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catching poetry’s life lines
My parents were raised in rural County Derry at a time and place that produced the “folk healer,” that individual uniquely gifted with “the cure” or “the charm” for whatever ailed them. Consulted only after it was determined that the medical doctor was flummoxed, the folk healer meted out charms in plasters and poultices, in potions that swirled in brown bottles. It was to the healer my father turned when the local doctor told my mother there was nothing he could prescribe for her bout with jaundice. Dissatisfied with this from a man with formal medical training, my father ventured deep into the Derry countryside to the home of a man with “the charm.” Observant and eager to…
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‘time for a few small repairs, she said…’
~ perhaps you have stopped here because you too are considering the lilies and the view from where you are. Maybe you don’t know why or how you arrived at my little corner of the blogosphere; you just took the road less traveled to get here. Whatever the reason, I’m glad you found Time to Consider the Lilies and hope you’ll stay a while. As for me, I will be taking a break from writing for a while. I’m not sure for how long but hope to resume normal activity with more ‘lessons from the field’ very soon. Until then, the blog will still be here, with eighty-eight reminders to…
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‘spared’ & other euphemisms in cancer country
Throughout the day, I have caught myself looking at the clock, wondering what I missed on January 19th one year ago, when I underwent the mastectomy of my right breast and its reconstruction. I am loath to declare the day a “cancerversary,” the cheery-sounding sniglet used by many ensnared within the disease to mark milestones – the day a lump was discovered, a diagnosis delivered, or a surgery undertaken to remove a tumor, a breast, a piece of a lung. Made-up words tend to euphemize and minimize, making us smile when we should be serious. I remember attending a talk by one of my favorite authors, Sherman Alexie. I laughed…
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we’ll take a cup of kindness yet . . .
January 1, 2013 2:00AM All is quiet – the right time for taking stock. My parents are here, fast asleep having brought in this New Year far from their Castledawson home with the fireworks we’ve been saving for a special occasion and, for luck, my husband designated as the ‘first-footer’ after midnight. Sweet relief to shut the door against the worst of 2012 together, a year which started ominously, each of us terrified by the idea of breast cancer tearing the fabric of our lives to shreds. Cancer. When I heard it got me, I cried as though I had just found out that someone dear to me had died. Inconsolable…
