Calm

I give terrific dream analysis though often I find it impossible to decipher my own. This one I did and it still resonates with me days later.

In the dream I was in a room - they're always interesting these rooms, bear no relation to any dwelling I've ever lived in or been in, though sometimes there's a faint familiarity.

At the outset I tell you I don't believe in any form of afterlife and have written extensively about my god-free life so I don't attach any kind of hereafter messages to any dreams I have about dead people.

So this dream: I was housekeeping in this large white room, surrounded by cleaning utensils. I don't housekeep in real life. I keep things sanitary and hygienic but heavy cleaning is Emma's job. So here I am sitting on the floor in this room staring at a vacuum cleaner, wondering about nozzles and power cords when I hear a cough. And I look up and at the doorway is my mother and she has a doll, infant sized, over her shoulder and she's patting it and pointing at it with her other hand. She's silent but insistent I look at it. I get up off the floor, away from the furniture polish and bottles of cleaner and start to walk over to her very slowly, puzzled, saying "Mum, Mum?" over and over. She's smiling but her hands keep moving in the same pattern.

And I wake up suddenly and I'm crying so hard in my loss and grief that it takes me about five minutes to stop and I, the dream expert, breathe in some calm and analyze.

Everyone appearing in a dream is just another aspect of ourselves. And for once, this one's clear as a bell

I can fooster my way round, distracted by the baubles of life and neglect my doll, my creative spirit which needs stroking and care and attention.

And all the promises I made to myself a few months ago about entering more competitions, writing new material, were sucked away by other distractions, some major like the writing workshops I'm giving, others minor like projects in my town and, lawd, editing, editing and editing an anthology (don't ask, unpaid work more's the pity, I was sucked in, my own fault).

So yeah, time to clean house for sure and concentrate on, well, my bliss.

Memory

I am struck so much by memory lately. Not in a morbid way or anything, strictly reflecting on its power.

I read "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" again for my book club. I loved it the first time around (2009) and the re-read was equally delightful.

I had thought in the past that it was such a shame most of us can't plumb the depths of our parents' memories. I spent a huge quantity of time (afternoon upon afternoon) with my mother when she had terminal cancer where she shared so many memories with me. I didn't take notes, much to my regret now, I thought it would embarrass her. But I could have written so much down in privacy later but it didn't occur to me caught up in my own grief and the care of my own two babies. She had fascinating memories. I'm trying to assemble them in a book. For instance, she recalled, in detail, the shock and horror of a barracks explosion in Castlemartyr, County Cork when she was a very small child. And contrary to many others, she remembered the kindness of the Black and Tans throwing her and her sisters English toffees as they rolled by her house in huge, loud trucks on their way to Youghal.

And then this line in the aforementioned book struck me:

"I am betraying you by dying, I am truly causing you to die....must we also put to death those who were still alive only through us."

And I think of living with my grandmother and grandfather for a while in that small village, and watching him, a labourer, set off for work in the morning and coming home at night with sausages in his back pocket (an enormous treat) and me helping him set the traps for the rabbits on the back acre, and tossing grain at my granny's chickens, and being kept up for all hours - don't tell yer mammy sitting on his lap while he and his pals set Ireland to rights and sang impossibly long olachons (laments) in the Sean Nos style. And one time, dancing with my granny while a fiddle and a harmonica and spoons and bones kept time. My granny was old to me then (in her late forties!)and I remember clapping my hands in glee at her agility on the flagstones.

I would be the only one remembering all of that (eldest grandchild)and I suppose, when I go, it'll be a second death for those, now long gone, who continue to live, and so very clearly, in my memory.

Light, Tunnel

There comes a day when one wakes up and bingo, no pain in the back. Today was such a day for me.

Interestingly enough, nearly 3 weeks later, the whole back of my hand is a rancid shading of purple and yellow from where the IV was inserted.

And yesterday, I catch these two brothers I know sneaking in their truck and trailer down my driveway and I wave at them to stop and sheepishly they admit they'd filled the rest of my barn with a truckload of wood and wanted it to be a surprise as I'd "been kind" to them last year. And when I questioned that, they said "think about it". I've never been one to keep a ledger. although I know of a few that do. Imagine that if you will. Tallying up your own favours and good deeds like money in the bank.

One of the loveliest letters I ever received was from my grandmother about a year after my mother died. In the letter she listed all the ways and kindnesses and gifts I'd given my mother in the last few years of her life. And I didn't remember much of anything I'd done or sent or given or written. I felt I hadn't done enough. But my mother had shared all these instances with her own mother and I was then re-gifted everything so magnificently in that precious letter that when I read it now I burst into tears.

It's best not to tally anything. Give and forget is my motto. Unless I am given. And that I don't forget.

Daughter handed me a huge bag of goodies yesterday.

Bits and bobs including her wonderful baking and cooking.

Among them is this magnificent oil lamp which thrills me to pieces. In so many ways.

How very dear she is.

Every time I light it I will think of her.

Bread and Butter

I love making bread. Irish soda bread, spelt bread, real honest to goodness yeast bread. As do some of you out there. With real butter. I reflect on a conversation a long time ago with my mother.

"There's a way you'll always know if someone cares about you," said my mother one time in the kitchen where she was preparing sandwiches.

"Tell me," I said, I was probably about twelve.

"You'll know by the way they butter your bread."

"What do you mean?"

"Someone who really cares about you will butter your bread right to the edges with no empty places anywhere, not even the edges."

And you know?

She was right.

Memoir

I started this memoir a few years back. A chap book (strictly for family) about my mother. Two of my family members have read it so far and are enthusiastic about it. I feel if I don't write all of it down and quickly, my memories will start to fade. Letters (she was a prodigious writer to me being an emigrant) have survived which I will include. And some photos, particularly of her outside of her maternal experience as mother to us, her children.

She had first hand experience as a young child of the horror of the Black and Tan era in Ireland and the blowing up (by the IRA in Rebel Cork) of the local barracks in her village.

She was put out to service at the age of twelve to the local merchant even though she had skipped a class at her village school as she was so bright. No opportunities then. For anyone.

Through this process of writing down her life I feel I am getting to know her all over again and with the distance of her passing, see her struggles and evolution more clearly.

There is never a day goes by when I don't think of her. She died far too young and I surmise she would only have gotten more interesting with age.

Eternal Mothers

4 generations - my grandmother, my mother (not too long before she died), myself and my daughter.


My elder daughter has been posting some gorgeous stuff on Facebook about mothers and daughters complete with photos (some of which I had taken, years ago)of mothers and daughters and grandmothers too.

It got me to thinking of mothers, spiritual mothers, sister mothers, friend mothers. The ones who've mothered me, the ones I try to mother.

For most of us, we never get over the loss of our mothers, the one who either birthed us or adopted us. We especially grieve when our own mothers die young, like mine did, and thus miss out on their own grandchildren. A sadness that never leaves us, try as we might.

Last night I caught my mother's tenderness in a black and white portrait of my daughter and her baby daughter I had taken many years ago. I had never noticed this before. Tears sprung to my eyes. Tears of joy. She lives on.

Apart from my two birth daughters, I have another daughter - a precious niece - who lost her mother while still a child. She now has her own daughter. This young niece is a delightful combination of her own mother, my deceased quick-witted sister-in-law, and my own fiery little mother. I am happy to see her own daughter is the head off her, as we say back home.

And most times I look in the mirror I see my maternal grandmother's face.

There's a powerful connection to the past in the faces of the young.

Eternal life is no lie.

The Box

The Box

Once a year
I open it.
And read.

I wish I could
Read through
Everything.

But try as I might.
Through tears
I can't.

It is all
I have of her
Now.

Her letters
To her emigrant
Daughter.

Full of news
Of homeland
Of life

On the lost
Side of the
Altantic.

Advice, concern
And most of all
Love.

Through her dying
One small triumph:
Baking.

Her words caress
On papery
Bits and bobs.

“You write well,”
“You're a good mother.”
“I miss you.”

“Thanks for the clothes”
“Write to Daddy”
“Another operation.”



“Please come home.”

Outrageous Sunset

After working this morning, I had lunch with a dear friend. She's 85 and just about adopted me when I moved here. As is the way when you don't have any familial baggage obstructing the view, we are right easy with each other, supportive, loving and interested in each other's lives without any preconceived notions or judgements.

We should all get our mothers when we're well broken in like a good leather: soft, gentle, respectful and never, ever irritated.

She's anxious for spring to come. She tells me she gets anxious that this might be the year she'll miss it. She tells me she'd never tell this stuff to her sons. They'd laugh at her, think her weird, might even start looking at where to put her. I tell her I understand. Totally. My dad would get antsy about spring too but I would get irritated with him. Not understanding. Now I do. She keeps gifting me in this way.

I cancelled dinner plans as the forecast was freezing rain which is just about the only condition I won't drive in and the dinner party was in town a good 75K drive.

I was coming down my stairs and glanced out the window - I never do miss a sunset - and this stunner was outside. It fair took my breath away and I thought to share it. Then I napped on the couch, safe and sound, in front of the fire.

A rather perfect day.

And now I'm a little jumpy for spring too.

A Love Story

I was asked recently to write a very short love story and I thought to share it with you all. Love comes in all shapes and sizes and sometimes we don't venerate love until it has been swallowed into the mists of time.
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Looking in the Wrong Direction

She stood there, leaning on her cane, smiling all the while, patting her granddaughters’ blonde heads, insisting she would see me in no time at all, my six months in London would fly, just wait and see. My dream, her dream for me, had come true: writer-in-residence at Bartford College.

I shepherded my children on to the flight, telling them to turn and wave, wave at their grandmother, but my eyes were on the east, anticipation seeping into my bones, my mother already a distant shape in the fog of my past.

It was four months to the day that the phone call came. Her ulcerated leg had been a fiction. The cancer even back then at the airport had been eating her alive from within.
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The Call

Healy Pass, Beara Peninsula, West Cork, Ireland.



I wrote a while ago about the massacre in the land of my maternal ancestors

This morning I was going about my busy day and a little lost in thought, I was gazing outside at the trees and the strongest feeling came over me and I encapsulated my thoughts in the following words:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unblinking

This morning
The eyes in the trees
Focussed clearly on me.

Begging my return
To my mother’s land.
Beara.

Barren, beatific.
Just like she left it
Yesterday.

And I will so.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hadn't planned a trip to Ireland but it seems like Ireland has planned a trip for me.

As I grow older, I respect intuition more and more. More of us should. It gets drowned in modern life, in the wanting of material stuff, the sidetracking into the inconsequential, the gathering, grooming and guarding of the meaningless.

Obviously, Beara has something to teach me. I need to show up for the lesson.

Good Boys

No, not good ol’ boys, or good little boys, I’m writing of good men that I’ve met in the last wee while here in this microcosm of life that is Newfoundland. And I’m particularly writing of men around their mothers. I don’t have sons so have never experienced this directly.

My mother was dead before her four sons had a chance to be men around her though I did get a small taste with my eldest brother who had this jocular almost flirtatious manner with her. Her face would light up when he walked into a room and he was the spit of her own father, which helped. But I’d watch him cajole money from her or attempt to get her to intercede with Dad or tell her she was the only special woman in his life as he dropped a kiss on her cheek. She was putty in his hands.

My series of husband/serious relationships men all had troubles of some kind with their mothers. In some cases they avoided their mothers, or would vocally castigate the relationship a la Dick and Tommy Smothers, saying that Mom always preferred a brother. And in one case a sister. For some, their mothers had not approved of their marital choices or their children. I had an odd set up with my own mother-in-law. She really didn’t like my husband very much (she definitely preferred his brother) and when he and I broke up she refused to have contact with him and befriended me completely. It might have helped that I had custody of her goddesses, the granddaughters.

My father adored his mother and she him, a fact that troubled my mother greatly and had them (she and her mother-in-law) set up a lose-lose scenario where her enemy became her mother-in-law and vice versa. My mother was never present when my father and his mother interacted but I observed his courtesy and courtly attention and was bemused by this previously hidden facet of my father.

I play cards with my fellow villagers here every week and our large group encompass all ages. Many mothers and their middle-aged sons play. It is their ‘evening out’ together and in most cases the wives/daughters-in-law are elsewhere.

It is a joy to be around the kind of energy these, in some cases, crusty old fishermen, exhibit towards their mothers – this courtly behaviour I had first observed in my own father. Retrieving their lacy shawls, linking them proudly into the village hall before and after the game. Fetching them little sandwiches and cups of tea.

“Are you alright there, now Mum?”

“Ah, you’re such a good boy. What would I do without my boy?”

And for one brief, shining moment you catch a glimpse of the freckled ten-year-old boy in the face of the sixty-plus year old wind-burned, bald fisherman, himself a grandfather.

Good boys.

The world needs more of them.

Me and Mother Church

There were many nudges along the way. Many ‘clicks’ – you know, that little ting, like a bicycle bell, a little alert that the world and more specifically Mother Church was not as sane and sanctified as all around me believed.

I think my first awakening, or more a little frisson, was at the Catholic Convent School I attended. We would go to mass in the convent chapel on a fairly regular basis. None of us were allowed near the sacred place, the altar. We couldn’t touch anything, the vestments, the altar cloths, the hardware, or go anywhere in front of the altar rail. The nuns, of course, were allowed to launder and steam-press the precious linens, and they did so in gratitude and humility, being the brides of Christ.

They couldn’t serve at Mass. But my ten-year-old brother could. He was an altar boy and had higher standing than any of the nuns and of course stood head and shoulders above us, the convent girls. In the eyes of Mother Church. My filthy, nasty, little brother was now on Godplanet while those of us sans penis were consigned to the trash heap outside the altar rails? Ting.

And then there was the matter of my mother’s last ‘confinement’ – a lovely old-fashioned word. She was forty-three. I was thirteen. On a blog entry a while ago, I wrote about an experience she had with a ‘young pup’ of a priest, whilst in this pregnancy:
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A Bit of Mutton


My mother told me many things,
When breathing deeply of the morning air
As we walked together to First Friday Mass
So our souls would be saved at the last minute.
No matter what we did in between.

Our Lord had promised this, you see.
If we made nine of these First Fridays in a row.
And we did. I don’t remember the masses
I remember our walking and talking
And how we would breathe together.

She would swing her arms and look to the still
Early sky. Breathe, she said, breathe.
It’s good to get the early oxygen into the blood
And leave all the men in the house behind us.
It’s a change for us women to be alone together.


She believed and carried me on the wings
Of her belief in Our Lady first and Our Lord second.
Until the great man behind the red curtain
Told her it was a sin to eat meat on Friday
Even though she was expecting her last.

She was forty-three then, saying she was thirty-nine
And had an irresistible craving for the meat.
She was outraged she told me, that this
Young pup of a priest could tell an aging
Expecting woman her soul was damned.

Forever, she said to me, in spite of the
Nine First Fridays, for eating a piece of meat.
She would burn in hell for all eternity.
How could he know, this young pup,
Of varicose veins and a tired swollen body?

Life is a terrible mystery, girleen,
I don’t know what to make of it at all
I just can’t make sense of him telling me that,
Me old enough to be his mother, that I was
Now damned and going to hell for a bit of mutton?

I got up and walked out of that box so I did.
I did not want the penance or the forgiveness
For this great sin. I walked all the way out the door
And came straight home this past Saturday
And I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------But that wasn’t the end of it in this pregnancy for my mother. In those days, in Ireland, when women had difficulty in childbirth, when labour ceased or there was fetal distress or a myriad other challenges, and the woman happened to be Catholic, a Caesarian section was forbidden by the Catholic Church in collusion with the College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in Dublin. The procedure approved was the Symphysiotomy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphysiotomy. See the section on Irish women.

My mother had horrific side effects after the birth of my sister. Her pelvis was shattered and she was unable to sit, walk or stand for six weeks. My sister had to be bottle-fed and my brothers and I took turns with this as my mother was unable to sit and hold her baby and my father was of the era where his masculinity would be suspect if he was ever caught holding an infant. After several months of agony my mother had another operation which involved breaking her pelvis yet again so that this time the bones would knit correctly. She never fully recovered and was not too long for the world afterwards.

When my sister was nine months old and my mother had the use of her legs again, she asked me to accompany her for a special service in the church. Women only and the holy priest officiating.

Childbirth was considered ‘unclean’ then so she had to be cleansed from her unholy act in a ritual called ‘Churching’ – now obsolete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churching_of_women

And I could go on, but as this is far too long as it is, I’ll stop and continue some other time.

So ask me again why I no longer believe in The Great Invisible Cloud Being?