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“let your soul and spirit fly”
“Each of us, as we pass through life, leaves traces of the passage. Sometimes the signs are as slight as a bent leaf, a twisted twig, or a seed dispersed. Sometimes, we leave behind the husks of former selves or castaway restraints. While following these trails, we grow ever more aware of our lives in connection-to our foremothers, to the elemental…
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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
my mother’s day dance
In Ireland, it is Mother’s Day. In Arizona, it is just another Sunday that finds me thinking about my mother – ma – in Castledawson, County Derry, a great armful of sheets rescued from the clothes-line before the rain begins to fall. Then, the folding, a precise ritual, and my father her partner in a dance handed down from one generation to the next.…
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Act Two, Aging, Being a Widow, Birthdays, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Treatment, Castledawson, Coming of age, Death and dying, Dying, Family, Fatherless daughters, FInal wishes, First birthday without him, Funerals, Great Advice, Grieving, Loss, Love, Marriage, Memoir, Mourning, Northern Ireland, Poetry, Robin Williams, saying goodbye, Thanksgiving, Themes of Childhood, Tommy Edwards, W.H. Auden, Wedding Anniversary
Remembering Ken on our 25th ‘Anniversary’
Twelve days after Ken died, I wrote this post. I haven’t read it since, and I’m not going to read it tonight. Somewhere in the middle of the grief-stricken ramblings, I remember is a pure – and good – memory of this day twenty five years ago – January 13, 1990 – the day when Ken and I embarked on what we both knew…
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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
a mother’s day dance
This Mother’s Day weekend in America finds me thinking about my mother back in Castledawson, County Derry, a great armful of sheets rescued from the clothes-line before the rain begins to fall. Then, the folding, a precise ritual, my father her partner in a dance handed down from one generation to the next. My daughter learned those same moves not by…
