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Aging, Awesome Women, Castledawson, Coming of age, Family, grandmother, Irish culture, Irish mammies, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mother's Day, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, Themes of Childhood
mothering in the time of COVID-19 . . .
Having worked in education for over thirty years, it is not uncommon for me to encounter – in real life or the virtual version – my former students, all grown-up, some of them married with careers and children. Surreal to find myself standing shoulder to shoulder with these adults who, just a twinkling ago, were scribbling in composition books about who they might become. They are often incredulous to discover I am now the mother of a daughter who is over a decade older than they were when they sat in my classroom. Equally perturbed by this scenario and its implications is my daughter. It amuses me to watch my…
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Dispatch from the Diaspora, Feminism, Love, Meg Ryan, Milestones, Nora Ephron, Online dating, Relationships, Rob Reiner, Social Media, When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail
match point ~ seeking romance & mr. right
A match made in heaven? No. In spite of all the tactics and algorithms deployed to make sense of our checked boxes and declare us a 100% match or subsequently updating our relationship as 'official' on Facebook, we are making this match right here, right here where angels fear to tread, in the messiness of the middle of two lives that collided at the best and worst of times. There is no wrong time.
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All The Young Dudes, david bowie, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Drive in Saturday, Lazarus, Life on Mars, Rebel Rebel, Rock n Roll Suicide, Young Americans
bowie – is it any wonder?
The following post was also published on the Irish Times website as part of a collective tribute to David Bowie from Irish writers Julian Gough, Joseph O’Connor, Edna O’Brien, Roddy Doyle, Eimear McBride, Hugo Hamilton, John Kelly, John McAuliffe and many others – David Bowie: Irish Writers Pay Tribute It was just after one o’clock in the morning. On my bedside table, a tiny screen lit up with a message from another planet and three words that still don’t belong together: “Bowie is dead.“ David Bowie is dead. It was cancer that took him, a cancer he kept private from this world – my world – of which he was so much a…
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Arizona, Awesome Women, Immigration, Linda Ronstadt, Memoir, Parkinson's Disease, Politics, SB1070, Soundtracks of our Lives, Themes of childhood
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of her Voice
I never thought I would hear Linda Ronstadt sing again, but there she is on my television screen, singing a traditional Mexican cancione with a nephew and cousin. It is, she explains, a family thing that she doesn’t want them doing without her. She stops to find a note, they resume, and when the song finishes, she looks at the camera – right at me – and says, with a no-bullshit candor: This isn’t really singing. Believe me. It’s a few notes sketched in. But it’s not really singing. And, I am in tears. I bet I’m not alone. I’ve been cheated. On Monday, work will take me back to…
