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9.11.2013, 9/11, Anything can Happen, Belfast, Billy Collins, Blogging, bombing, British Army, cancer, Diary, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Healing Field Tempe, Loss, Memoir, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Peace, Poetry, Remembering September 11th, Seamus Heaney, September 11, The Peace Process, The Troubles, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood, Writers
Dear Igor . . . the last name on the list
Time after time, I have stood on the virtual doorsteps of people in the middle of lives parallel to my own, beautifully blindsided by unexpected coincidences and exchanges of truths that may not otherwise have seen the light of day. In my virtual home, it is often easy to pull up a chair and trade ideas and opinions with people I may never meet about why Seamus Heaney still matters; about my beautiful, bruised Northern Ireland, the wee country that scared me and shaped me; about breast cancer and the pain and of it, and the shiver of fear that lingers long after it is no longer detectable; about clearing…
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9/11, Anything can Happen, Billy Collins, Healing Field Tempe, Memoir, Remembering September 11th, Seamus Heaney, Terrorism, Themes of childhood
sharing the sky on september 11
What I remember about the morning of September 11 is how blue the sky was above the Twin Towers on my TV screen. And, I remember the feeling of revulsion so familiar to me from growing up in a tiny country where every day is an anniversary of some atrocity. Until that morning, I had taken for granted the sense of security I felt as an immigrant who had traded in Northern Ireland for the United States. Foolishly, I had too quickly dropped my guard, almost forgetting anything can happen. I no longer felt the need to reassure myself that the sound of a car backfiring on the freeway was…
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and What I Wore, Art, Awesome Women, Carly Simon, Cat Stevens, Culture of breast cancer, Facebook, Memoir, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Nora Ephron, Soundtracks of our Lives, Theater, Writers
worn out
The other day, I went shopping in Guadalajara where I found a blouse I’ve been looking for – for almost 40 years. I suppose an explanation is in order. It begins – as many stories do – with an encounter with something by Nora Ephron. In the summer of 2013, my best friend and I went to see the enchanting and poignant Love, Loss, and What I Wore, Nora and Delia Ephron‘s stage-adaptation of Ilene Beckerman’s book by the same name. I’d never met them, but I knew each of the five women on stage. Like them, I can still peer into my closet and hang on the clothes and…
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A Poem for Michael and Christopher, Act Two, Door into the Dark, Postscript, Seamus Heaney, The Underground
P.S. Codladh sámh, Seamus Heaney.
Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit. There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you. And so, my fellow graduates, make the world before you a better one by going into it with all boldness. You are up to it and you are fit for it; you deserve it and if you make your own best contribution, the world before you will become a bit more deserving of you. ~ From his remarks to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduates, May 12, 1996 Dear Seamus, It’s eight years…
