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After death of a spouse, Being a Widow, Dirty Boulevard, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Lou Reed, magic and loss
Lou Reed and My Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart.
For as long as I can remember, I have known that Holly came from Miami, FLA and hitch-hiked her way across the USA; that little Joe never gave it away; and, that Jackie thought she was James Dean for a day. As young as I was when I first heard Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” I cannot possibly have…
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hand ballet: magic & loss & lou reed remembered
Graceful and elegant, my daughter’s fingers catch the sun spilling through the window. For a minute, everything stops. My little girl’s hands are those of a young woman. Strong and steady. Earnest. She is the real warrior in our house. Just a twinkling ago, she first discovered her beautiful hands. For me, her besotted mother, it was a magical milestone in…
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Belfast, Crafts, Family, Fathers and sons, Happy Father's Day, Memoir, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Ordinary Things, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Social Media, Soundtracks of our Lives, Themes of Childhood
inarticulate speech of the heart – on father’s day
This will not be a happy Father’s Day for my father. From far away, he will worry about my daughter and me and how we are doing on this, my daughter’s first Father’s Day without her dad. He’ll wish he could be in Phoenix, to fix things for us, to paint the laundry room or clean the windows or mix cement to…
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Awesome Women, Being young, Breaking Bad, Fireworks, Friendships, Grieving, James Gandolfini, Lou Reed, Love, Marriage, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, New Year, Northern Ireland Culture, Rites of passage, Robert Frost, saying goodbye, The Sopranos, Themes of childhood, Time, Writing
cups of kindness
“Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat.” Patti Smith How do I begin to put the stuff of the past twelve months in a box and tie it up in a big red bow? Just begin. Pluck out a memory and wrap it up. Move on to the next.…
