Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Rachelle Gardner at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Soul Train
- Live Out Your Dream And Discard The Box
- Tears In A Bottle
- From The Young Mom I Once Was, To You
- I Can’t Help Falling
- What A Difference Ten Years Makes
- The Next Best Thing To Robert Redford
- The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
- Where Have All The Years Gone
- Fun With Kiki Cullen
- Stuck On Mom
- Ten Years Later, Our Girls From Northern Ireland Remembered
- The Thrift of Grief
- Job Security
- The Party’s Over
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Bare Naked Mamas
OK, here’s the deal.
My mom did great while I was out of the country. So great, in fact, that it got me to thinking—a lot.
Had I accidentally created a kind of dependent-Mama-underclass, in which I was micro-managing every detail of a woman’s life who was still able to handle quite a few of those details on her own?
In addition, was there something about my own life (or about, um, me…) that I found so uncompelling that I’d rather be about my mother’s business than be about my own?
Yikes!
In the old days, before the Old Country, I’d often arrive at Mom’s and find her sound asleep, mid-morning, naked. She’d say, “Come on in. Sit in that chair over there and talk to me.”
But, you see, the thing is I don’t like chatting up naked ladies. Never have, never will. I like my women with their clothes on, plain and simple.
I’d finally gotten up the gumption, a couple of weeks before we left, to tell Mom that No, I wouldn’t sit across the room from her naked booty and shoot the bull. She’d have to get dressed and come out to the living room, and then we’d talk. She went along with me, but she was clearly disgusted with my standards.
Now I’m raising them even higher. Yesterday and today both I arrived at Mom’s for a visit, opened her apartment door, and saw her naked rear end beaming up at me from the bed in the next room. Instead of waking her up and imploring her to cover up her stuff, I shut the door, retraced my steps to the car, and headed for Starbucks, where all the baristas and the customers have most of their goods artfully dressed.
The facility where she lives in assisted living says that because she’s in a private apartment, she can do whatever she wants within her own walls. And I understand that in theory. In practice, though, doing your own naked thing and expecting that folks won’t find it offensive is, well, kind of antisocial, don’t you think?
What would you do if this was your mama? Engage her on your terms or on hers?
Give me the naked truth, OK?
Altar
So, it took losing the contact info on my cousin John to send me on a wild-McKenna chase through the Internet, until I found Plunkett, a tour guide in County Monaghan who agreed to show us around the McKenna sites.
There was only one small hitch to meeting up with him, in my mind—the possibility that we’d find out definitively that Grandpa Bernard was a bigamist.
“Whatever you do,” my mother warned before we left Kansas City, “don’t tell the others.” The others are my seven girl cousins in Scotland. Mind you, they are girls to me, but they range in age from 63 down to 48.
“Why would I keep it from them?” I asked my mom.
“They’re getting older,” she said. Um, yeah. And this makes them exceptional exactly how? “And when you get older, you don’t want to know everything. Especially if it’s bad. They won’t want to know, Katy. Just let it lie.”
“OK, Mom,” I said. “I will be sensitive to their advancing age. I promise to divulge information only if they seem to wish to know the truth.”
Plunkett and I, thankfully, did not appear to be talking about the same Bernard McKenna. None of the dates matched up to make it likely that Grandpa Had Two Families and, hey, it was nice to let the old fellow off the hook on at least that count.
But Plunkett really wanted us to find out as much about my family as possible, so he drove us out to Henry’s Pub in Scotstown, Co. Monaghan. Henry, he said, would know someone. After seeing the main (read:only) drag in Scotstown, it occurred to me that Henry might only know “someone.” If I remember right, Scotstown is a one-pub town, and that’s unheard of in Ireland.
Doug and I waited on the street and Plunkett came out after a few minutes. “You’re in luck. Henry told me how to find a 90-year-old woman named Catherine McKenna, who’s lived all her life in the same house she was born in, in Feebaghbane. She knows everything there is to know about that area.”
Feebaghbane? Plunkett had already told us he didn’t know how to find the tiny piece of property (called a townland) which consisted of perhaps 200 acres on a larger piece of land called the Rose estate. I knew that my grandfather was born there, but that’s all I knew.
“Do you mean we’re going there?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we call her first?”
“Get in the car. She’ll be happy to meet you.”
Catherine McKenna opened her door to us and served us tea and brown bread till we were stuffed. She told us stories of all the different branches of McKennas, and who lived where in Feebaghbane.
“We’ve figured out,” Plunkett said, “that Katy isn’t a Red Paddy Frank McKenna at all.” The first thing I learned when I got over there is that if you can’t establish your McKenna family’s nickname, you won’t get anywhere in finding your ancestors. “I thought she was at first,” he continued, “because of her flaming red hair.”
“But then I told him it’s fake,” I explained to Catherine, who laughed. “We’re pretty sure I am of the Barney Neds.”
A Barney Ned McKenna is one who’s great-great-grandfather (circa 1850) was Edward, who came to be known as the “Ned” during a period when McKennas proliferated so rapidly in that area that each family needed a sub-name in order to keep them all straight. The “Barney” refers to my great-grandfather Bernard, son of the Ned, and then again to my Grandfather Bernard.
“Oh, the Barney Neds,” mused Catherine. “I remember them well.”
“You do?” I asked, incredulous. “What do you remember?”
“The Jimmy Neds ran the farm when I was a wee girl,” she said, only she pronounced his name “jammie,” which was so adorable I could hardly bear it. “And his brother Edward used to come back and forth from Scotland to visit quite often…”
As soon as she offered this bit, I knew we were talking about my family. Edward was the brother of my grandfather. Both of them had moved to Kilsyth, Scotland, as young men, presumably because the Jimmy Ned—their oldest brother—had inherited the farm and there was no work for them in Ireland.
“Catherine,” Doug said, “do you know where their property was?”
She gave him a sideways glance and pointed out her window. “Right over there. Did you bring your wellies?”
Just then, her nephew Podge came in from working in the fields and said he’d be happy to drive us around the land in his truck. Podge now owns 50 acres of Feebaghbane, including the sixteen acres that would have been farmed by my great-great-grandfather Edward and my great-grandfather Bernard before passing to the Jimmy Ned.
Podge drove us through his 300-sheep farm and straight to the remaining walls of the Ned’s cottage. “This is the place,” he said, as if he got requests from Americans to see their ancestral lands every day of the week—and I feel certain that he doesn’t.
We took a lot of pictures that day, of Podge and Catherine and Plunkett and us. And especially of the stones that are piled up in remembrance of the Neds and of the walls that still stand as a testament to their lives.
I carried home two rocks that had become loosened from the mortar. There were a hundred more I could have taken, because who knows how long Podge will leave the structure standing? But somehow I couldn’t—I just couldn’t.
Leave them lie, I thought. But even so, make sure you tell the others.
The Get-Up
I don’t get men. I like them, I just don’t get them.
Especially one man, as you might have guessed. Maybe you can help me out here.
The house got a little cool in the night, because I had the attic fan turned on high. I figured it’s going to get up in the 80s today, so why not cool the house down as much as possible in advance of the heat? Pretty excellent strategy, right?
I’m still not on Kansas City time. I’ve been up since four—again. By six, I’d grown impatient with my n’er-do-well, lazybones husband and went in to wake him up.
“But I was up late last night,” he said, stumbling from the bed and into the bathroom. While he was in there, I took the opportunity to make the bed, just in case he imagined he might take a short stagger back into it.
The next time I saw him, he was dressed—if you can call it that—in a heavy, long-sleeved, maroon-and-tan pullover sweatshirt with the hood pulled up and a pair of red-white-and-blue, stars-and-stripes-forever (purchased in the $1 clearance bin after last year’s frantic July 4th shopping season) boxer briefs. Unless I’m mistaken, I spied a pair of orange knit mittens clipped to the cuffs of his hoodie.
“You look funny,” I said.
I wasn’t laughing, mind you, because lately I’ve said “You look funny” quite a few times and, honestly, I’ve stopped laughing somewhere along the way. Laughing, I’ve found, only reinforces naughty behavior.
“Thank you,” he said, and he sincerely meant it.
People, he thinks I was complimenting him! If I’d said he looked as handsome as all get-out, he couldn’t have been more pleased.
If you can answer “What’s up with that?” there’s a funky pair of mittens in it for you.
Plunkett and Podge
If I hadn’t lost John McKenna—albeit temporarily—I never would have found Plunkett McKenna. And if I hadn’t found Plunkett, well, I’d have never met Podge McKenna.
John McKenna of Kilsyth, Scotland, a man I found on the Internet, has turned out to be my second or perhaps third cousin. You tell me: he is the grandson of my grandfather’s brother. We kept up pretty well online for a year or so, and then he told me that he was going to be moving to the Inverness area. He gave me his new email address, a precious commodity to my way of thinking, the occasion of which prompted my computer which contained that information to utterly and forsakenly die.
About a month before we left for the old country, I decided to search the World Wide Web until I found John McKenna again. I hummed a few bars of “It’s A Small Web After All” and hoped for googling success. I almost got lucky, too. I found a fellow’s business site. He looked like I remember my John looking, so I emailed him.
He said, Sorry, I’m not your John McKenna. Have you thought about trying the online UK phone book? So I tried it, to absolutely no freaking avail. But somehow I found a man named Plunkett McKenna, who advertises online as a tour guide specializing in County Monaghan, and focusing even more particularly on all things (and sites) McKenna.
I emailed Plunkett and he agreed to meet Doug and me on a certain day in Emyvale, County Monaghan, a town known as “McKenna Country.” Plunkett couldn’t possibly make up for the loss of John, but I figured meeting him might provide links to other branches of the family.
He likes to help people with their genealogical puzzles, he said, so I offered a few details about my father’s family—the only few I knew.
He wrote back in ten minutes flat. “Strange that your grandfather Bernard drowned in Scotland. My great-grandfather Bernard drowned in Scotland, as well.”
I wrote him back in ten seconds flat. “Did your great-grandfather perhaps father a child, who would be your grandparent, before moving from Ireland to Scotland?”
Five seconds later came the reply. “No. My Bernard McKenna married and raised a large family in Ireland. But when he drowned, the family received a letter from the priest in Scotland stating that the old man was known to have two families.”
Yikes! I’d imagined a lot of stuff about Grandpa Bernard, but it never occurred to me that he might be a bigamist. Were Plunkett and I related also, and how exactly do you refer to a “cousin” who’s from the “other” family your grandfather had in secret? The correspondence died off after that brief exchange, and I didn’t hear from Plunkett again until I arrived in County Monaghan and dialed his cell phone.
By then, I was ready for anything. Even a man named Podge.
Eileen Walsh
“I’ve been looking for you.”
Eileen Walsh greeted Doug and me as we stepped out of a shop in Louisburgh, County Mayo, and onto the sidewalk. We’d arrived in town the night before, eager for the start of the traditional music festival which began that morning. Eileen had said she’d try to drive into town from Westport for the concert that night, but we didn’t know if she’d actually make it or not.
And then for her to find us easily in a town crowded with a couple of thousand extra visitors, well. It seemed unlikely, but then—in much the same way that around every bend in Ireland is an entirely new vista—everything about Eileen is a surprise. After all, we’d only met her for the first time the day before.
She’d overheard us talking at the Internet cafe in Westport and approached us. “Where in America are you from?”
“Kansas City,” I said, and she volunteered that her home is in Boulder, Colorado. At least, that’s her permanent address.
“I’m in Ireland for a year,” she said. “I just got here two weeks ago. I don’t have a job, or a place to stay long-term. I have to turn in my rental car in a few days, so then I’ll be walking.”
“Is your husband here, too?” I asked, feeling grateful all of a sudden that I had one of those by my side.
“Nope. We decided years ago that we wanted to spend a year in Ireland, starting now. I steadily planned toward it, but then as it got closer, he said he couldn’t leave his clients. I had to come, though.”
Eileen Walsh is a woman on a mission to make it on her own merit, her own steam, her own hard work and perseverence. She and her husband agreed that she needed this time in Ireland, and she says he fully supports her emotionally.
But financially, at 58 years old, she’s on her own.
“I’ve never lived by myself, ever. I went from my parents’ home to having college roommates, to being married. I’ve never had to support myself. So I’m looking for a job—I’ll do nearly anything. Hair styling, housekeeping, waitressing, upholstery. I just need to earn enough to pay my expenses.”
“Did you bring a lot of stuff with you?” I asked. I was wondering about furnishings and housewares, that kind of thing.
“One suitcase and a trunk,” she said. “But it’s too much. I’m shipping the trunk back home. I’ll find a furnished flat and I only need a few changes of clothes. I don’t want anything to weigh me down.”
We Irishwomen have something of the hardscrapple imbedded in our consciousness. We don’t need much to get by. Like me, Eileen has an Irish-born grandparent, and she has become an Irish citizen because of it.
Eileen taught me a lot on our first meeting in Westport, and even more when she found us on the street the next day. Though she admitted to being daunted by the circumstances she’d placed herself in, I saw no fear in her eyes. She’s a woman who’s determined to follow the course she’s chosen (even the course between Westport and Louisburgh on the iffy roads in the rain is challenging to me), and if she falls flat and ends up conceding defeat—in other words, if she finds she can’t make it in Ireland for a year—she’ll go back to Boulder with a sense of accomplishment she’s only beginning to gain.
We sat together at the concert that night, Eileen and me, tapping our toes in time to the jigs and horn pipes and reels. Even though we’ve embraced different paths at this season of our lives, our hearts were attuned to each other and to the pull of love for Ireland.
Eileen, if you’re reading this, I want you to know that I think of you every day, and that I’m praying for you, too. May the road rise up to meet you.
John McKenna
I guess it was about four years ago that I took to googling myself.
I know, I know. It’s a silly waste of a half hour, but every once in a while, it’s fun. I loved experimenting with parts of my name, and then with different combinations. Even simply the word “Katy” brought up fallible higher in the search than I believed possible.
It was the surname “McKenna” that opened up my world, though. You see, when I was growing up in Kansas City, there were only a few McKennas in the phone book, and they were all my aunts and uncles. Each time the new white pages came out, I’d sit with the monstrosity upon my wee lap and open to our page. Our column, actually. OK, our per-column-half-inch, to be exact.
There we all were: Robert Baillie McKenna (my dad), Uncle Bernard, Aunt Mary, Aunt Cathy, Uncle Eddy, and Uncle Francis, their names scrunched together in print rather like the lot of them appeared in person—huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The only one missing in the whole wide world from our little enclave (that I knew of) was Aunt Rosie, who had stayed behind in Scotland when her sibs emigrated during the 30s and 40s. She and my dad talked long-distance every Christmas, so that was kind of like finding her in the phone book in my mind.
Except not. Because you see, when a branch of the family stays behind and exists only in a telephonic brogue thick with both static and emotion, you end up being drawn to that limb your whole life long. The break with the past isn’t clean like it might be with some immigrant families, you don’t forget those who came before with their unfinished stories and their unsung songs—you can’t.
At least, I couldn’t.
Four years ago, a casual google search for the name McKenna led me to the genealogical coup of my dreams, although at the time I hadn’t dared to imagine that there was another McKenna out there on the same search as I.
When I clicked on the McKenna discussion forum, a fellow named John claimed to seek relatives from Kilsyth, Scotland, where my father was born. John was born there also, in the 1940s, and offerred that his grandfather was a man named Edward, who came to Kilsyth from County Monaghan.
Probably not my McKennas, I thought, since I’d never heard of Edward, who would have been my grandfather’s contemporary. Besides, I remembered my father’s words on the day I first realized he was half Irish, that his own father had been born there and then married a Scottish woman.
“Where was he from in Ireland?” I asked. I was perhaps ten or eleven at the time, and only knew about the Scottish side which was pretty difficult to dismiss since I was surrounded by broad brogues.
“Ulster.” My father was famous for his one-word answers. Usually, I understood the word, but I’d never heard the term Ulster until that day, didn’t know about the border counties or the civil war or the fact that my father’s nickname as a young man had been “Dev,” after DeValera, the much-loved hero of the Free Irish Republic.
“Ulster?” I asked. I knew to expect another one-worder, but I felt like I really scored that day. Four words, then seven more in disclaimer.
“Near Belfast. County Armagh. But we don’t talk about that side.”
I let it go, because I had to. If you could have seen the look on his face, you would have dropped it, too. He squinted in concentration as if looking through a camera’s viewfinder with the glaring sun defying his vision’s best efforts. And then he said as little as possible, or possibly—who can say for sure?—all he recalled.
Dad wasn’t talking, and a ten-year-old kid can only get so far with the Golden Book Encyclopedia. But I never forgot those eleven little words, and wondered when I found John McKenna’s message on that genealogy board just how far I’d been misled.
County Monaghan? Just over the border into the Republic from the county Dad specified, a border whose blood-drawn lines were disputed during my grandfather’s time, one of the three counties of Ulster which ended up in the Irish Free State at the end of a very long day.
I left a message for John McKenna four years ago, and with a few tentative emails, the family mysteries began both to unravel and to profoundly deepen.
And now, finally, I’ve met the man.
Leave Them Alone And They’ll Come Home
The last time I posted was May 2, and here it is May 15. What can I say? I mean, what did you expect after I revealed that bit about the lingerie shop? Just kidding!
Truly, my excuses are as few and far between as was reliable Internet access. For a couple of countries advanced in oh, so many ways, the Internet thing is just not happening in Ireland and Scotland the way we hoped it would be. People, I’m spoiled! I’m so used to free wi-fi that I refuse to plunk down a couple bucks at Starbucks for T-Mobile—it’s the principle of the thing, right?
The hotel in Galway was the only place we stayed that even pretended to have access, and sure enough, the server was down. But the people were up—all night. It’s a great town, kind of like Dublin as far as culture and night life goes, but not quite as international. We didn’t do Dublin this trip, concentrating instead on the west and north mostly.
I have SO much to write about, I don’t know where to begin. But, boy, have I taken good notes. I may end up writing a book in which I fictionalize my Scots-Irish family story, about which I found out so much more that I’m thrilled just contemplating it.
I hope you’ll hang with me a few more days as I get back on Missouri time. It’s 10:30 am here, and to me it feels like 4:30 in the afternoon. I’ve been up since 5, after heading from the airport yesterday evening straight to a huge McKenna Mother’s Day party for my mum! (We didn’t even know about it until we landed in Kansas City, but hey, who can resist one more crazy accumulation of McKennas?)
My plan is to write a series of vignettes about specific ways that Ireland and Scotland changed my life—again. So it won’t exactly be as if I was blogging it day by day, but at least my connection is reliable, and my memory is fantastic.
I’ll leave you for now with this: On one of the last mornings of the trip, I awakened during the wee hours (one of only three hours in which it’s actually dark outside) with that question that comes upon each of us from time to time, even occasionally when we’re in the most familiar place.
“Where am I?”
For the first time in my life, I fell back into a peaceful sleep without needing to solve the mystery. If I’d thought about it another few seconds, I would have realized that I was in Ft. William, Scotland, in a hotel called Clann MacDuff, but finally—finally—it didn’t matter a bit.
As for “Who am I”? Well, now, that’s a different story altogether.
Too Much Irish Information?
So we spent a lovely evening in Galway Thursday night. I know all those many days ago must seem like ancient history to you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a story to share. And so I will.
In Galway City, as in Dublin, there are loads of street musicians of all ages and abilities. They open their guitar cases or plunk down their caps, put a euro in for seed money, and hope to attract listeners with spare change. Some sing solo, some play instumental, whatever. You can tell that many are trying to raise just enough money for another night in a local hostel and maybe a pint to go with iot.
Doug has always wanted to be a street musician in whichever other life might present itself as he goes forward along the path, and I thought a bit of needling might get him to commit that night in Galway.
“Go ahead,” I said. “You’ll never see any of these folks again. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“I don’t play well enough,” he lied, and believe me when I say he really lied.
“I dare you,” I said, feeling like a gambler. I scouted the length of Quay Street, looking for a vacant corner. “Just play until you earn enough euro for a night’s stay at a B&B.”
He looked at me like I was crazy and said a firm “No.”
We passed a teenager of the angsty Irish variety, attempting to make his way in the world with a poor rendition of “Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.” No lack of confidence in that lad.
“Come on, then,” I urged. “You’ll be knockin’ on heaven’s door soon enough. Just play your whistle till you’ve got enough for fish and chips.”
“No,” he repeated.
Another young couple sang what was supposed to be harmony in a language neither English nor Gaelic. I was unimpressed, and even more sure that Doug would be a huge hit in Galway City, if only he’d take a chance.
“All right, then. Play until you earn the price of two lattes.” By now I was losing my patience, for which I am famous the world round.
“It’s not going to happen.”
All of a sudden, I spotted a store next to a spot on the brick road that begged for a musician.
“OK, mister. How about I agree to a trip into the lingerie shop?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Hand over me whistle.”
Catching Up
We’re in Westport, County Mayo (sister city to our own Westport area in Kansas City) for the second time in three days. Friday morning we passed through here on our way to Louisburgh, which held the festival we just returned from. It was SO great!
Doug got to sit in among a few wee lassies, taking whistle instruction from the one I call “his girlfriend,” the wonderful Joannie Madden, of Cherish the Ladies fame. We’ve seen Joannie’s Irish traditional band perform three times in the states, so to be in her class in a local setting was a treat. At the same time, I brushed up (ha!) on my Irish singing in a class taught by Tim Dennehy, an Irishman who’s made many recordings over here and is well-revered.
I first took a class in a small festival in Riverstown from this same man six years ago. He told us then that a singer should choose two or perhaps three songs a year to master, adding ornamentation after mastering the words and melody as we’re able. In six years time, then, I suppose I should have a repertoire of a dozen or so Irish songs under my belt. Thankfully, Tim did not quiz me on this!
We worked on six songs over the course of the day, unheard of by any of us before we arrived. I was the only American in the group of six students; the others all being Irish themselves. They thought I was a rather good sport, I’m thinking. :)
Internet access is still spotty here. To say the next Internet cafe is only a “short stagger” away would be to not tell the truth of the thing at all. In the cities, we’re good, but we’ve not spent much time in the cities, except for one night in Galway. In the remote areas and the small towns, they only chuckle when you ask.
Everyone has a cell phone, though. The past three nights as we’ve sat in the pubs, with Doug joining in the sessions whenever possible, we watch the young fiddle and flute players. They plop their phones down on the table with their Guinness. When a call comes in, they notice the name and then turn to their mates (while each are playing their various instruments at blinding speed) and say, “It’s Jenny. I’ll call her back.” When I say they don’t miss a beat, I mean that literally!!
I’ve been sick the whole time we’ve been here. The chemist in Louisburgh has me on acidopholus, figuring I’ve attracted an Irish bug. You’d think with my credentials, I’d be immune to Celtic bugs of all types, but not so. Today, I think I really am better.
And happy, sick or not.
Will catch up again soon, I hope. Need to go wade through three days of email, both personal and buisiness. Yikes! Then it’s off to enjoy the sunshine in Westport, and then on to Donegal.
Much love to all. xoxoxox
Morning Has Broken
Well, here we are in an Internet cafe in Ennis, County Clare! We didn’t sleep a wink, Tylenol PM notwithstanding. Ah, well. We sat with a lovely man from Cork on the plane over, and who needs sleep when you’ve got brogues? That’s always been my motto, anyway.
I’m kind of shocked that we got farther than New Jersey, to tell you the truth. We sat on the tarmac in KC for an extra hour, because the pilot said that “as always happens this time of day,” the New Jersey runways were so backed up that they wouldn’t clear us to fly there. Then, once we got to New Jersey, we circled for more than thirty minutes before they’d let us land.
That would have all been cool, except for that our layover in NJ was only to have been for one hour and twelve minutes! We raised only a bit of a stink, so that the customer service person just off the plane called over to the other gate and had the plane wait for us. Then a guy driving one of those nifty carts zoomed up to the gate and we piled in. It would have taken us the rest of our natural lives to make it to the plane headed for Ireland without the cart.
But we’re here, and we’re happy, and someday I will pee again. Amazing how things kind of shut down when you’ve flying over the pond. I’m pouring the fluids in, though, and you know what they say about what goes in…..
More later, and I promise not to concentrate too much on my bathroom (or lack of bathroom) related difficulties.
I do have standards, you know!
Gloatin’ Through The Gloamin’?
Maybe you weren’t raised on that old Scottish song, “Roamin’ Through The Gloamin’,” but I was. And since I’m being blessed to roam through it with my own two feet (and my own one husband) once again, I hope you’ll join me on the journey!
I started this blogging adventure in December of 2000, just two months after Doug and I returned from our first (and only) trip together to Ireland and Scotland. So I don’t know exactly how or even if this will work, but I’m sure hoping to blog my way through the heather and home again.
A lot will depend on Internet connections, of course. We’re going to some rather remote areas way in the far north in Ireland, so bloggability may be in a bit of a grey area, along with the rest of the island.
I promise not to gloat here at fallible, but I really do want to share our travels as they unfold. Hope to visit with you in the comments section from across the pond. (And for those of you who are already across the pond—any pond will do—perhaps we’ll meet along the way!)
We’re leaving in a half hour. Can’t remember the last time I had this much fun!
Grab your blogging passport, and let’s get going!
Croak
I won’t deny that over the years I’ve spent some energy contemplating my own demise, whether timely or untimely. I’ve planned for the old guy’s, too, just so you know.
It’s pretty complicated, not like back in the day when you could have a simple will or a verbal agreement with a few folks about how to dispose of your effects and divide your few possessions, in case the inevitable happened early.
The last time we went to the Old Country, in 2000, we still had two minor-aged children. Back when Scott was a minor as well, we appointed guardians for our kids and drafted a living trust so that our wishes would take place with a modicum of red tape.
Doing anything to prevent red tape in the future, of course, means cutting through a lot of red tape today.
Still, even though I’ve spent several weeks trying to make sure our affairs are as orderly as possible before we leave the country, I left an outline for the kids which contained all the salient information on a single post-it note.
Doug was just a bit offended when he saw it, I think.
“That’s it?” he asked. “Our entire lives, condensed into a few lousy bullet points?”
“Yep,” I said. “And if it weren’t for the love notes I added, I could have fit it all on one side.”
We haven’t croaked quite yet, but I’m getting the love notes down to a science.
Half A Million Little Dollars
If you haven’t seen this story, you should.
Honestly, what are people thinking when they sit down to claim a hefty $500,000 advance from Little, Brown? Do writers really imagine that the technology doesn’t exist to discover whether or not they’ve plagiarized? How does a chick get herself into Harvard without knowing she shouldn’t copy chick lit from the chick in front of her?
James Frey messed up big-time, claiming fact where there was merely story. But this gal? In my opinion, this is even a more agregious literary offense.
But, hey. Who am I to judge? I don’t even like it if I think I might have copied myself.
A Tale Of Two Grandpas
I’ve told you how my father’s father died—the poor fellow drowned in the River Clyde in Scotland.
There is—and always will be, I guess—a lingering uncertainty about the circumstances which might have caused him to be “seen falling” (the words used on the death certificate) off the boat that dim and dreary February day. At six in the morning, it’s a little late to be still drunk from the night before, I’d think. At least, not drunk enough to fall overboard.
He could have been thrown or pushed, I suppose. I don’t know for sure if Grandpa Bernard had long or short-term enemies of the type that might perpetrate such a crime, but of course even back then there would have been random acts of senseless violence. One can always hold out hope.
Because then there’s the other awful possibility—you know the one I’m talking about. I guess I have to admit it’s the one that seems most likely in my mind.
Did I ever mention that as an infant, Grandpa was baptized at St. Dympna’s Catholic church in Feebaghbane, County Monaghan? In case you’ve never heard of St. Dympna, here’s a bit I found about her patronage: “Against sleepwalking; epilepsy; epileptics; family happiness; incest victims; insanity; loss of parents; martyrs; mental asylums; mental disorders; mental health caregivers; mental health professionals; mental hospitals; mental illness; mentally ill people; nervous disorders; neurological disorders; possessed people; princesses; psychiatrists; rape victims; runaways; sleepwalkers; therapists.”
That’s exactly how it was worded at the Catholic forum I visited. I don’t think St. Dympna was really against “family happiness” or various others of the items, professions, and conditions mentioned, but yeah, I can see her being against sleepwalking.
Suffice it to say, and you can take this with more than a grain of salt if you are so inclined, that St. Dympna is the patron saint of the mentally ill. Now that I type it in so many words, it occurs to me that I might have shared this information with you before…in fact, I distinctly remember Michael Main commenting about another saint’s credentials….Oh, well. Saints Preserve Us!
So, Grandpa Bernard died at age forty, in an obviously tragic and possibly mentally ill state. But, you’re probably thinking right about now, didn’t you have another grandpa? Wouldn’t your mother also have been fortunate enough to have a dad?
Yes, yes she was. The grandpa I knew my whole life was called Papoo. He lived until the summer of 1976, when I was twenty-two. We lived in the same town our whole lives, and he was a thoroughly wonderful man to know and love.
I’m thinking about him a lot these days, as Doug and I are leading up to hopping on the plane for the Old Country.
The first time I went to Scotland was after I’d grown up and moved out on my own. My parents had decided to go and take my brother and baby sister who still lived at home. I had the brilliant idea to fork over a wad of cash and piggyback onto their vacation.
Papoo spent the night at Mom and Dad’s house the night before we were scheduled to fly. I spent the night, too, because we lived far from the airport and a limo was scheduled to retrieve us and all our stuff fairly early in the morning.
Before I awakened, Mom cooked a full Irish breakfast for her daddy, who then kissed her good-bye and headed back to his house, a twenty minute drive from hers. Did I mention Papoo was a widower, lived alone, and that Mom was his only child? To say he felt a bit of panic about his daughter leaving the country for five weeks, when he was used to her calling him twice a day, would be putting it mildly.
We got the phone call about an hour later, just as the limo was scheduled to pull up in front of the house. Papoo had called my sister Liz and said, “I’m not feeling too well. Can you come over to the house? Don’t tell your mother, though, because she and the rest of them are about to leave for Scotland.”
Liz and her new husband Big John rushed right over to Papoo’s house and there he sat in the kitchen chair, the phone in his hand, way past only mostly dead.
You might say that Scotland laid claim to both my grandfathers, then—the first, whose loyalties drew him home to Ireland over the waters and back again, and the second, who with his final earthly thoughts could only imagine seeing the place through his lovely daughter’s eyes.
Scotland is fascinating and frightening, beautiful and bleak. The memories and the might-have-beens it recalls are as jagged as the craggy mountains that cut into the mist-enshrouded landscape.
At the same time, though, there’s healing in the heather. And so, once again, Caledonia calls.
Sometimes I Feel Like A Daughterless Mom
Have I mentioned that sometimes it’s hard to have a child you can’t get to when you know she needs you?
Or when you know, at least, that if she was five years old and this happened, she would have needed you? Or when you know, at the very least, that in the old days, you really did have a little girl who got all better with hugs and kisses from her good, old Mom?
My daughter, who is still in the mountains high above Kingston, Jamaica, working with kids at an orphanage there, has apparently inherited from my mother a disturbing propensity for falling in the john.
That’s right. She slipped getting into the shower and is now, in her words, “being tended to by two American nurses.”
The fingers in splints don’t worry me too much, although they sure would limit her ability to take care of the kiddos. But the “bruised ribs” thing? Too many unanswered questions for my blood. I’m praying there aren’t any broken bones in there, getting all tempted to puncture a lung or whatever else those puppies do. And, I’m sorry, but herniated discs aren’t much fun, either….
Right now, I’m waiting for more information than she gave me in the very sketchy email (due to busted fingers) she sent last night. She might not have sent it at all, if I hadn’t sent her one asking, “How shall we be praying for you right now?”
Moms know when stuff is happening, people. They just do. And boy do I wish I could get to her right now. Because the only thing better than being tended to by two American nurses is to throw one old-fashioned Mom into the mix.
I love you, Carrie Woman!
