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A Call, Aging, Being young, Birthdays, Castledawson, Family, Father Daughter Relationships, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Rites of passage, Seamus Heaney, The Harvest Bow, Themes of childhood
happy birthday da
It is my father’s birthday today. Unimaginably, he is 76 years old, but like the rest of us, I’m sure there are times when he feels not one iota different from the handsome young man with a shock of black hair, smiling that smile at his beautiful girlfriend ~ I will send his birthday greetings via my mother’s Facebook page. He won’t want to admit that he likes the “new-fangled” social media – but secretly he loves it. After all, he can read his favorite passages from the Bible on my mother’s iPad or Google the answers to questions about the Japanese Maple trees he tends in his garden. Without question, he is one…
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Bunratty Castle, Celtic Tiger, County Clare, craic, Dromoland Castle, Ennis, global partnerships, homesickness, hurling, Irish American relations, Mark Twain, Memoir, Phoenix Sister Cities, recession, Shannon Airport, The Burren, Tourism, trad, Travel
a long, long way from clare to here . . .
It’s not taking time to rain today in Phoenix – I might as well be looking out at the playing field that stretched between our house on the Dublin Road and Lough Neagh. It is – according to the 11 Levels of Irish Rain “REALLY lashing . . . hammering down.” On such a day, I can expect inexplicable pangs of homesickness, that old, unchanging feeling that I know will pass, the way it has done countless times since I first came to America. It is as real a feeling as it was when I first experienced it twenty five odd years ago, reminding me of what Stephen King says – that homesickness can…
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BC Action, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Awareness, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Treatment, Breast cancer walks, Culture of breast cancer, Early Detection, Mammograms, Mastectomy, Pink Ribbons, Pinkwashing, Profiting from breast cancer, Susan G Komen Foundation
the five people I met in cancer country . . .
Opening the in-flight menu on my trip back from Denver this past Sunday, I was reminded that Breast Cancer (industry) Awareness Month is in full swing. Again. So again, I am reminding my friends to remind their friends to think before they pink. With all that’s happened over the past year, I have chosen not to dwell so much on being diagnosed with cancer, living with cancer, or even expecting to die from cancer. Having said that, the paralyzing fear of it progressing certainly knew how to make an entrance a couple of weeks ago. But in the early days following diagnosis, cancer hung from every sentence. Anchored down in unfamiliar waters, I would have lost my way back…
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booby-trapped this October?
This will be my only post about breast cancer awareness month. I’m aware.
