Summertime Birthdays, Tradition, and Pickle Juice

I stayed up late on the eve of his birthday, getting his present out of its clever hiding spot, wrapping it, pulling out ingredients and mixing up sourdough waffle batter, setting a special breakfast place at the kitchen table for the birthday boy, just like my mother used to. The warm June air was spilling in through the open window, bringing with it the scents of early summer evenings - the flowers, the dogwood, the freshly mown grass.

I thought of my mother, mostly.  I’m the same age now that she was the day I was born, and I wonder if she felt then as I do now; if her knee ached climbing the stairs with a toddler on her hip, whether she noticed stray gray hairs and lines slowly appearing in the same places, and if she searched the slightly new face in the mirror, wondering where had the twenty-year old gone who used to smile back at her, yet liking the reflection of her life in these changing features. 

My mother always made birthdays special. My favorite part was breakfast, because it was the first moment of the day. I would get out of bed, the golden summer light streaming through my basement bedroom, and too excited to get dressed, I’d climb the staircase in my pajamas. In the kitchen, where the small table was pushed against the windows, my mother would have set a special birthday breakfast place: a pretty napkin under my plate, flowery silverware, a card, a gift, and a glass with a bloom or two from the garden. I would eat my bowl of cereal while the sun rose higher before me, admire how the light cut through the flower’s water, sparkling on the table, and wiggle with anticipation for the day to come. From that moment forward, I would feel that every minute of that day was a good one, meant just for me. 

I try to recreate that feeling for my own children by imitating my mother’s tradition as best I can. What I didn’t realize was how much work actually went into making a birthday breakfast look so nice, but I’m sure it helped that she is an excellent housekeeper. I, on the other hand, am not naturally inclined towards keeping a very tidy house, which is how I found myself up until midnight on the night before my son’s birthday, trying to make things as nice as I remember my mother keeping them, hoping that he would treasure these mornings like I did. I thought of her as I cleaned a smear of pickle juice off the glass door, and as I scrubbed the tines of a fork in the sink. The scrubbing, the tidying, the laying of special tableware: my mother made this seemingly small act of love year after year, for each of her four children, and we all felt it.

I wonder if my grandmother had the same breakfast table tradition. I texted my dad to ask him to question her about that, but no, this was something she came up with on her own. I wonder if my boys will do this for their own children. 

It’s one big cycle, isn’t it? Parenthood, family traditions, cultures. Mothers do for children, who do for their children, and so on. Staying up until midnight to make that first moment in the morning feel like a hug, wiping smears from a window to make the morning sun sparkle over a bowl of cereal. Generation after generation, on and on it goes.  It’s so beautiful to be a part of it.  

On George Floyd

I have written hundreds of words on the murder of George Floyd, and I don’t feel like I’m saying anything new or more worthy of attention than what’s already been written. 

It is an injustice, it is heart-hollowingly awful, and I am so, so sorry that this happened, and that it is something that black people live with as a very real possibility in their own lives.  

His criminal past does not justify his murder. His intoxication does not justify his murder. His maybe/maybe not knowingly counterfeit bill does not justify it, either. 

I hope that I can help make this kind of thing an impossibility in the future, in the ways I raise my children, in the ways I listen and speak and vote and react. 

Mostly, I can pray, and the prayer that gives me very clear direction on this is from St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, let me sow pardon.

Where there is doubt, let me sow faith.

Where there is despair, let me sow hope.

Where there is darkness, let me sow light.

And where there is sadness, let me sow joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console.

To be understood as to understand.

To be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. 

Distant Connections

Fuchsia blooms all over West Cork - in the hedgerows, the ditches, gardens, and in the windows of long-abandoned houses. When I saw one in bloom at the garden centre here three years ago, the only one, I had to have it. Now it winters in a large south-facing window in North Dakota, and this week, it flowered. Holding a blossom in my hand, I could be the teenager I was, standing in the bohereen by my parents’ house on the hill by the Atlantic, the sea wind blasting as hard as it does on the prairie. I thought I might mash a blossom in my palm and taste its sweet nectar, but the blooms I have are too few, and too precious, for that. 

Real connections with Ireland have been few and far between over the past few years, and I’ve no idea when I’ll taste coarse brown bread again, see a pint of Murphy’s poured properly, or when my ears will be filled with the Cork sing-song that I used to hear all day, every day. It’s almost as if that life were a prolonged daydream to me now, it’s so far away and so different from what I’m living today. 

But since the COVID-19 pandemic began, there is a new connection (and an old one) and it’s not just the fuchsia blossom.This connection is with a group of cousins who meet via Zoom every evening to say the Rosary together to pray for the end of the pandemic.  The times that I can join in, the family Rosary is providing its own miracle for me, though it’s not the one we’re praying for. It’s restoring a bit of my sense of still being connected, of belonging to that place that was home for so many years. 

The cousins do not recite the prayers in unison, but each at their own pace after the first portion of each Our Father or Hail Mary is recited by whoever is leading that decade, voices and words criss-crossing over one another. Like the responses at Mass in Ireland, everyone starting at the same place and ending whenever they end, never at the same time as anyone else,  then waiting for the next part to pick up again, and all off at their own pace once more. It reminds me of how we go to communion or board buses in Ireland - in a big rush, all together, somehow orderly but without order. Oh, I miss it.

Then, afterward, a sing-song. I close my eyes now and think of the screen in front of me filled with familiar faces chatting away, laughing, smiling, and singing in my mother’s accent. Someone got out a squeezebox, a tin whistle was fetched, an organ played off-screen, and one cousin even broke out a stage mic with his guitar. After the rest had finished renditions of Raglan Road, The Wild Colonial Boy, The Rare Auld Times, and Spancil Hill, my American dad sang ‘Sioux City Sue’ and kicked off a spate of American tunes. It always made me giggle, being from the Dakotas and never knowing all the lyrics to the Black Hills of Dakota, while everyone I knew in Ireland learnt it word for word at school - it was no surprise when that broke out too, along with Home on the Range and even a Dolly Parton song. So much fun squeezed into a conference call. And then it was over, and I was back in my prairie kitchen, but my heart was full from such a real and close connection to people and a land that I love. 

Having a whole world disappear from in front of your eyes and be replaced with a different one - every emigrant knows that too well, and now everyone knows it, at least a little bit. What a gift it is that we live in an age when we can see those people and hear the voices, prayers, laughter, and songs that remind us of who we are.

A COVID-19 Spring, Featuring Beauty, Hope, and Ticks

Each year, Spring comes tiptoeing in the door, then jumps in fully with both feet, often dragging Summer in close behind. We on the northern plains know better than to trust it. We know that Spring has left the door open wide and might just as easily hop back out, giving Winter enough room to throw around a blizzard or two in a show of strength, or perhaps to blow frosty air over the budding trees, dust the fledgeling grasses and shoots with snow, and leave us all muttering, even though it’s exactly what we know to expect.

However, when warm weather does come back for good, we all rejoice, knowing the door has been firmly shut against the frigid air, and that’s the moment when two things happen: the ticks come out, and the turkey buzzards return.

When I lived in Ireland, the natural world in North America was a topic that inspired awe and trepidation. Whirling wind storms that could lift a house from its foundation, snakes, venomous spiders, tiny insects that feed off blood and leave disease in its wake, blizzards, bears, bison, mountain lions: all horrifying or fascinating, or both, depending on who was interested. Ireland, in contrast, felt as safe as a feather bed wherever nature was concerned. The worst things a person could encounter were a badger or a slick mountain side. Now, I don’t want to encounter a testy badger or get washed out to sea by a freak wave, but the lack of venom and man-eaters made a walk in the country pretty nice.

But back to the main concern. Yesterday, I found three ticks on me, so it must really be Spring this time. One was crawling up my pant leg, one was navigating the hairline at the nape of my neck, and one was probably shaken from my clothes before it landed in the steep basin of the bathroom sink.

They’re unwelcome little buggers. They show up just when the weather gets nice enough to stretch out on the grass and let the sun warm your poor, winter-worn limbs. They’re like sand in your bathing suit, grit in your picnic sandwich: just there to make a nice time not all that nice after all. If they serve a purpose, I have yet to learn it.

Turkey buzzards are similarly unwelcome, in my mind. Bulky, hunched creatures, hulking in gangs at the tree tops, They float silently over the houses, scouring the ground below for dead rabbits, squirrels, birds; finishing off the evidence of a harsh winter or a skilled house cat. My neighbor, a wildlife biologist, calls buzzards “nature’s vacuum cleaners,” and “super cool.” I’m sure they are, and I know they fit beautifully into their ecological niche, but dang are they creepy. Perching in our neighbor’s tree, they stretch out their huge black wings in the sun and stay like that, looking unsettlingly like vampires about to swoop in for the kill. My children love them. The toddler calls them “birdies.” Hmm. I know they won’t harm people, but I still get an urge to scoot the little ones indoors whenever they start their ghoulish circling (the buzzards, not the children.)

Nevertheless, here they are, the ticks and the buzzards, harbingers of change, whose presence announces joyfully to the world that the deep days of winter are behind us, at long last. They might as well be prancing through meadows, calling out that it’s spring! It’s spring! It’s spring! And if you don’t mind, they’d like to take a few sips of your blood, or chow down on some half mummified bunny leg from your yard while doing a fantastic Dracula impression.

I know there’s a COVID-19 thought about hope in here somewhere. Just give me a minute - I haven’t had my coffee yet.

…a minute…

…coffee…

Ok, here’s what I’ve got. On the northern plains, even in the twenty first century, we are often at the mercy of nature. We are used to waiting, months at a time, for the break that gives us our best days. We are a people who endure with hope, and a people adept at embracing the moment when good things finally come our way. We have to be! The dang climate won’t let us be otherwise. Northern plains people have (generally speaking) an astounding drive to get out and enjoy themselves, to tidy a flower bed like nobody's business, to produce a bounty of canned salsa from a patch of soil, to lounge on a boat and soak in every ounce of warmth that comes their way. Summer is our goal, a land of milk and honey that we have crossed the desert to enjoy. But there are a few speed bumps that nature provides us in the forms of critters mentioned here, and we have to negotiate those, too.

COVID-19 isn’t just a speed bump on the way to summer. This is more like a mountain. We’ve been joking that North Dakota people are great at social distancing and isolation anyhow, but who thought that this year would provide so much of it? The backyard barbecues, pool parties, neighborhood kids knocking on the door - there’s so much about spring and summer that gets us out of ourselves and into community: life-giving, heart-filling community. It seems unjust that we might miss it all this year. It’s starting to feel like we probably will, a winter that will last far too long.

Ticks and buzzards, those bearers of disease and flying momento mori that show up each year have always shown up. This year, if they decided to stay indefinitely, I wouldn’t be shocked; 2020 has been that way. But they won’t. They don’t. 

Eventually we will be able to wander among the hills and grasses without considering Lyme disease. We’ll say, ‘I’m glad they’re gone,” and “Isn’t this nice?” It will feel so good. (Except for the mosquitos, but I don’t want to think about them just yet.)

The COVID-19 curve will, God willing, eventually flatten. A vaccine will be developed. Some day we will be able to gather together again, to embrace our friends and family, kneel side by side in prayer, and to use the same ketchup bottle as everyone else at a party, willy-nilly, as if touching it couldn’t kill someone! What carefree abandon! What ease. What everyday, ordinary joy.

We will make it through this wintery solitude and past the hulking shadows that may remain afterward. Such good things are coming again and, oh, won’t it be wonderful when they do?



Note: This blog post doesn't feel finished, but here we go anyway 

Dispatch from the Quarantine

Quarantine, Day Fifteen. I know because I checked the calendar. It's not always apparent anymore what day it is and this is starting to feel a bit like childhood summers did, one day melting into the next. Now that April 30th is being thrown around as a date when all of this will perhaps-maybe-possibly end, I imagine there will be a lot of melting. But I did know that yesterday was Sunday and when evening came, I still had a notion knocking around that we would have to be ready in the morning to head out the door; that I'd have to make sure there were clean work trousers for my husband, clean school uniforms, a snack, and a washed and filled water bottle for our little guy. But I didn't need to do those things, and the realization of this came not with a jolt, but with a wash of relief.

Relief!

Relief seems almost wrong to feel, given what's happening. It's the same relief of realizing that I don't have to face meeting up with someone I have difficulty with, that I don't have to steel myself to face and respond to pointed criticisms respectfully - not at all, and possibly not for a long time.

Maybe isolation isn't all bad.

And yet I feel like I should cringe at that thought, because there's something tone-deaf about it, when health care workers who are friends of mine don't get to choose isolation, when single people, hospital patients, prisoners, and the elderly are forced into isolation and into its subsequent loneliness. Lucky me, that mine can contain a certain amount of relief. Perhaps being sheltered from this disease, and from the world, is something that my spirit has needed. After all, here I am, writing a blog post after nearly eighteen months without having even peeked at this particular corner of the internet.

There's some comfort in this isolation, too. I feel safe at home. I feel confident that my parents are safe from the virus, tucked up in their own cozy place a mile away. And our home is a blessing that we didn't realize the expanse of until we had to be here indefinitely. On the first day of school closures in our district, my husband and I stood looking out our back door and counted the ways we were grateful to be here. At our house, we have a spacious back yard with interesting nooks and crannies for the children to explore, ample sunlit space for our vegetable garden, low-sweeping tree canopies that can serve as a hiding spot or a fort, rock walls to scale, and three friendly families on each side of the fence. We have a pretty reliable income, and my husband can work from home - again, safely. We even have a secluded room (with a child-proof lock!) where he can go to work in peace, complete with a lovely view of spring creeping across the yard. We are so blessed in all of this. We are blessed that this virus arrived not in the deep freeze of January, but in the surprising warmth of an early prairie spring. We are blessed to live in a place that doesn't have a huge population, where we won't encounter quite as many people when we do have to venture out for food or exercise.

Blessing may be an odd word to use here in light of the big picture of this new virus and the havoc that it is wreaking on economies, cities, and lives, but not if you are a Christian. We are taught from the very start to look for God in all things, to lean on him in times of adversity, to literally put our trust in the Lord. I am trying to remember that this is it, the moment to trust.  I'm not saying that I have been doing it consistently. Day Three of the quarantine is when reality set in and I began to gain a picture of what we are facing and what might come of it. Reader, I had to sit on our staircase while the children watched a movie and take deep, slow breaths in order to stop the tears, to calm my beating heart and my shallow, panicked breathing that had come about from all of the 'what ifs' and 'how wills' that had been assaulting me all morning. This is a scary time, and in many moments over the past two weeks, I have not been trusting in Christ. The days that I have placed in His hands have, conversely, been wonderfully calm, ordered days. He will carry me through this if I let Him.  If I let Him. I mean, God is good all the time, right? Even now, even in this, He is good.

Last thought, I promise. Does anyone else feel like we are living the answer to the Litany of Humility? This prayer kept popping up in my facebook groups over the past few months and into my music streaming and oh look, this is life today.

Take care, trust in God, and wash your hands.

#MeToo

I mean, who hasn't been groped, grabbed, or intimidated, right? It almost feels embarrassing to pull up old stories and share them because I feel that, well, it's something that all women (and probably lots of men) have to deal with in their lives, and we all just get on with things. But this week, thanks to many brave souls who are speaking out against Harvey Weinstein, it is being talked about, as it should be. So here are my stories, even though this feels a bit attention-seeking (cringe). I hope it doesn't read that way.

The first time, I was a fifteen year old girl, hopping into a car with some of my friends. An older guy was in the back seat, squeezed between me and one of my girlfriends. I didn't know him, a friend of somebody's sort-of boyfriend. He was probably nineteen or twenty. Not half a block from my house, he reached over and stuck his hand in my crotch, jiggling it. When I slapped his hand away, he laughed and said 'God, what a virgin!' As if that were something to laugh about. As if that were something to be ashamed of. Everybody in the car laughed. I felt myself turn scarlet, at the violation and the humiliation, crossed my arms and legs away from him and made myself as small as possible. That was the first.

Then there was the boy in school who came back from the bathroom into sophomore algebra class and stage whispered 'I just peed on my hand' while he wiped his wet fingers across my cheek. That same boy who would put his foot in my backside as I crouched in front of my locker to retrieve books, who kicked my chair whenever he walked by. Who supposedly liked me.

Then there were the countless - really countless - times that my body was grabbed in pubs and nightclubs in Ireland as an older teen and a twenty-something. It usually went something like this: standing in a crowded spot, queueing for a drink at the bar, and I would feel a hand on my backside, sometimes in between my legs. I would spin around, angry and ready with some harsh words, and two or three lads would be behind me, acting like nothing was happening, or point at each other, faces serious, feigning an apology for the other's behavior. What do you do in that situation? Give a dirty look, tell the to eff off - those seemed to be the only possibilities, since I couldn't tell who had touched me. Or just ignore them, which is what I usually did.

Then there was the time I stood on the south end of O'Connell Street in Dublin, waiting for the bus to college. It was early in the day, and I had an assignment to turn in at ten in a seminar. I remember standing at the end of the bus queue, watching down the street for the bus, and suddenly being violently spun around by the elbow, a man's angry face blurring towards mine, and then warm spit all over my face. He was gone, dissolved into the crowd of pedestrians as quickly as he'd appeared. Two people in the queue turned towards me - a man and a woman. I stood there, shocked, saliva covering my glasses and cheek. The man started quizzing me - Who was that? What did you do to him? No, surely you know him. Why would he spit in your face if you hadn't done something to him? He probably heard your accent, that's it. Lots of people don't like Americans, you know.

I sputtered back answers. But I didn't know him. I hadn't been talking, I'd been standing silently, waiting for a bus. I started to cry as the angry man's warm spit ran towards my mouth. Could I have a tissue, somebody, please? The man in front of me handed me a tissue, tutted, and turned his back; the woman just stared. I didn't know what to do. Call my boyfriend? Go to the cops? Get on the bus and go to class? I got on the bus because, you know, that assignment was due at ten, and if nobody in the queue believed me, why would the cops? Once on campus, I bolted off the bus to the nearest bathroom and scrubbed my face and glasses with hand soap for what felt like ages. My skin was cracking with the dryness for the rest of the day. Yeah, it wasn't a sexual assault, but it happened to me because I was a young woman, of that I am sure, and disbelieved because of that too.

That summer I was in Rome, visiting a friend, when I went to make a phone call in one of those international telephone shops, tiny phone booths lining one wall. I was the only customer. When I hung up the phone, the man who had been behind the counter was spreadeagled inches behind me in the booth, completely blocking my way, smirking. My heart stopped. I asked him to move in very poor Italian, and when he didn't, I shoved him out of the way. He laughed as I ran from the shop.

Then there was the time that still makes me shake, and I hate talking about it. Thirteen years later, safe at home, happily married and expecting my second child, I can feel my hands starting to tremble as I write this. It was the next year, my final year of college, and I was home in Cork for Easter break. It was a beautiful weekend afternoon, sunny and warm, and I went out for a run. My parents lived in a small rural community outside of the city, and like most rural parts of Ireland, the roads were lined with high stone walls covered in brambles. A mile or so from the house, I turned up a hill by the parish church. That particular road was long and steep, usually very quiet, with no houses or other roads intersecting it on either side. A battered-looking white panel van with no windows in the back came down the hill towards me and I heard it stop after it passed. I heard a sliding door bang open. I looked around and three men were running towards me. I kept running. I remember that my only reaction was confusion, thinking 'this is weird, what are they doing?' Then a car came down the hill and slowed - I looked again and saw the van tearing off. I kept going. The car looped back; a young couple inside, clearly shaken, insisted on giving me a lift home. They said they had seen the men chasing me, stopped to help, and the men legged it back to the van and drove off. The couple followed the van for a bit and noticed that its front and back number plates didn't match. Of course, I then had to ask myself if I should trust these people enough to get in their car. I sort of had to.

When I got home, my older brother was the only one there. I remember how he held me once the story spilled out. He sat with me while I called the local Garda station (the Irish police). The guard I spoke with laughed and said 'ah sure, twas probably just a few lads pulling a prank.' Lads in their forties. Lads who I didn't know. My parents came home a few minutes later, and I remember how upset my dad was when I told him about the guard's response. He phoned a reporter who lived nearby, who then rang the station to ask a few questions. Within a half hour, the sergeant was at my parents' front door, very serious, and ready to interview me.

I have asked myself many, many times over the years if those men were really coming after me, if they were truly going to bundle me into the van and do horrible things, and I've come up with some pretty good alternate explanations of why anyone would chase a young woman up an empty rural road. I still don't particularly want to believe the most obvious conclusion myself.

But nothing had happened to me. Thank God. I wasn't raped. I wasn't kidnapped. Far, far worse actually happens to others. But beyond the incidents themselves, the things that stand out to me, that make me feel sick with emotion are the times when I wasn't believed. I can't imagine what it's like for people who are raped and who are then questioned, laughed at, disbelieved, accused. The humiliation. The frustration. The fury.

Something I really, really need to keep saying these days

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, let me sow pardon
Where there is doubt, let me sow faith
Where there is despair, let me sow hope
Where there is darkness, let me sow light
And where there is sadness, let me sow joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love.
For it is giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Scrape Her Off the Pavement, Lads!

Today is my sweet sister's birthday. Ten years ago today, we were on the lash in Galway city: my sister, our younger brother, and myself. On. The. LASH. It was raining, but not hard, and it was a weekend night anyhow, so nobody cared. We were dressed up, actual dresses, fancy looking shoes that weren't made for walking far in, sparkly purses, the lot. The theme for the evening, however, was 'Scrape Her Off the Pavement, Lads!' Didn't really match the outfits, did it? We shouted the theme as often as we could, and nobody paid attention, which is one of the best things about living in Ireland. Eventually, many pints in, my brother ran away from us towards the end of Cross Street and disappeared around the corner. He was fairly slippery, sneaking off when we were turned in the opposite direction. He didn't come back for a while, but when he did, he had a beer smirk on his face, cradling a paper tray full of chips and curry. Bastard. Then he shared. Ah, lovely brother. We perched on a shop window ledge next to half full pint glasses and ate. Messy and silly and carefree.

It was my last night out in Galway, really. My last night in Ireland before emigrating. Re-emigrating? De-emigrating? What is it when you move back to the place you were born, but you were born to an immigrant anyhow? The gray spaces are there, for sure. What I remember of that night is the laughter, the looseness of all of us, the rain falling on our faces and necks, strangely not cold for the north Atlantic, and the joy of shouting out into the street full of people out enjoying the misty summer night.

Now my sister is married, the mother of three teeny children with rosy cheeks and ready laughs. We never did have to scrape her off the pavement, even though that was the goal that night. It's probably for the best.

When your kid is sick, you will get sick.

This is us right now. Presenting at work? Terrible cough! Packing for a conference? Pink eye! Fingers crossed that thirteen days of a ridiculous, hanging-on, day after day, hack-up-a-tonsil cold paired with three, yes, three cases of pink eye is almost gone.

Having lived and worked in North Dakota for several years, missing consecutive days of work feels like a cardinal sin. This is a place where the ultimate compliment a person can receive is to be called 'a hard worker,' so missing work hints at a character flaw.

But really, what can you do? Spread the wealth and make everyone else miserable? That's not much of a character strength, in my opinion. So blankets, couch, medicine and tea it is.

Now go wash your hands, this post is probably contagious.

Shameful Saturday

There's nothing quite like waking up at 5 am, finding oneself still fully clothed in yesterday's work outfit, laying face to face with an infant. Oops, I did it again.

Also, if it's true that the state of your home is a reflection of your inner self, I'm the emotional equivalent of pile of junk mail and unfolded laundry, with baby toys and wet towels scattered around the perimeter.

That reminds me of a guided meditation we had to do in secondary school years ago. All of us gerruls jammed into the refrectory at the convent, a sea of green wool jumpers and knobbly knees. It was meant to be a treat - a break from the stress of exam prep. We were told to close our eyes and imagine ourselves walking in the woods. Along our way, we were told to find some kind of drinking container, and an animal. It was up to us to decide what those items looked like.

The drinking container I imagined was a partly-crushed plastic water bottle with dirt mushed into the creases, and I could see that there was some grit rattling around inside in the small amount of water that was left. I didn't imagine myself drinking from the bottle (would YOU?) The animal I pictured was a deer.  I didn't pet it because I could see that it had ticks crawling on its body. Realistic, right?

At the end, we were asked to share what we'd imagined. The other girls had not grown up in North Dakota. Irish-born, they had spent their childhoods frolicking on blue flag beaches and mixing with organic farmers from Germany, so they had imagined beautiful stone bowls and chalices filled with spring water, noble elk pausing in the distance or remarkably tame horses who came up for a nuzzle.

Heh. Cute. Then the home ec. teacher shared the meaning of our imagined objects. I think you know how this is going to go... The animal represented how one imagined oneself, and the drinking container was how one envisioned love.

Ah. Righteo, then.

With that, it's Saturday. The sun is shining, and the baby is yodeling at his father. Bring on the coffee!

a toddlery morning

I don't know that there's anything more joyful than running in a big field with a toddler. Little kids have the best grins, the biggest laughs, and the most willingness to have a rollicking fun time. And when they fall down, they laugh harder.

You can probably guess how I spent part of my morning. It was great.

Fall has been my favorite season for a long time, and being able to scamper outside through piles of leaves with a laughing munchkin makes it a zillion times better.

The crickets are singing.

The sound of crickets singing in the early evening is one of the most comforting things, like the smell of warmed honey or peony roses in summer. It's the sound of childhood nights: the window cracked open, a mercifully cool breeze finally starting to blow, clean feet tucked under the sheets, their day's worth of dust washed off in the old claw foot tub, and comic books pushed down the side of the mattress.

It's a sound I didn't hear for many years while living abroad. Another little thing in life to enjoy.

Goodbye, tree.

The box elder is coming down.

After a series of storms that have left its limbs broken, hanging and scraggly, the 50 foot box elder tree that hides between our garage and the neighbor's fence is coming down.

Sure, last year it dropped thousands of seeds all over our yard and clogged the gutters. Ok, the summer before that, it drew thousands of box elder bugs to our yard, and an entire side of the house turned red and black, blanketed with their soft little bodies. And, all right, some of them snuck in the windows. Yeah, and the whole thing is probably a hazard, ready to clunk down on the garage in the next wild windstorm that races through town.

It's just that it's such a pity to cut down a tree, especially on the prairie.

As a friend said the other night: the best times to plant a tree are 40 years ago, and today. It's time to think about planting.

On Kim Kardashian, pregnancy and image

Well, I sent this in to the local paper tonight. Let's see if they print it...

An Open Letter to Local Grocery Stores:

Let me start by saying that I’m 8 ½ months pregnant, which means that like many women in this stage in their pregnancy, I bear a strong resemblance to a July watermelon.

Sunday evening I stopped by Dan’s Supermarket in Arrowhead shopping center to pick up a few things for dinner. As I waited in line to pay for my groceries, I passed the time by scanning the magazine covers stacked next to the gum and chocolate bars. That’s when I saw the cover of In Touch Weekly magazine. This particular magazine featured a photo of a pregnant Kim Kardashian, dressed in a tank top and unzipped jacket. There was a blown up detail of her armpit. To be more specific, there was a blown up detail of a skin fold in her semi-exposed armpit, labeled with a supposed quote from Kim herself: ‘even my armpits are fat!’ The cover’s main text reads: “I’ll never be sexy again. Desperate after gaining 6 lbs in a week, pregnant Kim eyes an extreme liquid diet & resorts to even more drastic measures. PLUS her obsession with her teen sister’s body.”

Well now. There’s an unexpected punch in the gut for a pregnant lady.  

Here are the messages anyone could take away just from that magazine cover alone, without even looking at the story inside: Looks always trump health. It’s ok to scrutinize and criticize women’s bodies, no matter what their circumstances may be. Gaining weight during pregnancy is not acceptable. Fat, or even enlarged breast tissue in the armpit area is not ok when the body is preparing to lactate. Liquid diets are something a pregnant woman could reasonably consider in order to avoid gaining weight, never mind the effect on her growing child. Pregnant adult women should want to resemble teenage girls. Bottom line: Pregnant women should be ashamed of their changing bodies.

One could argue that the magazine is taking more of a ‘look at this wacky celebrity’s approach to pregnancy’ but even so, those negative messages are still there, blaring out from the newsstand.

Of course, this is just a symptom of the wider problem: the media’s treatment of women’s bodies, pregnant or not. We are to look a certain way, and our health and happiness is secondary to our looks. We are disgusting if we don’t fit the media’s mold, even when our bodies are nourishing a baby.

Here’s what I have to ask the grocery stores in Bismarck: why on earth do you stock offensive and damaging material in almost every checkout aisle? By displaying materials like this week’s issue of In Touch Weekly, your businesses are actively helping to distort the general public’s view of women, women’s view of themselves, and little girls’ expectations of their future looks. Let’s not forget pubescent and teenage girls, with their constant self-scrutiny. Is it kind to push these messages on them when all they came in for is a bag of oranges? At the very least, surely encouraging body dysmorphia and the eating disorders that come with it are bad for the food business.

Wouldn’t a special checkout counter with these magazines be more appropriate? Just like the cigarette counter, people who want to expose themselves to such nincompoopery could go out of their way to do so, leaving the rest of us to peacefully contemplate what kind of gum we want.

Even better, why not stop participating completely? Why not refuse to stock magazines that feature such ridiculous covers? If not for me (after all, I'm perfectly happy with my current watermelon shape), then for the legions of little girls who go home from the grocery store check-out line questioning the value of their own round little bodies.

On Women's Little Christmas, and why it's a brilliant idea.

Today is January 6^th, Epiphany, Three Kings Day: the last day of Christmas. And the twelfth day of Christmas. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night? A play widely believed to have been written for tonight, the twelfth night of Christmas. Twelve drummers drumming? Today. We keep our Christmas tree, nativity scene, and decorations up until today is over… because it’s still Christmas and not, as the shops would have us believe, the start of the run-up to Valentine’s Day. Yes, I’m clinging, but what harm?

There’s a special aspect to today that I miss, which to my knowledge is only celebrated in the southwest of Ireland, especially in Cork and Kerry: Women’s Little Christmas (also known as Little Christmas, Little Women’s Christmas… you might get the idea). Today makes me think of the way women are celebrated on January 6^th in that part of the world: with free drinks and the teeniest of mince pies! What else could a girl want on a cold day?

So what’s the story? Well, you know that your mammy and your granny probably have always been in charge of the real Christmas goings-on every year, yes? The shopping, the wrapping, the hint-throwing, and the stocking stuffing, not to mention the cooking. All usually handled by a woman. What's more, they probably did something special (like feed you and everyone else within sight) for St Stephen’s Day, for New Years’ Eve, for New Years’ Day, etc etc etc.

Poor mammies, they’re probably exhausted by now with all the excitement of the Christmas season.

And so, the idea is to give the ladettes a day to put their feet up, have a day out, and get a few free drinks in.

I don’t need to convince you of what a fabulous idea this is.

Here was my experience of Women’s Little Christmas in years past: gaggles of women out on the streets, going from pub to pub. Inside, if there’s a fireplace, there is usually a fire roaring. The landlord pops over with some hot whiskeys, hot ports or hot brandies and a plate of mince pies for the gerruls – at no cost. It's a Little Christmas miracle! When you’ve finished, you either stay to have another one (which you have to pay for yourself, come on now) or abandon this lovely pub for another lovely pub, similarly full of women, firelight and warmth, and probably with a different beverage on offer.

And here’s what I say: like the Spanish siesta, the north islander eleven o’clock snack and four o’clock tea time, what a great idea. Why not bring it here? Americans could use more things to celebrate, and believe me, once you’re used to something (like elevenses, by golly) it’s hard to give it up completely.

So in an attempt to instate Women’s Little Christmas on the prairie, I’ll be swinging by the mammy’s with a bottle of port and a plate of cookies. Kettle on, oranges sliced, and we’ll be right as rain.

Happy Women's Christmas, laydeez. Go on, you'll have another one.

Salthill Prom, Seamus Heaney, and a poem.

It's only been an age since I last posted. Ah well.

Our city is wearing snow well this year, and just in time for Christmas, for everything resembles a Christmas card. The trees are coated in frost, the lawns are thick with white, and the moon shines brightly enough to illuminate a bedroom at night.

In between laundry and wrapping birthday presents and all the other things 'to do' this morning, I found a pocket sized notebook from my post-college days, when I was teaching in Galway. There are a few pages where I wrote about seeing Seamus Heaney do a reading on Salthill beach in 2006. It goes a little something like this:

Sun beating down, casting short shadows on the pavement. Jackets off, sweaters around the waist. A gathered crowd at Ladies' Beach. Schoolchildren form a sea of green uniforms.

A gentle breeze shifts the sands. An elderly man kicks a red football toward the brown seaweed scattered shore - his grandchild runs barefoot after it.

And Seamus Heaney, standing on the daisy studded verge between the strand and the street, began to speak of a poem written on the Salthill Prom: "the golden moment of 1965 when I saw them come out of the water, gleaming." Girls Bathing, Galway, 1965.

Wind blows strands of hair, strollers pause, hypnotized; dog leashes lay in the sand. Bicycles park along the wooden benches that run the length of the beach. Dogs lay on the sun-warmed pavement while some go on interrupted by poetry - by the poet. Schoolkids turn cartwheels in the grass, and photographers snap pictures.

Afterward, crowds gathered to get him to sign books, pages struggling in the Atlantic breeze. People wait patiently for his attention - a handshake, a scribble, a nod.

On being Pro-Life, all the way, in an election year.

Halloween has come and gone. Two trick or treaters, the only ones who came to our house, were given generous portions of candy. The rest... is mine. 

Meanwhile, we are counting down the days to the election. Some people are sick to the teeth of political ads, others can't get enough out of a good debate with friends and family, even more moan about the undecided voters, while some 'undecided' voters declare themselves independents who have long since decided, thank you very much.

Ah, polarity. It is usually strong, but right around now the strength that people feel their convictions is staggering, sometimes. It always comes as a surprise when friends open their mouths to chastise one another based on differing political opinion. 

This week the New York Times published an editorial called Why I'm Pro-Life, and it has been on my mind since I read it a few days ago. You may have seen it, it's made the rounds on Facebook, often posted by people who would not normally call themselves pro-life. 

Reading it was like a light turning on inside my head, a sunbeam splitting the clouds, a choir opening up into song. Thomas Friedman put into words what I have felt and thought since reaching the age where I could vote, but have been unable to articulate. He pinpointed the frustrations I feel as a voter, and a citizen. 

I suspect that I'm not alone in this.

In his article, Mr Friedman says:

"The term “pro-life” should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth. What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth. That radical narrowing of our concern for the sanctity of life is leading to terrible distortions in our society."

He also says: 

"You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children. You can call yourself a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.” I will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against common-sense gun laws as “pro-life.”"

Here, here, Mr Friedman. 

This is why I have such a hard time in election years - the fact that neither party espouses these values fully - and friends have expressed the same dismay. Many are pro-life in the thorough way that Mr Friedman demands in his editorial. Personally speaking, my trouble comes from my conscience, which has me in turmoil until a week after I step out of the polling booth. 

See,  I have yet to find a candidate who is, like me, pro-life, Friedman style. That is, I'm a strongly anti-abortion, pro-gun control, anti-war, anti-death penalty, pro-social justice, pro-insurance reform, environmentalist, pro-gay equality, Catholic feminist voter.

Now I ask, where is my candidate? 

Where is my party?

Who can I vote for that will stand up for everything I hold to be important? For human rights from conception until death,  for quality of life, for respect for our land? Who can I vote for without making an enormous moral compromise?


*crickets* 


But I'll still vote. Always do.

The book sale

Thursday morning:
Library sale, all weekend, starting today. Books $1 per pound.

Oh, yes.

Rang up the mammy, agreed on a meeting time, and hurried into my clothes in the icy morning air that filled the upstairs rooms of our house. The earlier post from this week was about right - yesterday, sleety rain came, covering the sidewalks, handrails, picnic tables,  leaf piles left too late, all in an glassy layer. The trees looked heavy by mid-afternoon The sky has been a low, slate gray since early this morning, and if not for the wide roads, you might think you were on the shores of the north Atlantic. 

So heavy socks it was, a sweater and wool coat bundled round me, scarf up to my nose, and I fairly ran out the door, down the street, hopping over the streams of wet leaves laying in the gutters. Nobody else raked, evidently.

Just a few streets over is the library, where many adult bookworms of today spent their precious summer hours as children, curled up in a beanbag chair with The Boxcar Children or Laura Ingalls Wilder. In the meeting rooms, downstairs, a line of middle aged women was coming out the door. I spotted a friend's mother and said a quick hello before heading in. It was after 11, which is the lunch hour, officially, in North Dakota, and is the time when many people 'get stuff done.' The bibliophilic crowds were there, all right, nosing through the boxes of books laid out on long banquet tables. I headed into the fiction and non-fiction room, buoyed by the thought of new books and a winter filled with long stories by the window.

Immediately, treasures surfaced. A book of American short stories. David Sedaris. Rebecca. Folk songs as played by Pete Seeger. Chocolat.  A Passage to India. Julia Child's My Life in France. A volunteer walking through the crowded room spotted the growing stack in my arms and offered me a blue cloth bag with a tree printed on it. As I walked about the room, the bag grew fuller and fuller. Jodie Picoult and Jacob Have I Loved joined the others in the blue bag, and I had to put it down from time to time to keep the handles from cutting into my arms.

The mammy wandered by, and we shared our finds, plotted a coffee for after we finished.

I found Germaine Greer's 'The Female Eunuch' and Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' in the fiction section. Might be an indication of the politics of whoever was in charge? Let's assume it was a second-thoughts buyer who left them there. 

One book stood out, with gilded page edges and gold lettering on the front. Magpie bait. I cracked open the cover, thumbed through the pages to see what it was, exactly. 1906, gorgeous illustrations, and pages framed in flowering vines. 

It had to be bought, if just for the beauty of it. 

We laid our purchases on the scale, and paid sweet little for them. $7.50 for ten books. That's a frobisch.

In the line, a dark haired woman heard my mother's accent and snagged her into a conversation. This lady had just come back from her father's foreign birthplace, and wanted to talk with another north islander. She was very pleasant until a moment before we said goodbye, when she launched into a critique of immigrants today... reminded me of an older person's 'kids today' speech. The current wave of immigrants into the United States made her heart hurt, she said, with their insistence on clinging to their language and traditions, those people who don't become citizens immediately, those people who come here on work visas and then go back home because they can. Yes folks, you read right - she was complaining about legal immigrants.

My mind went to the Nepalese and Bhutanese refugees I taught in Grand Forks, who are trying so hard to eke out a living in the northern Red River Valley, illiterate refugees in their later years who spent seventeen long winters in mountain refugee camps, ghosts in their own parents' country; who take buses back and forth across the towns each day in the bitter cold so that they can take basic English classes, so that they can improve their job prospects, so that they can feed their children and move their lives into modern America. Why shouldn't they hold fast to their language and traditions? It's all they have left of their old life. I thought of my mother, who waited twenty years before becoming an American citizen, because that - waiting - was her choice.  I could scarcely stop the glower from creeping into my eyes.  What can you say to a person who says things like that, publicly and proudly?

At the same time, across town at the park, my husband was  in conversation with a woman from the Czech Republic, who was there exercising her dog.  Some of the other Americans who came into the park ignored his hello. She was glad to talk.

It makes me angry when people speak of immigrants disparagingly. I came to immigrate in a place of privilege. I am Irish American, which means that I'm a white, English speaking, educated, dual passport holder with an easily pronounced name. Those are the reasons that I'm accepted effortlessly when I go to Ireland, or when I'm in the United States. I know that I've had it very, very easy.

But it's so easy to throw less convenient immigrants under the bus, it's easy to imagine that your own foremothers adapted to the American way of life immediately, that they learned English quickly, and didn't bemoan anything whatsoever about this country. But that can't be the reality. They were not beyond the human tendency to hold fast to the comfort of familiar things.

Look at how immigrants moved in pockets: they settled together, in places where their language and culture could be supported and survive, where they could pass traditions on to their children. Just look at all the German speaking grandmothers in North Dakota. The Ingas and Arnes of the Red River Valley. Our state paints a portrait of bordered homogeneity. 

Of course they struggled, and they missed their homes with an ache that can't be understood without making the same permanent trip across the sea.  Their grandchildren still steadfastly cling to language and tradition and culture, remembering that they are of another country as well, one that they've never set foot in. This dark haired woman, neither German nor Norwegian, who spent eleven 'magical and charming' days (her words) in her father's country, who was so proud of his poverty and struggle as an immigrant, had sadly missed the irony of her prejudice. 

My mother and I, immigrants both, went upstairs for our coffee, and felt a little sad without really knowing why.

Autumn on the prairie

It’s autumn on the prairie. In the last few weeks, the cottonwoods, elms, maples, have all turned from green to yellow, orange, and red. It’s a short-lived burst of color out here, and the leaves soon drop to the ground, covering every browning lawn in a blanket of gold. Driving through Bismarck takes a little navigational know-how if you want to take full advantage of the season. The old neighborhoods have wide avenues lined with American Elms, their branches arching over the streets and interlacing far above the cars and bicycles, forming a cathedral ceiling for those passing below. Look up and you’ll see blue sky peeking through the gaps, and at the right time, the sun turning each translucent leaf into a tiny pane of stained glass. It’s like Harry Clarke designed it himself. If you take the right route, you can keep going through leafy tunnels much of the way across town.

The ever-present North Dakota wind is doing its part, too, gusting now and then, sending a swirl of leaves skittering over the roads, or prompting a shower of leaves to fall, snowfall-like, over the houses. Children jump into leaf piles, scattering, and parents moan that they’d only just finished raking the whole yard before a new layer fell to the ground.

This has been a dry September, and the leaves, once they've finished rustling in the wind, are satisfyingly crunchy underfoot. A fine dust blows through the air, a product of dry leaves ground into nothingness. The soil is sending up dust, too, and allergies have been predictably rampant.

Fall is the season of the church supper out here. Country churches unfailingly host a community meal, often served on picnic tables in the field outside, with mountains of roast beef, mashed potatoes, sweet yellow buns, seventeen different kinds of pie, and coffee that flows unceasingly from huge silver vats manned by elderly women. Bingo and horseshoes serve as entertainment, though be wary of trying to beat any man sporting a cowboy hat – he’ll know his way around a horseshoe throw. There’s almost always a thrift sale with a baked goods counter set up nearby: whatever you do, don’t pass up a slice of eggy, sweet, creamy kuchen, especially if it was made by someone’s grandmother. 

With all the beauty of autumn, there is the knowledge that at the end of these bright, colorful weeks, we will find winter. Winter here is often harsh, frigid, bitter, and by the time we’re in the dark depths of January, seemingly endless. Does anyone look forward to it? Best to enjoy the gorgeous days we have now, with the sun warming the leaves, raising up the smells unknown to any other season.

Percy Bysshe Shelley had the right idea, to approach the chilling of the year with an optimistic note: to remember that if winter comes, spring won’t be far behind. 

610. Ode to the West Wind

I O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou	5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill	10
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
II Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,	15
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head	20
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,	25
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,	30
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers	35
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know	40
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share	45
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed	50
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd	55
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,	60
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,	65
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?	70

A big shout out to the publishers of Soundings, as well as Miss Harte and her Leaving Cert English class of 1998. We never covered Yeats in time, so some of us missed out on valuable points, possibly a place in medicine at UCC, but look at us all now - we're fine. Totally fine.