Christmas in August

One of my sisters has lived in Australia for about 40 years.  I’ve never not missed her, but she and her husband visit regularly.  The trip from Australia to the US is long and difficult though, and as a result when they come here, they usually plan an additional trip…often to Europe.  It makes sense given how far they’ve come, to to tack on what they can while they are in this hemisphere.

 

This sister knew how much my husband I wanted to go to Ireland. We’d tried to plan a trip a year earlier but it didn’t work out.  So last fall, as they scheduled a visit to the US for August 2015, followed by a jaunt to Ireland for a wedding they'd been invited to, they asked if we wanted to come. 

Here’s the thing.  My husband’s work is built on stress and schedules, and there are (many) times of the year he can’t take time off…including about every single school vacation our daughter had growing up.  A long time ago, I got used to not taking vacations when it was convenient for the rest of the world, because he never could. Years ago, I stopped asking, because I knew it added to his stress, and made him feel bad.

But darn it, I really wanted to go to Ireland with my sister.  So I broke my rule.  Last November I said, “I know the answer is probably no, but shame on me for not asking.  Can we go to Ireland with S. and B?”  Now, I KNOW, of all of the bad weeks, the worst two are the last week in August and the first week in September, which is when the proposed trip would occur.  So, when, after hemming and hawing and calendar checking, my husband said, he’d talk to his boss, that in itself was a victory.  I kept my fingers crossed and my mouth shut after that.

By mid-December the subject remained open, and my mouth remained shut.  As long as I didn’t know for sure, there was still hope, but it wasn’t fair to keep my sister hanging, so I gave us a deadline.  I told her if I didn’t say yes to her by Christmas, they should make their plans without us.  Then I told my husband what I’d said.  He said he was waiting for the right time to broach the subject at work. 

Christmas Day came, and I didn’t think of Ireland.  It was a non-issue.  Since my husband had never said yes, I accepted it wasn’t happening.  We had a wonderful dinner at our house with a crowd of family and some later drop-ins.  We sang and danced, and the day went very late.  At 11:45 PM, my husband beckoned to me from across the room.  When I got there, he leaned over and spoke in my ear.  “Merry Christmas.  How would you like to go to Ireland?”  My answer?  Something like Yeee haaaa!   Depending on the time of year, my sister is at a minimum, fourteen hours ahead of us.  I bolted to the computer and emailed her.  “It’s still Christmas here.  We are in!”

I know the poem in my last post was reflective and sad, perhaps even grim.  But our trip was anything but, and three weeks later, I still go to bed picturing what we did and saw and ate, and on top of everything, in love with the man who, 31 years later, can still delight me with a late-Christmas surprise.

My First Ireland

Standing on

the western edge,

walled with rock and green,

the ocean silver patched,

bleeds into

a rain-swelled sky.

Across a blurred sea

there’s Boston.

Ancestors, traveled there

sailing on hope,

knobbed bones,

washboard ribs

steerage passengers

stacked like cordwood,

coffin berths.

Are we not all made of

sinew? Tissue?

Down-covered swells

of sweet tasting flesh?

And yet,

the stench of rotting fields.

An ocean filled with fish,

“our own” forbidden

from casting a net.

Ships packed with export,

but a shilling

for a starving man

to build a needless wall.

Standing in this place,

I think about bellies.

Cold caves of want.

Families. Boys, girls,

babes gone before speech,

a father

faced with non-choice, 

eviction or

“assisted” immigration.

And so, my ancestors,

maybe yours,

crawled onto a boat,

departed desperation,

staggered to a foreign place,

made of themselves,

carried on.

Lifetimes later,

I look out from

this western edge,

stomach full,
and wordless.

This has gnawed at me since I studied the potato famine in 11th grade.  Standing on soil where it actually happened, well, I guess, made an impression...

Energized - IWSG September

This is my post for the September edition of Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group. On the first Wednesday of every month, members write posts designed to help and inspire other writers, or perhaps seeking support in their own efforts. To read more posts, click here.

As I write this, in some states, school buses rolled weeks ago.  Here they just begin.  It’s the calendar I’ve been used to all my life.  September means back to school. And even though I’m so long past those days they feel like ancient times, my rhythms pick up again, after Labor Day.  Like New Year’s in September, I formulate goals, make plans, eye the future.  My aim now, after a summer slowdown and a mind- altering vacation far away, is to start back on my novel, still in first draft mode, and to get it done by Christmas.  It's been a difficult summer for me, and I've been inching along, trying to make forward progress in every way.  With the novel, I feel like I need to set a time line, as I’ve been scratching it out, like a stick in wet sand, for much longer than it should take.

Now it’s time to inhale, sit myself down and concentrate on this story.

Do you make plans in the fall?  What to do you to focus?

Church of the Jetty - 2015

When we drove home from a family party in the middle of a thunderstorm Saturday night, it didn’t occur to me that Sunday would be a “Church of the Jetty” day, but it should have. Lightning flickered purple over the highway, thunder bashed overhead, and window-wipers flogging back and forth struggled to keep up.  But when I woke at 6:30 in the morning, it was clear as the blue sky outside my window that the storm had cleaned things out.  An hour later, after brewing coffee, we stopped for bagels and headed to the harbor.  As we tiptoed by, the same way it happens each time we do this, the summer church service taking place on the porch of the new sailing club began.  Down at the docks I sang along with the first hymn.   

  

I wish I knew the words to tell you how open and bright a clear a summer morning can be on the low-tide harbor.  Everything is white and vivid and sweeping, almost as if the world has grown larger.  As if the light has moved inside you.  We anchored on the flats and pulled up the boat.  Egrets and seagulls picked through the mud as my husband scrubbed off the slime that accumulates on the sides of the dinghy.  Toward the east, the water sparkled.  The sun glinted off a tilted panel out on Minot’s light.  Rowing crews parted the sea, leaving a V’s in their wake and a couple slogged through the low water, dragging their boat behind.  One lone fisherman took a last sideways cast, before pulling up anchor and trundling away.

In the end, we didn’t walk the jetty.  We stood below it, circling, flipping over shells bleached white by the sun, watching the gulls and the terns, listening to the gurgle as the tide rolled in over the sand.  But through it all, the jetty was there, hulking behind us, an altar of sorts, blessing our morning while standing guard over a perfect view.

I'm going to be off blogger until after Labor Day.  Wishing you all a glorious end to summer.

Birds of a Feather

I was going for  a picture of the hummingbird...

But then these guys showed up.  Anyone know what they are?   

I took the photos through a window, so they're not the best. But this is less about the photos and more about the lesson.  I spend a lot of time watching for hummingbirds, and don't usually pay that much attention to what else is out there.  Perhaps I need to broaden my horizons. 

Wishing you all a week filled with bright surprises.

To be, or Wanna be - That is the Question.

 This is my August contribution to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group, a blog hop all about writers helping writers.  To read more posts, click here.

When I started this blog six years ago, the goal was to hold myself accountable to writing regularly.  It was an easy objective really, because I was recently (and traumatically) unemployed and had the time, as well as a whole lot of emotion needing release.  A personal essay five days a week turned out to be the way to heal myself.  Over the years, writing took on another spin as I set my goal to completing a novel, then another, and one more.  I have yet to get one published, but I wrote them, and that’s a lot more than I thought I could do, pre-Middle Passages.  

I took another job, then a different one after that.  Now I work regular hours and write too.  At this point, I’m a third of the way through my fourth novel and stuck…mostly due to life circumstances, and because there is research I need to complete.  But, after all this time, I also understand there is a rhythm to my work, and the right pace for me includes a summer slowdown.  When September arrives, I gear up, which will happen again, I know.  But for now, while I pause on this novel, I’m holding myself to blogging once a week.  Sometimes, it feels like homework.  Oh, God, I have to write another blog post?  But in truth, blogging has saved my writing so many times.  When I get stuck, there’s Middle Passages, reminding me. If I choose, I can turn into one more wanna be writer. 

 

Or, I can write.  

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It is a picture post Monday...while I try to find words for IWSG Wednesday.  I'm still trying to work out the settings on the new camera...but you'll get the gist.  Every once in a while, an unexpected day arrives along with an unplanned opportunity, one during which, I inhale and say, "I am SO blessed.  This was one.  A trip to the Cape.  I packed a bag and hopped into the car less than thirty minutes after the invitation was issued. No agenda.  Just the camera, and going with the flow.

Seals and seagulls waiting for the fishermen to arrive. 

An Osprey.  Also known as a fish eagle, sea hawk, river hawk, or fish hawk.  My first.

Kite surfing on Cape Cod Bay.  I've heard of it, but never seen it.

Kite surfing at Monomoy National Wildlife Preserve.  Believe it or not...the picture doesn't do it justice.

And then there's the picture I didn't get.  On our way home, rounding a curve on the entrance to the highway.  A full moon rising orange in front of us, and a firework chrysanthemum, exploding blue and purple beside it.  Oh, my!  In my last post, I wrote about life being in the details. 

That was another one.