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Aging, Art, Children's Books, Coming of age, Death of parent, Education, Fatherless daughters, learning to drive, Memoir, Milestones, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mr. Jones, Poetry, Rituals, The Gone of You
just walk away – remembering her last first day of school
WALKING AWAY – Cecil Day Lewis It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day – A sunny day with leaves just turning, The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play Your first game of football, then, like a satellite Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away Behind a scatter of boys. I can see You walking away from me towards the school With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free Into a wilderness, the gait of one Who finds no path where the path should be. That hesitant figure, eddying away Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem, Has something I never quite grasp to…
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Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Cadillac Ranch, Coming of age, Drive All Night, The Price You Pay, The River, The River Tour 2016
independence day again
It’s Independence Day, and I’m thinking about fireworks, the kind that exploded into the sky over Slane Castle on a summer evening in 1985 when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were making their Irish debut. Close to 100,000 of us made the pilgrimage through the sleepy – and disapproving – village of Slane to see The Boss. Between assurances of increased security and a promise – as yet unfulfilled – that this would be the last rock concert to disturb them, the residents had been placated. Even the weather cooperated with the kind of sun-drenched day the Irish pray for. Everybody was young that day, even the crotchety old…
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Act Two, Castledawson, Family, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mother's Day, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Poetry, Rites of passage, Rituals, Seamus Heaney
and still we dance . . . happy mother’s day
In Ireland, it is Mother’s Day and it is also still impossible to visit my mother and the place that made her. A phone call later will help minimize the miles between Castledawson and a village in Mexico, me falling easily back into the comforting colloquialisms of home, but it won’t be the same as surprising her the way I used to do with a bunch of fresh flowers that she will immediately arrange in a crystal vase on the hall table. Even if I were able to fly to Belfast, I would still have to stay away from her, COVID restrictions in place for the foreseeable future hoping to tame…
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Dispatches from the Diaspora, Friendship, Happy New Year, Milestones, saying goodbye, Seamus Heaney, Starting over, Ted Kooser, Time
Facing the Ice on New Year’s Eve . . .
Dangerous pavements. But I face the ice this year With my father’s stick. ~ Seamus Heaney On New Year’s Eve, a year ago, Chinese health officials confirmed an outbreak of a new virus causing pneumonia-like clusters in Wuhan city. Since then – as we all now know – the virus has spread to nearly every country, killing over 1.8 million people and decimating the world’s economies. How do we bid farewell to all of that? I’m not sure we can. Not really. Not as over 1.8 million ghosts step into 2021 with us, reminding us as we turn the calendar page, of what we have lost and the hard road…
