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The Man I Love Has Cancer.
The man I love has cancer. And, after months of deliberation, of decisions made and decisions overturned, he has begun treatment. Radiation treatment. Every single day. For forty more days. With my own cancer treatment in the rear-view mirror, I thought I would just know how to help him, how and when to find the best and kindest words to lift him up, to quell the fear, to be “there” for him. Then I remind myself that the treatment of cancer is a private act with stretches of time spent in a surreal and solitary confinement. Along the way, I know I can point out some of the landmarks – detection,…
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putting down roots
Remembering summers past . . . Lawn-mowers and leaf-blowers strike up their tune much earlier when summer arrives in the desert southwest. By the time I left for work on Monday, I noticed, with the same kind of resignation triple-digit temperatures bring every year, that the flower beds were empty, the freshly mown grass less green, and, where just weeks before long branches hung low and heavy with hot pink blooms, were almost-bare limbs exposed to the sky above our house. I remember the uncharacteristically hot Spring day when our little family drove to a the Moon Valley nursery in search of a tree just like those which provided some shade during our weekend strolls…
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When Mother’s Day Falls in Ireland – A Stratagem
I have worked in education long enough that it is not uncommon for me to encounter former students, some of whom are now married with careers and children of their own. It is always surreal to meet these adults who, just a twinkling ago, were writing in composition books about who they would become when they were all grown up. Likewise, they are incredulous to discover that I am now the mother of a daughter who is older than they were when they were my students. And equally perturbed by this scenario and all its implications, is my daughter. A delicious juxtaposition, really – my former students confronting the truth that there…
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Being young, Coming of age, craic, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Irish American relations, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, St. Patrick's Day, The Troubles, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, United Workers Council Strike 1974
By the Wayside on St. Patrick’s Day
“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” ― Elie Wiesel, Night I am ambivalent about St. Patrick’s Day, still not sure what it is about March 17th that renders so many people Irish or some version of it that I do not recall from living the first twenty-seven years of my life in Northern Ireland. Everywhere I turn on Friday, there will be Americans proclaiming their Irishness, some in T-shirts emblazoned with a command to kiss them, others bearing warnings that they are falling-down drunk. Because they are Irish. Even elected officials whose nationality we never knew or cared about will become bona fide Irish. I wonder just how many frazzled interns there must…
