern United States, the three story library houses 8,000 books from Irish authors, poets, and genealogical sources as well as a permanent exhibit on The Book of Kells, several reading rooms, and computer access to various disciplines of Irish and Celtic studies including genealogy.  While conducting his own genealogical research, McCelland met Dr. Brian Trainor, former Research Director of the Ulster Historical Foundation, Director of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and Chairman of the Irish Manuscripts Commission. Just this week, Dr. Trainor passed away in Belfast and as testament to McCelland’s commitment to preserving the history and genealogical record of the people of Ireland has bequeathed to the McClelland Library his personal collection, helping realize what  Librarian Chas Moore reveals as McLelland’s greatest hope, “to have an entire bookshelf lined with Irish in Arizona family histories. We are well on the way to achieving that goal with our new Irish in Arizona project.”

Architectural Photography by Michael Baxter, Baxter Imaging LLC

Impressive and imposing against the desert sky, the McClelland Library is modeled after an ancient Norman castle and stands on the campus of the Irish Cultural Center along with the Cottage, An Gorta Mor The Great Hunger Memorial, and the Great Hall which has hosted an impressive trail of ambassadors, academics, historians, poets, and politicians. Last Fall, John Deane gave a poetry reading at the center and in January 2019, Jim Rogers, Editor of the premier Irish Studies journal in the United States, New Hibernia Review, will deliver a lecture. Diverse programming such as this that resonates with Phoenix resident and editor and publisher of Reading Ireland, Dr. Adrienne Leavy, who first became involved with the McClelland Library and the Irish Cultural Center some years ago when her daughter Niamh began taking Irish language classes there. Leavy praises the staff “who take their stewardship of Irish culture very seriously,” and the Center’s impressive programming, “whether it be lectures and exhibitions, or the various language, music and dance classes offered.”  Part of the creative team that organized the 1916 Centenary exhibition, Leavy points out that perhaps the most gratifying aspects of that project, was that it “exemplified the cross-cultural mission of the ICC, with the opportunity to work closely with the Louth County Museum in Dundalk, who made the research for their excellent 1916 exhibit available to the library.”

In 2018, the Irish Cultural Center and McClelland Library presented a full season of activities exploring the theme of Peace and Reconciliation, featuring book discussions, lectures, events, and films as well as a lecture on the impact of the Good Friday Agreement on contemporary Ireland by Robert O’Driscoll, Consul General of Ireland to the Western United States. Other dignitaries include President Mary MacAleese, who during her visit to the Center in 2008, foreshadowed these collaborative endeavors, acknowledging the promise of the new library to “build connections as never before,” and reminding those gathered that the will to do so is part and parcel of our Irish DNA

It is what keeps us clan and family to one another through all of life’s vagaries.  This [Irish Cultural] Centre, and its new library, will be a hub for those connections, and a home for the new networks of friendship and shared interests that will keep Ireland and Arizona close, even across the miles.

Writer, Yvonne Watterson pictured with Former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese and her husband, Martin.

Back home, that simple mouse-click away, my parents still live in rural South Derry, but my father would be right at home in the McLelland Library. In my mind’s eye, he is surveying the arch above the doorway, calculating how much limestone and labor went into it, and marveling when I tell him that the  Irish blue limestone was quarried in County Galway, then cut and carved in a County Clare workshop by master stonemason, Frank McCormack, the kind of Irish craftsman who belongs in a Seamus Heaney poem along with the blacksmith, the diviner, and the thatcher, each well-practiced in the techniques and tools of ancient crafts. Just like my father.  McCormack, who has been practicing stonemasonry since 1989, did all of the stonework at his workshop, Irish Natural Stone Products. The three tons of limestone were shipped to the United States by boat through the Panama Canal, and after arriving in Los Angeles, transported by truck to Phoenix, where McCormack and one of his finest master stone masons flew to fit the pieces of stone in layers.  His wife, Mary, describes the difficulty of working in the Phoenix heat, “They were on site at dawn ready to work and had to leave at the height of the sun and then work again as the day cooled down. Should a mistake be made and a tool left in the sun hands were burnt and this slowed work.” It took a month for the team to recreate in the desert a masterpiece of ancient Irish civilization. McCormack reminds us that

If you look at that doorway, you’ll see old history; you’ll see we used the chisel the same way stonemasons did 1,000 years ago. It’s the real deal.

Courtesy: Irish Cultural Center

Lib The inspiration for the doorway came from library architect and President of the Irish Cultural Center, Paul Ahern.  He had visited Ireland in 2005 “to see the churches, monasteries, and castles in order to absorb some of the design character of these old, old stone structures.” While the basic conceptual design was completed before Ahern began searching for a specific historical reference image for the doorway, he knew what he wanted – relatively simple geometric shapes without religious figures or Celtic crosses. He focused an Internet search on County Clare because of the relationship between Phoenix and her sister city, Ennis and while perusing possibilities, he discovered a photo of the former St. Brigid’s church on Holy Island, Lough Derg. A 10th century structure, “St. Brigid’s arched entry seemed to have the right character so I developed the design by scaling up the original to fit our library.”  To help him recreate the doorway, Mary McCormack explains that her husband made a number of trips to Holy Island to photograph the details, and that it was Frank who had the idea of carving “McClelland Library” into the arch, “a permanent recognition of Mr. McClelland’s involvement in the project.”

Towering over me as I enter the courtyard, is the McClelland Library and McCormack’s impressive handiwork. Under my feet is a map of Ireland, each of her counties set in brick and etched with the names of donors.  Behind me, the An Gorta Mor, in memory of those who suffered in the Irish Famine.  All around me, the echoes of two ancient civilizations, and I find myself recalling five years after his death, Seamus Heaney, a man who loved libraries, once exalting them and their librarians with these lines from one of his favorite poems by Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz:

“I imagine the earth when I am no more . . .

Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,

Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.”

 Yet the books will be there.

Architectural Photography by Michael Baxter, Baxter Imaging LLC

 

 

Make Some Noise, Murphy – We’re All Ears.

23 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in cancer, Feminism, Irish Diaspora, Love, Memoir, Mothering, widowed

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In December 1988, shortly after Candice Bergen showed up as Murphy Brown on American TV, I took up permanent residence in these United States.  And for the next decade, I liked knowing I could find her if I needed her on a Thursday night at nine o’clock. Characterized as “Mike Wallace in a dress,” she was tough and didn’t suffer fools.  She was, as the saying goes, “one of the boys,” a moniker that has been applied to me a time or two prompting me – then and now – to consider what it means to be a boy, a man. What constitutes “masculine” behavior, especially today when there are men and women defending the alleged sexual assault of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh? Perhaps a new and acceptable understanding will come out of the proceedings – but I’m not confident. In this country, we don’t do well with learning from history. Just ask Anita Hill.

By the time the Murphy Brown show ended in 1998, Murphy had a son, and I had a brand new baby girl. Smitten, my baby made me feel like a natural woman too, but she also intimidated me like no other force in my life – six pounds of pure hope in my arms. 

Motherhood exposed a vulnerability in the irascible Murphy Brown, as did the diagnosis of her breast cancer in the final season – a vulnerability that was no match for her big hair or the business-suit armor and the smart-ass attitude. Out of the blue,  I would meet a similar fate 13 years later, not fully aware of what the woman who played Murphy knew –

Life is wondrously and appallingly surprising. Anyone who doesn’t know that is unarmed.

Like Bergen, I was an “older” first-time mother. I often wondered if I was up to the task of motherhood.  I know now that I was. Like Bergen, I was widowed  and didn’t think I would love or trust another man again.  But I did, and with every storm that has passed in the past five years, I am reminded of Lou Reed’s wisdom – “There’s a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.”

I’ve missed Murphy Brown and FYI, the magic of which returns to TV this week in The Murphy Brown Reboot  and the timing couldn’t be better to reprise the character, who  twenty-six years ago was the talk of the country when Vice President, Dan Quayle, criticized her for ”mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.” As an aside, the same guy would come out and praise ”The Osbournes” as a loving example of family values on TV. And, I think we all know how many of his peers feel about Barack Obama, the child of a single mother, who would go on to  become President.  In its rebuke to Quayle, Murphy Brown incorporated some of his comments into the show, drawing about 70 million viewers.

Perhaps it’s time for the Vice President to realize that whether by choice or circumstance, families come in all shapes and sizes, and ultimately what really defines a family is commitment, caring and love.

This was real news on a fake news show, and its 2018 reboot will continue to grapple with issues of the day – the #metoo movement, fake news, Twitter, the relationship of the Press with the Trump White House, the current Supreme Court nominee, gun control, and immigration to name but a few. Murphy Brown has my attention again. She has thirteen episodes, and you know she’s going to make some noise. I’m all ears.

The Eagles – on a Corner in Phoenix, Arizona.

09 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in American Dream, Being young, Belfast, Concerts, Eagles Tour 2018, Glenn Frey, Irish Diaspora, Take It Easy, The Eagles

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When I was young, I only liked the Eagles because I knew they had been Linda Ronstadt’s backing vocalists – and I loved Linda Ronstadt. I wanted to be her and therefore learned by heart the lyrics of every song she covered. In my teenage bedroom, I spent hours singing along to her records, dreamy and delusional, telling myself that I was absolutely within her vocal range. Bored and adolescent, I longed to be far away Northern Ireland and its grey skies, from Margaret Thatcher, from politics and parades, from flags and fighting – far away from a country that has “no prairies to slice a big sun at evening.” I wanted to be an American girl. I wanted to hang out in a place called California with long-haired rockers who sometimes sounded a little more country than I thought I liked. I wanted to drive down an American highway on a sunny day with the top down and the radio up. For miles.

I loved everything about Linda Ronstadt and wanted to appear as confident, to stride onstage in a mini-skirt, one hand on my hip, the other shakin’ a tambourine. I wanted to belt out Poor, Poor Pitiful Me  with the kind of authority that after all these years alludes me still –  “Well I met a man out in Hollywood/Now I ain’t naming names.”  I would never have imagined the woman behind that heartsome voice could know vulnerability or inadequacy. I know better now. Moving through the world to the beat of a different drum is not always easy.

Linda Ronstadt covered every genre – Motown, soul, country, folk, rock – exposing me to the dozens of American musicians who would score the soundtrack of my life. Buddy Holly. Roy Orbison. Smokey Robinson. Jackson Browne. Lowell George. Neil Young. Warren Zevon. Bob Seger. The Flying Burrito Brothers.  The Eagles. The Eagles. Glenn Frey and Don Henley – The Eagles.  That’s right. The Eagles were her backing vocalists. Linda Ronstadt was living my dream, making harmonies – sweet harmonies – with long-haired rockers:

I got tougher being on the road with the Eagles. I walked differently, I became more foulmouthed.  I swore so much I sounded like a truck driver. But that’s the way it was. I was the only girl on the road so the boys always kind of took charge. They were working for me, and yet it always seemed like I was working for them.

KXgoR3T

In 1971, she had hired Glenn Frey and a singing drummer, Don Henley, to be her back-up vocalists, and when they later decided to form their own band, she helped them. In 2014, when Linda Ronstadt was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but unable to attend due to illness,  it was her long-time friend, her former back-up singer, Glenn Frey, who paid tribute to her. He made a point of saying that it was a long time coming, and he reminded everyone of what she would later reveal in  Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir about why she sang:

people sing for many of the same reasons the birds sing. They sing for a mate, to claim their territory, or simply to give voice to the delight of being alive in the midst of a beautiful day.

Glenn Frey knew this delight.  He knew why people sing. He knew how to give voice to our heartaches and hangovers, to lying eyes and life in the fast lane, to Desperados, and to James Dean. He knew how to sing to the girl who might slow down in a flat bed Ford  just to take a look at him, in Winslow, Arizona, where I drove one day in 1987. I was 24 years old without a care in the world and a tank full of gas.  It was 110 degrees, and I was hot and bothered wearing a shirt tied at the waist and cut-off denim shorts. I was Linda Ronstadt, and I had the radio on.

unnamedThe sky was on fire when I pulled over to the side of the road. It didn’t matter that it was late in the afternoon. It was close enough to a tequila sunrise. I turned up the music, got out of my car, and I stood on the corner. Of Winslow Arizona. I was an American Girl.

For that moment, I am forever in your debt, Glenn Frey.  But, I never saw him perform in concert, somehow missing the Eagles every time they rolled into town even after they reunited – when hell froze over.  And then Glenn Frey died, and I remember thinking this meant the Eagles had died too. But last week, I found out that their “Greatest Hits” album overtook Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” to claim the top spot on the list of best-selling albums in the United States,  and that they are touring sold-out stadiums all over the country.  How could that be? I wanted to find out. In retrospect, I wish I’d wanted to find out earlier than two hours before they took to the stage in Phoenix, but better late than never.  It was just plain wrong to be settling into a night of binge-watching on Netflix knowing that the Eagles were playing just a few miles away from my boyfriend’s condo.  The Eagles were playing – without Glenn Frey – but still. The Eagles were playing, and we didn’t have tickets. Linda Ronstadt’s back-up singers were playing in Phoenix –  and we didn’t have tickets. Unacceptable. 

Now I’m not going to tell you what we paid for those tickets. I’m still surprised that two were available on a dubious website just 90 minutes before the Eagles stepped on stage with a flawless performance of “Seven Bridges Road.” But I will tell you I’m very glad we did.

In place of Glenn Frey were Vince Gill and a young man in a red plaid shirt and jeans, his long hair pulled back under sunglasses, looking as though he had just grabbed his guitar from a flat-bed Ford. Then he announced that he was going to “sing one that my dad used to sing, if that’s okay.” Sentimental? Yes. But also pitch perfect, reminding me of the first time I saw the E Street Band without Clarence Clemons, when Springsteen introduced the big man’s nephew on saxophone.

With thousands of people singing along and waving illuminated smart phones, Deacon Frey, sang lead on “Peaceful, Easy Feeling” the resemblance to his father unsettling and magical.  And, as the final chord rang throughout the arena, a black and white image of his smiling father, Glenn Frey, appeared on the screen behind him – a reminder of his legacy, not that we needed it.

A little bit country, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Timothy B. Schmit,  Steuart Smith, Deacon Frey, and Vince Gill, shimmered through a set that as it unfurled, affirmed  for everyone in that arena that life’s been good and that we can forget about the news for a couple of hours. As Henley pointed out, “It’ll all be there in the morning.”

Setlist

“Seven Bridges Road”

“Take It Easy”

“One of These Nights”

“Take It to the Limit”

“Tequila Sunrise”

“Witchy Woman”

“In the City”

“I Can’t Tell You Why”

“New Kid in Town”

“Peaceful Easy Feeling”

“Ol’ ’55”

“Lyin’ Eyes”

“Love Will Keep Us Alive”

“Don’t Let Our Love Start Slippin’ Away”

“Those Shoes”

“Already Gone”

“Walk Away”

“Life’s Been Good”

“Heartache Tonight”

“Funk #49”

“Life In the Fast Lane”

Encore 1

“Hotel California”

Encore 2

“Rocky Mountain Way”

“Desperado”

 What a gift. Thank you Glenn Frey and thank you, Eagles.

 

 

Mexico ~ With My Own Ones

23 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by in Ajijic, Chapala, Irish Diaspora, Jalisco, James Taylor, Lake Chapala, Mexico, Mexico, Paula Meehan, You're So Vain

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“I am the blind woman finding her way home by a map of tune.
When the song that is in me is the song I hear from the world
I’ll be home. It’s not written down and I don’t remember the words.
I know when I hear it I’ll have made it myself. I’ll be home.“

~ Paula Meehan, Irish poet

Vibrant, foreign, and far away, Mexico was once nothing more than a James Taylor song on my first radio. It was too far beyond my reach to present an alternative to the Northern Ireland of my childhood, a grey and divided place, its capital city, a ‘no-go’ area in the 1970s. The United States or Canada presented a more accessible option, and to escape the rain, unemployment, and The Troubles, I turned to America, to its music and movies – to the dream of it – and I devoted most of my time in school to planning my exit strategy.  Instead of Spanish, I opted for French, contemplating Quebec I suppose, but when a summer job opportunity presented itself in New York, I seized it.

Laden with a heavy backpack and a tell-tale paperback book on how to ‘do’ America, I arrived at John F. Kennedy airport in the summer of 1984. With the bravado we attribute to youth and not knowing any better, I sauntered through Customs and Immigration. The officer who stamped my passport greeted me to the New World with an impatient, “Keep on rollin’, lady,” confirming what I probably already knew – that I was too slow for the big city and the big country that had been the stuff of my dreams for a decade.

Apprehensive and alone, I spent my first night in New York in the YMCA on Times Square and 42nd Street, long before the area had been spruced up and transformed into the glittering intersection we know today. Still with one foot in Belfast, when I ventured out that hot summer night, I stood for too long in the doorway of a drug store. With my backpack held open, I waited expectantly for someone to search it for explosives.  So ingrained was this habit, the girl from Northern Ireland had forgotten she was on a New York city sidewalk.

Within the weeks that followed, the initial culture shock gave way to an enchantment that remains within me. Just three hours away by train, Saratoga Springs beckoned me with a series of concerts celebrating the 15th anniversary of Woodstock. Saratoga, the place in “You’re So Vain,” where his ‘horse naturally won,’ according to Carly Simon who was married to the man who had sung about Mexico on my radio back in Belfast. Undaunted and reckless, I hitch-hiked my way to hear him perform, which he did – with Randy Newman. And of course, he sang “Mexico.”

I would later find out that the song came to James Taylor while he was taking a break during the recording of the “Gorilla” album. As he remembers: “I went down to spend a long weekend in Mexico with some friends in Puerto Vallarta, and while I was down there, this thing just … sometimes you go some place, you know?”

Yes, James. Thirty years later, I know.

A cross country trip from New York would bring me to the desert southwest, tantalizingly closer to Mexico. I settled in Phoenix, a sprawling metropolis connected by streets with Spanish names  – Via de Ventura, Calle Guadalupe, Casa Blanca Drive – and when I bought the house I still live in today, I planted a jacaranda tree that explodes with purple blossoms. In the blazing days of summer, when my friends would escape to those beautiful Mexican beaches that slope into the Sea of Cortez, I opted instead for Morro Bay on the central coast of California, with its misty morning fog and colorful wall murals; or I would go back to a Belfast that now shimmers as a cosmopolitan city in Game of Thrones country. Mexico alluded me – but not this year.

In Spring of 2018, we found ourselves at Mi Patio, a neighborhood Mexican restaurant in the middle of Phoenix. Before long, as is our way, we had befriended the stranger at the bar.  Affable and interesting, he joined our conversation about Van Morrison and Northern Ireland – each synonymous for ‘home’ for me. He even sang the first line of “Celtic Heartbeat”

Oh won’t you stay, stay a while with your own ones. . .

~ and I was at home in a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona.

And then he pivoted, drawing our attention to a little place he knew we hadn’t heard of but that we should definitely visit. He spelled it out. A-j-i-j-i-c. Something about the way those letters fell from his lips compelled me to ask more. To help us place it on an imaginary map, he said it was close to Guadalajara on the shores of Mexico’s Lake Chapala. He told us Ajijic was a magical place with a perfect climate and a welcoming international community of ex-pats like me, a place we would love.  April, he said, might be a good time to visit. So, by the end of the evening, we had a new friend and a plan in place. We would visit Mexico to mark my 55th birthday, and we would be his guests at The Hotel Casa Blanca in Ajijic.

When we arrived there on my birthday, far away from the country that made me, I was struck by how much I felt at home. Walking the cobblestoned streets of Ajijic, my feet were on familiar territory – my heart, too, hope burning as it had done once before in the summer of 1984. And, catching a glimpse of the man I love buying roses on a street festooned with papel picado, I knew I was home.

Together, we ventured to the plaza for a birthday drink. A jocular Canadian spied us and invited us to his table, and within minutes, he was asking us when we would be back.  He found out we were celebrating my ‘double nickels’ day, so he presented me with a candle and led the people around him in a chorus of “Happy Birthday.” The plaza hummed with the sounds of strangers singing and children laughing, and church bells ringing out in what felt like gratitude for the dimming day.  Seated there at my makeshift birthday table, I wept silently, undone by the wandering spirit that I thought had left me. I have missed her.

Contemplating the first step into a new journey, a new country, I remind myself not to be afraid of taking what Doris Kearns Goodwin calls that “spectacular risk” – to emigrate. Having spent more than half my life in Arizona, far from Northern Ireland, I know well the unguarded moments of dislocation that bring a visceral longing for “ home,” perhaps even for the things that sent me away in the first place. And, I am called back to my childhood and to a time with my grandmother, who died when I was just six years old. Hers was my first experience with death, and it was as her grandchild that I first experienced complete and unconditional love.

When the sun rose in Ajijic on the first day of my 55th year, its light filling our hotel room, I could hear once again my grandmother tell my mother, who also told me, to “follow the sun.”  Follow the sun, daughter dear, she once told me.  Standing in the morning light in Mexico, I knew I was home again – with my own ones.