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missing mother’s day again
In Ireland, Mothering Sunday is the fourth Sunday in Lent thereby falling on a different date every year. In America, Mother’s Day arrives each year on the second Sunday in May. As a mother living in America with a mother living in Northern Ireland, I should by now have developed a strategy to cope with this annual conundrum. Especially this year when I have depended so heavily – and daily since the breast cancer diagnosis – on the comforting colloquialisms from the woman on the other end of the line, on the other side of the world. My mother. Without the email reminders from online florists and the showy Hallmark displays that…
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encyclopaedia britannica – farewell for now
Learning via Twitter that The Encyclopaedia Brittanica will no longer publish in print struck me as ironic and sad. I know not when I last considered even consulting it, but I am very sorry to see it go. Like an old relative that I haven’t seen in some years, The Encyclopaedia Brittanica, has an important place in my personal history, featuring prominently in a childhood that was informed largely by books. I recall quite clearly the arrival of the handsome burgundy leather bound set which I know must have cost my parents a small fortune when they purchased it from a door-to-door salesman circa 1970. They probably even set up…
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resuming old ways
Only 47 days ago, a lifetime ago, my husband drove me to the hospital for the final pre-op surgical procedure: the nuclear medicine for a sentinel node biopsy which would be performed the next day at some point between the removal and reconstruction of my right breast. Just a thirty minute drive, this was enough time for me to participate, by phone, in an important meeting at work. Doing so brought to mind how I had worked right up until the day before I’d given birth to our daughter 14 years ago. Perhaps work was, and is, a way to stay distracted until the very last moment, when the pain…
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small steps are not enough
Not to dismiss in any way the science behind it or the work of those who compiled it, but my pathology report might as well have been required reading in my high school English Literature class. I can visualize my teenage self, poring over its language, structure, and form, trying to discern “what it’s really saying,” because I know there will definitely be a question on the final exam about how language, structure, and form contribute to overall meaning. After hours of looking up words, under-lining key vocabulary, and annotating my way through the gross description and microscopic diagnosis, I would no doubt conclude – and my teacher would verify…
