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A World Cup Legacy
It is Sunday morning in Mexico – already night-time in Quatar where Canada is moments from losing against Croatia in the 2022 FIFA World Cup. My boyfriend just asked me why Ireland isn’t playing. I explained that yet again, Ireland failed to qualify, but I am quick to point out, that when the Boys in Green did qualify – albeit only three times – they produced a World Cup finals record to be proud of, with no losses until the fifth game and unbeaten over 90 minutes against Spain, Germany, and England. Then there’s that summer night when they beat Italy at Giants Stadium. I was in Northern Ireland in…
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Thanks Given
For the day that's in it, Thanksgiving has something to do with wherever you find that moment of transcendence - among trees in a desert city or at the break of day on the edge of Mexico's largest lake. It's about finding the light. Seeing the light. It's about Annie Lamott's Three Essential Prayers - Help, Thanks, Wow:
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Neverending.
To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. Thomas Campbell Today is the anniversary of Ken’s death, and tomorrow would have been the 31st anniversary of our wedding day – magic and loss forever side by side on my calendar. My daughter sent me a text last night, telling me she has a visceral memory of the two of us telling ourselves that one day it will be decade since it happened – and we will hardly believe it. I remember that conversation too, my then teenage girl telling me it was beyond her grasp that one day it would be ten years, twenty years, forty years,…
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Enniskillen lingers
It never occurred to me that I was a child of The Troubles until I stumbled upon a scholarly dissertation about Northern Ireland. As a child, I was usually at a safe distance from “The Troubles,” there at 6 o’clock every evening when we turned on the news or the odd time our kitchen window shook because a bomb had exploded somewhere close. There was the time the car-bomb exploded outside Halls Hotel, and then years later when my brother, as a new journalist, had to interview the grandmother of three little boys murdered, burned to death on July 12, 1998. Richard, Mark and Jason, just eleven, nine, and seven…
