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Anne Lamotte, Arizona, Awesome Women, Belfast, Blogging, Creative Non-Fiction, Culture of breast cancer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Irish Diaspora, Joan Didion, Memoir, New widowhood, Northern Ireland Culture, Paula Meehan, Seamus Heaney, Social Media, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Van Morrison
me. the live tour.
Anyone who reads this blog knows I consider it a home away from home, a safe place to fall where I can put my feet up, have a beer, and listen to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers all day long if I feel like it. I don’t have to keep it clean. I don’t have to check the mail – I don’t even have to open the mail. If I don’t feel like company, I don’t have to answer the door. If I want to throw a party, I can invite people from all over the world. If I want to be alone with deep, angsty thoughts the way I did a million years ago,…
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9/11, Belfast, Boston Marathon 2013, Damian Gorman, Facebook, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, television, The Troubles, The Troubles
boston 2013 . . . without warning
Until September 11th 2001, I had taken for granted the sense of security I felt as a woman who had traded in Northern Ireland for America. Foolishly, I had too quickly dropped my guard, almost forgetting anything can happen. I grew complacent and smug, confident that – unlike her mother – my American daughter would never have to look twice at an unattended shopping bag that had been simply forgotten by someone in a hurry. She would never find herself standing stock-still, arms over her head waiting to be searched before proceeding through airport security. She would never wonder, while poring over international headlines, how a complete stranger could hate her because…
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if ever you go to Dublin town . . .
If you know where you are, you know who you are The intersection of place and poetry is celebrated in the 2014 Dublin: One City One Book initiative, now in its ninth year. Led by the city’s public libraries, it encourages everyone to read a book connected with Dublin during the month of April. This year’s choice is an anthology of poetry: If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song. Edited by Pat Boran and Gerard Smyth, this big, bold book invites readers to take a virtual tour of Dublin, down its streets broad and narrow. Anthologized in three sections – The Liffeyside, The Northside, and The Southside – the poems and songcelebrating the…
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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
mother’s day from far away . . .
I have worked in schools long enough that it is not uncommon for me to encounter former students, some of whom are now married with careers and children. It is always surreal to meet these adults who, just a twinkling ago, were writing in their composition books about who they would become when they were all grown up. Likewise, they are incredulous to discover I am now the mother of a daughter who is older than they were when they were my fifth grade students. Equally perturbed by this scenario and all its implications is my daughter. It amuses me – my former students confronting the truth that there really was more to me…
