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9/11, Anything can Happen, Billy Collins, Healing Field Tempe, Memoir, Remembering September 11th, Seamus Heaney, Terrorism, Themes of childhood
sharing the sky on september 11
What I remember about the morning of September 11 is how blue the sky was above the Twin Towers on my TV screen. And, I remember the feeling of revulsion so familiar to me from growing up in a tiny country where every day is an anniversary of some atrocity. Until that morning, I had taken for granted the sense…
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Aging, Art, Children's Books, Coming of age, Death of parent, Education, Fatherless daughters, learning to drive, Memoir, Milestones, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mr. Jones, Poetry, Rituals, The Gone of You
just walk away – remembering her last first day of school
WALKING AWAY – Cecil Day Lewis It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day – A sunny day with leaves just turning, The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play Your first game of football, then, like a satellite Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away Behind a scatter of boys. I can see You walking away from…
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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
and still we dance . . . happy mother’s day
In Ireland, it is Mother’s Day and it is also still impossible to visit my mother and the place that made her. A phone call later will help minimize the miles between Castledawson and a village in Mexico, me falling easily back into the comforting colloquialisms of home, but it won’t be the same as surprising her the way I used…
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All The Young Dudes, david bowie, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Drive in Saturday, Lazarus, Life on Mars, Rebel Rebel, Rock n Roll Suicide, Young Americans
bowie – is it any wonder?
The following post was also published on the Irish Times website as part of a collective tribute to David Bowie from Irish writers Julian Gough, Joseph O’Connor, Edna O’Brien, Roddy Doyle, Eimear McBride, Hugo Hamilton, John Kelly, John McAuliffe and many others – David Bowie: Irish Writers Pay Tribute It was just after one o’clock in the morning. On my bedside…