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airing laundry for mother’s day
Old Smoothing Iron by Seamus Heaney Often I watched her lift it from where its compact wedge rode the back of the stove like a tug at achor. To test its heat by ear she spat in its iron face or held it up next her cheek to divine the stored danger. Soft thumps on the ironing board. Her dimpled…
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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,…
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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
still we dance – on mother’s day in america
This weekend marks another Mother’s Day without the man who made a mother out of me, the man who loved me so well and for so long. Our girl plans to take time off work to spend the day with me, and we know – but we keep it to ourselves – that looking forward to a special Sunday together will lead to looking back to the…
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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.…
