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taking a little guilt trip this summer . . .
After a fortune-telling machine grants his wish, 13 year-old Josh Baskin begins an adventure in the world of work and romance and in the adult body of Tom Hanks. We don’t need to watch the movie Big to predict the ending of the timeless tale behind it. We know that the boy who falls in love with the woman will eventually be pulled back to his thirteen year-old life, so we aren’t surprised by her response to his suggestion that she go back with him. “I’ve been there before. It’s hard enough the first time … you know what I mean?” she asks, and the almost immediate reality, “You don’t know what I…
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“he not busy being born is busy dying”
“I read the news today, oh boy . . .” and prompted by Marie’s questions: who are cancer survivors and is it really necessary to celebrate survivorship on the first Sunday of June, I began yet another interminable trek through the unfiltered Internet. I found no answers for Marie. Just more questions. Admittedly, before today, I was completely unaware that such a “treasured worldwide celebration of life” was on the calendar and has been for twenty-five years. I wonder would I have been any the wiser had I not been diagnosed myself. So who is a survivor, and who do I think I am? At best, I am ambivalent. According…
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Art, Artisans, Awesome Women, Belfast, Crafts, Feminism, Memoir, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mother's Day, Northern Ireland, Ordinary Things, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, Themes of childhood, Themes of Childhood
good with their hands
Perhaps being good with one's hands is somehow connected to being in good hands. Handled with care. A hand-wrapped parcel from Crawford's shop was done right and with great care. There was heart and craft in it. It was in good hands ...
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Uncategorized
identity crisis … away too long
Original photo: Jeff Topping Irish? Northern Irish? British? Ulster Irish? Well, it depends . . . and I know I’m entering dangerous territory here. My brother, more eloquent than I, and still living and writing in Ireland, had to remind me the other day of the “fractured and dissensual nature of [my] cultural background, where declarations of nationhood are open to contention (Northern Ireland versus the North of Ireland; Derry versus Londonderry) and can be dangerous, and potentially fatal.” Indeed, I have been away too long, forgetting the bombings, bullets, and roadblocks, the subtle and more overt means employed to determine one’s religion, one’s fate. It is in the remembering…
