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Aging, Being young, Bridget Jones, Broagh, Castledawson, Diary, Family, FInal wishes, Loss, Love, Marriage, Ordinary Things, Personal Helicon, Poetry, Regrets, saying goodbye, Soundtracks of our Lives, Those Winter Sundays, Writing
the offices of love ~ what did I know?
This winter Sunday, I woke to the high-pitched scrape of steel on steel, my da sharpening my bread knife because “it wouldn’t cut butter.” I stayed in bed, allowing the long metallic strokes on each side of the blade to carry me back to the kitchen of my childhood, my father making sure the knife was sharp enough to carve…
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Anahorish, Anahorish, Antrim, Arizona, Bellaghy, Borders, British Army, Broagh, Castledawson, Dennis O'Driscoll, Fosterling, From the Republic of Conscience, grandmother, IRA, Language matters, Loss, Love, Memoir, Memoir, Memory, Mother Daughter Relationship, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Personal Helicon, Poetry, Politics, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Tony Parker, Writing
back to Anahorish ~ Seamus Heaney’s ‘first hill in the world’
Our poet, Seamus Heaney, will be buried in Bellaghy tomorrow evening, his body brought home from Dublin to rest next to the grave of his little brother, Christopher, whom many of us know from “Mid-Term Break,” a poem now learned by heart by Irish children in schools North or South of the border. The first time, I heard Mid-Term Break, was…