What do you see from out there?

By noeleenm on April 27th, 2006

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past week or two about what people react to in an advertisement. And in a blog. And in my home.

The internal advertising debate – sometimes extended to discussions with Gint and other family and friends – went on, of course, because of advertising for new housemates.

It’s hard enough to write an advertisement (and I wrote a lot of advertising features, as part of my ‘bread and butter’, as a freelance journalist) when you simply want to sell something. If what you’re ’selling’, though, is a place in your home, then there are other considerations also…

I was already trying to decide on the kind of housemates we wanted/needed over a month ago. Then it was a: “Male (macho pacifist), with no sense of humour and absolutely no opinion on anything. Vegetarian book worm a bonus”.

But that was before we lost Gail, and gained Dong Kwang and his prospective room-mate.

Now we’re looking for a girl, to even up the gender balance in the house. The calls we’re getting, of course, are mostly from males.

So I’m looking at the advertisement I’ve put up in the local supermarkets and on http://www.daft.ie/, and wondering why…

Could it be because it mentions ‘Irish housemother’? Maybe (what am I talking about – I mean ‘definitely’!) young men want to be ‘mothered’ more than young women. In fact, most men seem to want to be mothered into their nineties…

If so, they’re in for a rude shock in our house. I try to nurture anyone who comes to my home – because they are usually very far away from their own homes – in the sense of listening, talking, encouraging them to look out for each other, going to war on their behalf if I feel they’re being treated unfairly…

But cook for them, clean up after them, accept inconsiderate behaviour to any of the rest of us…

As Elke once said briskly about someone about whom she felt I was worrying too much:- “He’s over 18, and vaccinated!” Apparently, it’s a direct translation of an Italian saying, and it’s much, much nicer than the English equivalent: “He’s old enough, and ugly enough, to look after himself!”

Well, maybe discipline is part of being a ‘mother’, too.

In a very real sense, though, this kind of advertisement says as much about the person who is advertising, as it does about the rooms available. At some level I still want my house to be a family home, so, in a way, I advertise for ‘temporary orphans’ – people who are away from their own homes, enthusiastically exploring a foreign world, but wanting a ‘home’ to return to at the end of each day’s adventure.

It’s also, of course, the recounting of those ‘adventures’ that appeals to me. Television bores me to tears most of the time, which is why I don’t have one, but real people settling down in the kitchen and describing their day, their happiness, their disappointments, their bafflement, their fallings in love… I’m happily addicted to that.

The other thing that I’ve been puzzling over a lot are the comments that have started to come in about this blog. Most of them, this week at least, seem to come from people whose name ends in ‘X’! …MarlaX, KaylaX, KyleX, RyanX, MonicaX – and a refreshing TanyaC.

They are nice comments, and I really appreciate them, but I keep wondering about the co-incidence of the name endings. Am I missing something here? Is this something I should be asking my grand-nieces and nephews about – a modern fashion – or does it mean something in ‘blog’ language?

Because I still haven’t caught up on the world of blogs, and certainly not the world of ‘comments’. For instance, I’m really glad that these young people (and they have to be young to use words like ‘kewl’!) like my blog, but what is it about the blog that they like?

I’d love to know what they agree with, disagree with, what makes them laugh, what annoys them, what stories and connections these posts bring up for them… And are they not telling me because I haven’t responded directly? Or is it because my ‘comment form’ isn’t laid out in a user-friendly way? Dear *X, please let me know! I’d enjoy a good discussion here just as much as in my real kitchen, at home.

And that takes me back to my final ‘wondering’…

What do people see when they come to my home, I wonder? A few nights ago, a young Polish woman came to see ‘Gail’s room’, which is still vacant. She was an extremely nice young woman, and turned out to be both ‘wegetarian’ (Gint almost fell off his high stool when he heard!) and into hill walking and books. She seemed to like our house, wandering around repeating: “The house is really, really lovely”.

“Really, really lovely” in this case translates not into “fashionable” or “luxurious”, but into primrose walls in the living room, lots of books, a fair amount of living space and light, a rocking chair, sofas, pale pink walls on the stairs with a very vivid pink on the skirting and bannisters, a big, bright kitchen, mostly blue but with pine cupboards – and us, in the middle of it.

Because whoever comes here has to live with all of us.

So when this nice young woman politely said, at the end, that she would like to think about it, and she was sure I would, too, we were left wondering what she hadn’t been comfortable with – the house, or us?

And when we didn’t hear any further from her, I responded to an e-mail from a French girl, who had seen the advertisement on daft.ie and who wanted to take the room, but we couldn’t meet her beforehand because she’s in France. Today ’she’ responded, but ’she’s’ a young man, who saw my earlier advert. on daft.ie, before Dong Kwang arrived…

He – Cyrille – explains this in his e-mail, adding: “I hope that my sex will create no problem”. Dear God…

And I’ve just had a phone call from a Lithuanian girl who wants to come and see the room tomorrow night. Tonight, we have to have a ‘family conference’.

Posted in House Family | 1 Comment »

Eastern Sunshine

By noeleenm on April 25th, 2006

Last night Chang Won, who will move into our house at the end of next week, came to meet us. As he shook hands, he offered his ‘Western name’, as well…

“No”, the newest member of our family promptly corrected him. “In this house, we use only Korean names.”

The night before, Dong Kwang and myself had finally got a chance to sit down and discuss whether he really wanted to use a Western name here.

“No”, he said, honestly. “When I left Korea, I wanted to keep my Korean identity, but people say they cannot pronounce Asian names, so we choose Western names.”

I snorted, said something that Dong Kwang luckily hasn’t learned to interpret yet, and told him that, if he can accept that we’ll sometimes pronounce his name badly – as he may pronounce some Western names badly (try Noeleen with an Asian accent, for heaven’s sake) – then it is simply appalling to ask young Asians to leave something as important as their names behind them.

He beamed. And, last night, when Chang Won came to visit, Dong Kwang explained the meaning of his name.

“I was born in my home just as the sun was rising in the East, and my father said my name should be Dong Kwang – Eastern Sunshine.”

Looking at his open and intelligent face, as he went on to tell me eagerly about the history and language and culture of his country, I thought he was well named.

Both his and Chang Won’s names can be written in either the Chinese or the Korean alphabet, he explained, but more and more young couples in South Korea are choosing names for their children that can only be written in Korean – or Hangul, as the Korean language is known. …Just as in Ireland, Gaelic names are now very fashionable, like Aoife, Eoin, Fiachra, Caoife…

‘Haebaragi’, he went on, is the Hangul name for the sunflower, but is also used as a boy or girl’s name, and can only be written in the Hangul alphabet. It can, though, be translated to other languages. In English it means: ‘I only see the sun’.

By now, I was entranced.

“What does your name mean?”, I asked Chang Won. He searched for the words, consulting Dong Kwang for assistance. ‘Won’ means ‘foundation’, they agreed, after a while. ‘Chang’ means ‘bright’, they suggested rather dubiously, until Dong Kwang came up with the suggestion ‘brilliant’.

“Brilliant!”, agreed Chang Won, enthusiastically. “Brilliant foundation.” I didn’t go down the road then of explaining that many people here would understand ‘brilliant’ in this context as ‘extremely good’, rather than ‘radiant’. Another time…

We stopped talking to say goodbye to Chang Won near midnight, but Dong Kwang sat on until the early hours of this morning, telling me the story of North East Asia, and Korea, in particular.

The Chinese civilisation started around the Hwang He river, which we know as the Yellow River, the second largest in China, around 5,000 BC. Around 3,000 BC they invented an alphabet, based on shapes – the shape of the river, the shape of the mountains, etc.

“Many people lived along the river bank”, Dong Kwang continued, “and they move out then all over North East Asia to Taiwan, Korea and then Japan. All of these countries were affected by Chinese culture.”

They also, of course, developed separately, so that by the time Korea’s unique culture developed around 300 AD, only elements of their alphabet were based on the Chinese one, although some businesses, even today, require fluent Chinese, as well as Hangul. The alphabet changed even further by the time Japan was developing its own culture around 400 AD.

But, if the tide of cultural influence had swept from China to the east, the tide of power was to sweep, violently, from Japan to the west.

At the end of the 16^th century, Korea – and consequently China – had been saved from the Japanese by an extraordinary Korean naval leader, Admiral Yi Sun-sin. His navy’s command of the sea hampered the Japanese (who had invaded Korea in 1592 intending to us it as a base to conquer China), and the crushing defeats the small Korean navy administered ended the 7 year war so decisively that the Japanese fleet was totally destroyed.

It took Japan over 300 years to invade Korea again, in 1905, just five years after the 600 year old Joseon Dynasty had become the Republic of Korea.

This time they swept through Korea and China, and it was only at the end of the Second World War in 1945 that Korea was free of Japan again.

“But my country became a desert. Nothing could grow in the land. The people were starving.”

Politicians in the north of the country looked to the Soviet Union for help, while the south looked to the United States.

On the 25^th June, 1950, the Korean War began, when the North attacked the South. The first collective action by the United Nations saved South Korea, but China’s intervention on behalf of the North meant that the country ended up with its terrible border still in situ, in almost the exact same location.

Strangely it was under the leadership of a military dictator, Major General Park Chung Hee, that the economy of South Korea began to improve dramatically. By the time he was assassinated in 1979, South Korea was economically stable, but decades of authoritarian rule led to student demonstrations that culminated in the Gwangju Massacre, in which it is estimated variously that between 200 and 2,000 civilians died.

As with our own Easter Rising, the deaths of the protesters fuelled public outrage, and led directly to the first democratic elections in 1987. Ten years later, Kim Dae-jung won the presidency, and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for a series of efforts to reconcile North and South Korea. The name of the policy he pursued? …‘The Sunshine Policy’. Perhaps it came from the east. 

Posted in House Family, Korea, Korean | 1 Comment »

Pal

By noeleenm on April 24th, 2006

Yesterday was census day in Ireland – 23rd April, 2006. And I smiled to myself, thinking how typical it was that my dog, Pal, should have the first anniversary of her death highlighted in this way. Pal was a shameless seeker of attention, an affectionate, snuffling, lighthearted, insinuating presence – and she was my friend for almost 14 years.

I had brought her home from the local animal sanctuary, near Rathdrum in County Wicklow, on 5th November, 1991, exactly one month to the day following the death of my sister, Sally. It had been a month of devastating aloneness, despite the compassion of family and friends, equally ravaged by her loss and by the series of family bereavements that had preceded it.

I think that if I had decided having a baby python, two elephants, and a Bengal tiger might help, family and friends would have encouraged it. Instead, I found myself a month later driving with a friend to the animal sanctuary and collecting a cheeky little mix of Springer Spaniel and collie, the last of a litter for whom a local farmer hadn’t been able to find homes. She was seven weeks old.

Black and white, with floppy velvet ears and wet nose, she climbed all over me on the drive home, trying to lick my face, being restrained from licking the driver, trying to see out the window, trying to climb onto the back seat…

I called her Pal, because already she had become a friend, and because it was only one letter away from my sister’s pet name.

Pal was life, she was happiness, and the following morning she couldn’t seem to walk very well. I told myself it was probably the change of food and surroundings, and I took her to the vet.

She has Parvo Virus, I was told, and her chances of survival are about 30%. They put her on a drip and told me to take her home as the disease is highly contagious, to keep her warm, and to try to keep her hydrated with boiled 7-Up every 15 minutes. …If she survived the night, I was to bring her back the next day for another session on the drip.

I sat up all night with her cuddled on my lap, using an eye-dropper to get the 7-Up into the mouth of a by-now obviously very sick puppy. And I cried, prayed, and felt that if she died I would never allow myself to love anybody or anything again.

In the morning she was still alive, and I took her back to the vet for another session of feeding medication into her tiny leg. But the news was far better this time.

“I think you could try giving her some chicken soup”, the vet told me. I bought chicken breast, and made soup. Not only did Pal gulp down the soup, she started to chew on the bits of chicken meat left over. I let her.

Within a week she was not only eating solid food, she was also eating shoes, clothes on the line, wallpaper off the wall, the upholstery in my car… By Christmas, she was climbing Bray Head with me, her boundless energy forcing me into fresh air and activity that were good for my body and soul.

I learned quickly, though, that, despite the fact that she was keeping me sane in my grieving, I had been right to worry about getting a pet when my work as a freelance journalist took me away so much.

We muddled through somehow until, in March, I developed shingles. Again, family and friends rallied round, this time to nurse and feed me, and to walk Pal. But it was impossible to give the four month old puppy as much company as she needed, while minding me as well.

I lay in bed and listened to her cries downstairs, and went through every scheme I could think of to hold on to her while meeting her needs and mine.

A ‘Gingerbread Dog’ club was my first plan. I advertised for other single dog owners who would be willing to take turns in minding each other’s dogs, or walking each other’s dogs, on a barter basis. Nobody replied to such a mad advertisement.

I tried leaving her in a kennels when I had to go away – and returned to find her well, but so subdued that I swore I would never do it again.

Finally, I advertised for a new home for her, but when a really lovely couple came to see her, Pal and I sat curled up against each other in mute misery, and they kindly told me that it wouldn’t work…

Eventually, friends who lived on the old convent farm, just across the road from my home, became a second family for Pal. I dropped her into the O’Reilly’s home, and world, in the morning on my way out to work, and collected her each evening. I left her with them when I went away, and we had a joyful, yelping reunion each time I returned.

In between, we walked most of the Wicklow mountains, all of the Wicklow Way, and wore a track down to the park each morning and the beach each night.

I got used to being greeted with a rather abstracted kiss and hug and: “Hi, Noeleen. Where’s Pal?” from my younger grand-nieces and nephews, who made no real secret of who the really important person was that they were coming to visit.

But when I decided to extend my home, and share it, I worried at first about how young strangers would react to a dog. I shouldn’t have…

They each talked in their own language to this wagging-from-head-to-tail dog, with the lopsided ‘grin’ that someone once told me was a characteristic of Springer Spaniels. She greeted them from her favourite spot on the rug in the living room (if she couldn’t manage to sneak up to the landing on top of the stairs where she could really survey everything), she ‘listened’ to them, she begged food shamelessly, despite my best efforts, by placing her chin on any available knee and managing somehow to look skinny, and she taught them exactly where she liked to be scratched on belly, under chin, and behind those soft ears.

Pal went ‘to death’s door’ many times in her life, following that initial Parvo Virus scare. She almost died from turkey bones that I had stupidly let her have, she picked up poison so that her stomach lining began to literally peel away, and towards the end of her life we battled cancer. Again and again, she bounced back, until finally she could fight no longer, nor would I ask it of her more. The vet came to our house and she went to sleep, quietly and unafraid, in my arms.

The O’Reilly’s little grandson, Emmet, who had formed an extraordinary bond with Pal, asked his grandmother recently: “If I made a big, big ladder, could I climb up to heaven and see Pal again?” If he does, I responded when I heard, let me know: I’ll be on the rung beneath him.

While Pal was alive, it was difficult for me to be late home from work, particularly on a wet, cold day, because – unless she was locked in – I’d find a cold, sodden creature inside the O’Reilly’s gate when I arrived, despite the fact that she would have played and slept contentedly all day till then. When I went on holidays, she never bothered about the gate until I returned home, but, once, when I arrived in Dublin airport late one evening, Tom O’Reilly told me the next day that she’d gone out the evening before to lie waiting there.

I still feel her gentle presence quite often in the house, particularly in my room late at night, and I truly believe, like Emmet, that when I die, along with family and friends, there will be a black and white spaniel and collie mix lying waiting patiently inside Heaven’s gates for me to finally return home.

Posted in Friends, House Family, McManus Family | 2 Comments »

Sam

By noeleenm on April 23rd, 2006

The end of Easter Week has brought sunshine – enough to spend most of Saturday releasing clumps of flowers underneath the hedge from the choking weeds that have thrived over a very wet spring. From beneath has come the smell of moist, rich soil, along with primroses, bluebells, snow-in-spring, veronica, and pansies that don’t seem to realise that they’re supposed to be annuals.

Within, Sam spent the morning moving into his new room…

Sam’s real name is Dong Kwang Jung, but, like many Asian people, he chose an English name for people like us, who are too bad at languages (or too lazy?) to get our tongues round the pronunciation of Asian names.

I find this distressing. It reminds me vividly of the only scene I ever saw from the television serial ‘Roots’, which I found so horrific that I refused to watch the rest. It was the scene in which a negro slave was being whipped into submitting to his ‘Christian’ name…

So, if Sam has the patience and the wish for it, I will learn how to pronounce his real name, and use it. Maybe he won’t, because already I have made a mess of introducing him to Gint.

Sam had given me his proper name, but then said that it was easier for people here to call him Samuel or Sam. By the time I had shown him his room, and then brought him down to the kitchen to meet Gint, my poor excuse for a memory had already played tricks with the two names. I introduced him to Gint as Duncan (Dong Kwang?). When I later referred to him as Sam, Gint – not unnaturally – looked thoroughly confused, and asked: “Who’s Sam?”

Explaining where everything is in the house, asking him a little bit about his country (South Korea), and filling in his details on the census form which has to be completed today, while he got himself settled into his room, went for an interview to the local supermarket, and got a part-time job in McDonald’s meanwhile, meant we haven’t had a lot of time to talk about names yet. But, when we do, I’ll try to start all over and ask if he will teach me to pronounce his real name properly, if he’d prefer to be called by that, or if he actually likes this ‘dual identity’ – and then I’ll confuse Gint all over again, if necessary.

They got to know each other a bit better last night when both Gint and my sleep patterns were turned on their heads. I was tired from fresh air and digging by last night, and was happy to go to bed at 10pm. The normally dozy Gint came down to the kitchen at around 11pm, where he met Sam, and they talked politics and history, comparing their countries’ experience of communism. When I asked Gint this morning how he felt Sam would fit into our house, he said immediately: “Very well”, adding, “but last night it was sometimes as if we were having…” He thought a minute: “…Two different conversations?” Aah…

It happens sometimes in this house.

Sam’s English is amazingly good, though, I think, considering he’s dealing with a completely different alphabet, never mind language, and that his only other time in an English speaking country was in the United States, for two months, on a student exchange programme.

He came to Ireland just four weeks ago, spending the first month with a host family, and studying at the local ATC English Language School. He will continue to study English for the Cambridge Certificate, which he will sit in October, and will work part-time to support himself meanwhile. Non-nationals here on student visas are allowed to work 20 hours a week during school term, and full-time during school holidays.

Sam, at 26, has ‘a dream’, he explained – and I can easily see him fulfilling it. He has already completed two years of his Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Studies at his university in South Korea, where every home he says has a computer and a broadband connection. He wants to finish his degree there, and then do a post-graduate degree in Cambridge University in England, before going on to become a lecturer in computer studies and programming.

“To do this, my tutor at university says I must have very good English”, he explained.

“Is Korean similar to Chinese?”, I asked, remembering Elke’s explanations about the Japanese and Chinese alphabets.

Koreans understand written Chinese, Sam explained, but Korea has its own alphabet also, which – while character based – is completely different. Spoken Chinese would be almost as much a mystery to Koreans as it is to us, it seems.

“Korean is more like Japanese”, he explained. Chinese, it seems, uses the same sentence structure as English, while Japanese and Korean use the same word pattern.

For instance, in English we say: ‘I am a student’. In Chinese, the same order of words is used. But in Korean and Japanese the verb comes at the end of the sentence, ie. ‘I a student am’.

“That is why it is easy for Chinese people to learn English, and it is more confusing for us”, he finished. I have always known that ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ are relative terms…

Meanwhile, Sam has already made friends with other students in his language school, and one of them, also South Korean, will move in with Sam to the big twin room in two weeks time, when that young man’s period with his host family is up.

His name…? I wouldn’t dare to attempt it – but I’ll learn it, well, before he moves into this house.

Posted in House Family, Korea, Korean | No Comments »

Easter Gifts

By noeleenm on April 18th, 2006

Gint arrived down to breakfast on Easter Sunday morning, looking a bit sheepish, and handed me a box of mint chocolates. It was a gift for me from Elke, he explained, which she left with Gint before going home, with instructions to deliver it at Easter. The reason for his embarrassment was that he had told me the day before that Easter is celebrated in Latvia on Monday, not Sunday, and it took phone calls from home on Sunday morning, wishing him a Happy Easter, to make him realise he was mistaken! 

I understood perfectly. When I went to Ecuador, way back in the ‘70s, I arrived in Esmeraldas in April, just after Easter. On the first Sunday in May they celebrated Mother’s Day, and I sent a tearful message home to my own mother. … Except that Mother’s Day in Ireland is celebrated, as it is in England, on the fourth Sunday in Lent: it was originally called Mothering Sunday, and tradition has it that on that day apprentices were released to visit their mothers. I had already celebrated Mother’s Day at home with my mother before leaving for Ecuador, except that by May – in pre e-mail and pre cheap telecommunication days – March seemed like another century and Ireland like another planet. My family, of course, thought the equatorial sun had already baked my brains when they got my homesick greetings… 

So I understood Gint’s confusion, particularly as I knew precisely from where it had come… 

Katerina, from the Czech Republic, works on reception the local hotel of the Group for which I work (where Gail still works in reservations, and where Elke worked on reception till recently). She had explained to me on Good Friday that in her country, and in Slovakia, Easter Monday is the big celebratory day. One of the nicest customs, she explained with great enthusiasm, is that, on that day, the men and boys of the house leave early in the morning to return with switches plaited from willows – and ‘beat’ the womenfolk until they are given eggs… They have until 12 noon to do this, so the women must be prepared with the eggs from early morning. 

That evening the whole village gets together, men and women, and celebrate. Do the women get a chance to beat the men then, I asked? Apparently not… 

Now Katerina is no wilting female, and, as far as I know, she isn’t into bondage. She’s studying journalism, and seems to me to be an extremely well adjusted individual. This pretend ‘beating’ is simply something that reminds her of her beloved village. When she went on to explain that herself and her partner, Martin, have already plaited some willows and they will ‘make a little Easter like home’ with friends from Slovakia in Charlesland, near Greystones, where they now live, I found myself going ‘aaah…’ Over a beating…?! 

When I told Gint about this, he said they don’t have the custom of beating the women with plaited willows (he’ll probably start it when he goes home), but they too celebrate Easter on the Monday, rolling eggs down nearby hills. Hence, his confusion when he got calls from home on the Sunday – and his sheepishness. He hates to be wrong about history, geography, or cultures, his great interests.

It didn’t spoil his day out with his friends, though, and I enjoyed my day at home, ending with a meal out with friends. As I was spending Monday morning at the car boot sale with my SWAP colleagues, and then going on to visit my sister, Mary, and her family in Wicklow, it meant that Gint and I would not have celebrated Easter together at all. So we arranged to share a meal and an Easter bottle of wine in the house around 8pm.

…But, in the course of a walk along the river in Wicklow with Mary (as we fell about laughing over a visit to her doctor in which Mary’s memory was tested, because of a very unfunny fall in which she banged her head very badly), we were approached by two young German girls who were looking for the local hostel. We directed them and carried on, only to meet them again later. The hostel had closed down. They were exhausted, didn’t seem to have the money for a B&B, and we decided, after consultation, that I would drive them to the next closest hostel in Rathdrum. We left them resting by the river while Mary and myself went back for my car. 

As we walked back, we got to talking about whether or not there would be beds available in Rathdrum, about how it would be if some of the young people from our family found themselves stranded abroad without a bed for the night, and about how there’s an empty twin room in my house right now… 

Ingrid and Steffie ended up back in my house for the night – the best Easter present I could have given Gint, who brightened up considerably from his loneliness since Michele and Elke and Gail have left. The girls will head on to Belfast tomorrow morning, as Gint and I return to work. But the talk and the laughter tonight, and the feeling of a quiet, full house around me as I write this in the early hours of Tuesday morning, was a good way to end this Easter time. 

Posted in Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, McManus Family | 1 Comment »

Easter

By noeleenm on April 17th, 2006

At last… The fasting is finished because the mourning is finished, and with the end of Lent has come brighter, warmer, clearer weather – and hope. …Hope for renewal, inside and out, hope for regrowth, hope for resurrection…

The fine weather and the days stretching towards summer’s brightness meant that on Saturday I could spend most of the day cleaning windows, washing and rehanging curtains, and working in the garden. A lone clump of primroses, uncovered beneath the hedge in my garden when the choking weeds were torn away, was a sign of that hope.

Primroses always remind me of my father. He used to take us as children to the woods on the western slope of Bray Head to gather clumps of primroses, which he would then plant in the garden. There was no money to spare for buying plants then, and there were enough primroses – and woods – to go round. Now they are protected, as the lonely, lovely places they grow in become more and more rare. The brilliant colours of the polyanthus on their proud stems seem vulgar in comparison, but perhaps it is just that the gentleness of the primrose reminds me of the gentleness of our Dad, and the joy of having him – hard worker that he was – to ourselves for a whole day in the woods.

I had been to the recycling earlier, taking paper and cardboard, and Tetrapaks and plastics (bottles and cans to another recycling centre, later), and on Sunday, finally, a reasonable clear-out of the attic floor space at least! This clearing out continued on Monday when we (SWAP) went to another car boot sale, in nearby Greystones this time, to raise funds for our anti-building on the flood plain campaign. What we didn’t sell today (Monday) will go to a charity shop tomorrow to help another worthy cause.

This ‘spring-cleaning’ is to me a vital part of renewal as removing clutter from the house seems to correspond with removing clutter from my mind.

By Sunday night, though, I was quite stiff and sore, despite a shower and fresh clothes, as I went to church for the Easter Vigil Mass. I forgot my sore body then as my spirit was refreshed with the sudden burst of flame for the Easter fire at the bottom of the darkened church, then the Easter candle lit from it, and then the candles of everyone in the congregation till the church was a mass of flickering light as the concelebrating priests, the altar boys and girls, and the lay ministers all processed up the church together.

The readings followed, with the magnificent sung Gloria, then the blessing of the Baptismal water (often a baby is baptised at this point, but this year it didn’t happen) and renewal of Baptismal promises by the congregation, again with lighted candles, and the Eucharist.

Like at Christmas, this ceremony starts at 9pm, whereas when I was a child it would have started at midnight, so I was home by about 10.30pm, with still an hour and a half to go before I could drink wine again! So I settled down to my laptop to catch up on some long-promised e-mails and I was still writing at midnight. Then, to my surprise, I found I didn’t actually want a drink! I had been literally longing for a glass of wine for the past few weeks, but as soon as I could have one – it just didn’t appeal…

Humans!

So I went to bed, sober, around 1am on Easter Sunday morning, and got up to a planned quiet day. Gint was going off for the day with some Latvian friends, and I anxiously advised him to avoid Dublin city centre because of the planned military parade to commemorate the Easter Rising of 1916. This is the first time in over 30 years that such a parade has been held in Dublin because of fears that it would provoke greater divisions between Northern Ireland and the Republic. It’s a sign of how far we’ve come that it could be contemplated this year again.

I worried in vain anyway because the parade, thank God, went off peacefully with thousands of spectators applauding an army of which we all felt proud. Ireland’s peacekeeping efforts with the UN in over eighty countries around the world was acknowledged, but we were able also to remember with pride and gratitude the men   who laid down their lives to fight for our freedom in 1916. It wasn’t even a popular cause with most Irish people back then: it is generally acknowledged that it was the execution of these men – poets and teachers, rather than soldiers – by British firing squads, in the days following their surrender, that turned the tide of public opinion in their favour.

I didn’t go into the parade, nor did I see it on television, but I was riveted by replays of radio recordings made on the 50^th anniversary of the Rising with the people who lived through it – people like Nora Connolly, then the twelve year old daughter of James Connolly. She acted as a messenger for the leaders of the Rising, travelling to Tipperary with her younger sister. When they got back to Dublin on the Friday, they found the city in flames and the news of the leaders was that some said they were all dead, some said they were captured…

“And my father…?”, questioned this trying-to-be-brave young girl. I could hear the remembered fear in the woman’s voice, fifty years later, a fear that was unfortunately fully justified as her father was executed as he lay on a stretcher, badly wounded. And I imagined how I would have felt if it was my father, who also loved this country with a deep and abiding tenderness, and I went outside into the garden again, and touched the primroses with love and gratefulness to them all.

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Good Friday

By noeleenm on April 14th, 2006

Today the mood had changed in church, to fit Good Friday. Another of the parish choirs, dressed in black, sang intricate unaccompanied melodies that tolled like a funeral bell, with the occasional solo voice soaring above the rest of the harmony with an eerie, longing beauty.

In between the Gospel of St. John told the story of the Passion; communion was distributed by some 15 Ministers of the Eucharist, as well as the three priests and the deacon; and then the long, long queue formed to kiss or touch the cross. When I was a child, the priests went along the altar rails with small crucifixes, allowing each person in turn to kiss the crucifix, before wiping it and moving on to the next person. Now a large cross, with no figure, is mounted at the top of the church and people take it in turns to touch it, generally standing a moment in prayer or reflection as they do so.

What do most people think of, when they stand there, I wonder? Do they think of the Stations of the Cross in their own lives, or in the lives of neighbours and friends – illness, marriage break-ups, the loss of a child…? Do they think of scenes like those in Mel Gibson’s film: ‘The Passion of the Christ’? Do they think of places like Guantamo Bay, or Death Row filled only by the poor, or children like Jaime Ruiz the nine-year old child labourer from Nicaragua featured on Trocaire’s Lenten Appeal box, or the children who were scarred irrevocably by sexual abuse in our own society by family members or clergy…? Do they think of the lonely, the hopeless, the helpless, the suicidal, the bereaved, the frightened – and of those responsible for it…?

I know that I think of them all when I touch the cross on Good Friday. And I think of the man who experienced loneliness, torture, pain, betrayal, fear, and finally a terrible and humiliating death on a cross.

Many years ago, someone remarked to me that Jesus must have smiled a lot, and had a good sense of humour, to attract so many people to him. Years later, I saw a lovely pencil sketch of Christ, with his head thrown back, laughing, and remembered that intuition.

…But when you’re down at the bottom of the heap, when you’re beaten, or betrayed, or in pain, or simply lonely, then it helps to know that he was there, too…

Today is a day for living with the pain of the world.

Tomorrow night will come Resurrection in a glorious liturgy of bells and incense and fire and candlelight.

…But, outside the church walls, it is we have to roll the stone away from the tombs of the world’s suffering.

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Holy Thursday

By noeleenm on April 14th, 2006

This is Holy Week in the Christian calendar – Seachtain Mór, or Big Week, in the Irish language. For all of my childhood, and much of my adult life, our secular world faded into, and became indistinguishable from, the rhythm of the church’s liturgies, particularly towards the end of this week. Work and home life revolved around the times of the Easter ceremonies, culminating in Midnight Mass on Easter Saturday night.

Times have changed. For many, many people it has become a secular holiday – as Christmas is rapidly becoming, too – and most churches no longer overflow onto the street outside, as they once did. Yet churches are still crowded, within at least, as people return to the great mysteries of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Last night, the Vincent Browne Show on RTE Radio 1 discussed the DaVinci Code. I like this show: it tends to be stimulating, and – while appallingly contemptuous of some of his guests at times – Vincent Browne has a strong sense of the injustices committed against the most vulnerable in our society. He also, while apparently an agnostic, has a huge interest in the Bible, and did a very interesting series with a panel of believer and non-believers some time back – perhaps last Lent…?

I found last night’s discussion fascinating, with guests as varied as Catherine McHenry from Opus Dei and Tim Freke who doesn’t believe that the historical Christ existed at all, who thinks the Gospels are just figments of our imagination.

In between you had Sean Freyne, an expert on the Scriptures, who lectures in Trinity College, and Dr. David Hutchinson Edgar, who is an expert in Early Christianity and who has recently run a course exploring the DaVinci Code in Trinity! A live playback of the show is available on the RTE website (above), but some of the few things everyone seemed to agree on is that the DaVinci Code is a mixture of fact and fiction; that Mary Magdalene was probably a very important member of the Jesus’ movement but that it is extremely unlikely that she was his wife; and that the Gnostic gospels – many of them written by women from the Jesus Movement – were increasingly ignored as Christians accepted the patriarchal values of the society in which they lived.

I liked Sean Freyne’s contribution to the programme, particularly. He seemed to me not to dodge the hard questions, but to be quite certain of his scholarship – and the faith it underpinned. I especially liked his reference to a quote from a Jewish philosopher, which I understood as referring to people getting lost in trying to ‘name’ God, rather than living out what his presence might mean for us. Perhaps, though, we need both – the head and the heart.

Ritual is probably more about the heart, but it is important in all our lives. Overlaid on belief, it can be soul-touchingly moving.

I was at Mass in a little church in County Leitrim for Palm Sunday. The crucifix and all of the statues and Stations of the Cross were covered in purple cloth for Lent as we used to do in our church for years. Palms were given out, and the procession formed up to the altar, by seven little boys and girls from that parish who were preparing to make their First Holy Communion in May. It was simple and moving, a visible handing on of faith to the young by the generations that filled the little church.

In our parish, the scale is different, but the intent is the same. Two boys and one girl from the 127 children who made their Confirmation a few weeks ago, and some of the smaller children who are preparing for First Communion, were involved – along with adults of all ages – in the ritual laying of the altar and bringing up of the gifts for Holy Thursday’s ceremony. The choir who sang at the ceremony were mostly thirty-somethings, young mothers and fathers who wanted their children to have the same support of faith that they had grown up with. They sang gentle hymns reminiscent of the early days of the Charismatic Movement, when a huge group met in the old Quaker Hall in Dublin, with soft voices swelling around the acoustically perfect chamber there.

The main celebrant, Fr. George, used a beautiful painting of Jesus washing Peter’s feet to preach his sermon. Jesus’ face is reflected clearly in the basin of water as he bends to his task, but what Fr. George talked about first were Peter’s hands. One is raised almost in protest, as he tried to stop ‘the Master’ kneeling before him, but the other is laid, helplessly, on Jesus’ bent shoulder, receiving the love that put him there. Most of us are helpless before love.

Unusually, we had no washing of the feet this Holy Thursday in our church. Instead, to keep the ritual fresh and the intent behind it obvious, lay Ministers of the Eucharist took up their stations around the church with bowls of water. The congregation was invited to come up, and each person dipped his or her thumb in the water and then turned to the person behind, signing the Sign of the Cross on that person’s forehead, with the words ‘May the Lord bless and protect you.’

It was simple and effective, a chain of blessing going around the congregation with each person involved in nurturing another. People walked back to their seats, still smiling, having blessed and been blessed.

There are many ways of blessing people – words, silent prayer, hugs, listening… Whatever they are, whatever you need as you read this post, I wish it for you this Holy Thursday:-

May the Lord bless and protect you.

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People Before Profit Alliance

By noeleenm on April 13th, 2006

There wasn’t a big crowd at the meeting, but there were big rainbow coloured banners carrying the word ‘PEACE’ emblazoned on them behind the speakers. There was a high percentage of young, idealistic students, dressed in the ‘denim and whatever’ garb that all young people wear as a uniform, sporting the occasional beard.

There were also some older people, mostly soberly dressed and intent, including a representative from Pizarro, the development consortium that has applied to put high density building on the flood plain downriver from our homes.

It wasn’t a reborn hippie movement, although it had some of that feel about it (and there was a lot of idealism in the old Flower Power movement). It was instead the inaugural meeting of ‘People Before Profit’. SWAP, formed by our local community to fight high density building on the flood plain, had been invited to speak at it.

We had been contacted by a local community activist, a former (disillusioned, with reason) member of the Labour Party, and, for a short while, a member of the Green Party. Carmel had been a member of our core group in SWAP for a while, until the pressure of studies took over, but had contacted us again to invite us to speak at this launch.

Dr. Colmán Etchingham of the ‘Save Viking Waterford Action Group’ (SVWAG), who lectures on history in University College, Maynooth, chaired the meeting. Also at the top table, along with Carmel, were speakers, Richard Boyd-Barrett of the ‘Dun Laoghaire Save Our Seafront’ group; Catherine Murphy independent TD for North Kildare, since she took over Charlie McCreevy’s seat (former Minister for Finance, and now European Commissioner); and ‘our guy’, Adrian McKenna from SWAP.

In the mission statement for ‘People Before Profit’, which Carmel sent us beforehand, it states variously that: “Its aim is to reverse neo-liberal policies which place wealth creation for the few over the welfare of communities in Ireland”, and “Its aim is to deepen the links between community groups.” Not knowing a neo-liberal policy from a ‘Neonympha mitchellii francisci’, we latched on to the latter aim, which is about People Power – something we’re beginning to flex at last in our previously meek community.

Each speaker described local scenarios that illustrated what ‘People before Profit’ define as ‘neo-liberal policies’, e.g. ‘the privatisation and run down of public amenities’, and ‘the destruction of the environment and our heritage through a flawed planning process’. These we have come to know well.

Adrian, myself and the rest of our core group in SWAP had spent the previous evening at a so-called Public Consultation Day regarding proposed flood protection works in Bray Town Hall.

Two years ago I would have felt the kind of things that were being said at the People Before Profit meeting were a little over the top. It came both from the platform and from the floor, including an elderly gentleman, accompanied by his wife, both of whom looked at if they would have been more at home at a shareholders meeting of one of the Big Four banks, but who spoke with passionate anger about the irresponsibility of the people who are in power in our country, and in our town.

Now, a year into fighting this campaign, I have no trouble identifying with the cynicism and frustration. Nor did Adrian.

So we signed up for further information/involvement, including attendance at the next meeting, scheduled for a fortnight’s time, at which policy on how to implement this People Power will be evolved. But, at that point, something that had been raised several times during the course of the meeting was proposed and seconded from the floor – that People Before Profit will put forward their own candidates in the next election.

There we had a difficulty. We have agreed to support the four local councillors, from two parties – the Greens and Sinn Fein – who have supported us all along in our fight against the Fianna Fail/Fine Gael/Labour block who have rezoned this land against our wishes, and against all expert advice on flood plains. Two of those councillors will stand for the next General Election. We felt that we did not want to take away from their vote, and perhaps help the very people who have forced us into this tiring, frightening fight.

When I explained this view from the floor, there was some further discussion, with some insistence on the proposal, which was seconded, being put to a vote. Eventually, though, it was agreed that this would be discussed fully at the next meeting: the issue is too important to rush it through.

Adrian and myself discussed it on the way home with another neighbour, Tim, agreeing that we’ll have to thrash it out again with the core group. One of those, though, has already expressed deep reservations about People Before Profit. It is the Socialist Workers Party, or an off-shoot of it, under another name, he insists…

So I did a Google on the People Before Profit Alliance. It brought up an article on IndyMedia, which I would have expected to be in favour. Instead, the report was highly critical, including many of the comments. The only other two sites that were mentioned here were both belonging to the Socialist Workers Party. Interestingly, when I did a Google on People Before Profit (with the word Alliance), it threw up a much more favourable report – also on IndyMedia. The argument in the following comments is interesting…

The jury is still out, as far as I am concerned. I certainly don’t want our community group, and its concerns, used to further the political aims of any party. But, if we can influence the People Before Profit Alliance in Wicklow to stay free of any one political party, while using the collective bargaining power of all our votes, then this might be a very viable way to build real People Power before the next election.

PS. ‘Neonympha mitchellii francisci’ is a member of the Lepidoptera family, i.e. butterflies and moths. It is a small, dark brown butterfly with conspicuous ‘eye spots’ on the lower surfaces of the wings. Its common name is ‘Saint Francis’ Satyr’ and it is found in the sandhills of Cumberland and Hoke counties, North Carolina. ‘Just so as you know…

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Silverlocks and the Three Bears

By noeleenm on April 11th, 2006

Last Friday I went to Leitrim, the least populated county in Ireland. It’s a county of lakes and light, of reeds and willows, of primroses in spring and wild orchids in summer, and of air so clean that you sleep like a log there.

It’s John McGahern country. John McGahern, who died on the 30th March, was one of Ireland’s finest writers of latter years. His novel ‘The Dark’ was banned after its publication in 1965, resulting in his forced resignation from teaching, but he went from strength to strength as a writer: his novel ‘Amongst Women’ was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1990. It was his latest book, ‘Memoir’, though, that touched most people most deeply, I believe.

It’s a tender, heartbreaking account of his childhood in Leitrim, with a domineering father (“…reading for pleasure was not approved of. It was thought to be dangerous, like pure laughter”), and a gentle, beloved, schoolteacher mother, who taught him the names of the flowers and birds they passed on the way to school, and whom he lost at the age of nine – a loss that he mourned till his death just twelve days ago.

It’s also the county of traditional musicians like flute player, John Lee, fiddler, Charlie Lennon, and the McNamara family (who play flute, uileann pipes, fiddle, and concertina), and of Turlough O’Carolan, the blind 17th century itinerant harpist who composed some of the loveliest (for me, at least) Irish music ever heard. Of all strange places, I found a great account recently of Turlough O’Carolan’s life and music on a holiday website – http://www.holidayhound.com/editorials/t1lmcaradvice.htm.

…And, for the past two years, it has been home to one of my oldest (in terms of the length of our friendship, not the years of her life!) friends, Clíona McLoughlin.

Clíona is one of a family of eleven children for whom Irish was the language of their home, even though she grew up in my own town of Bray in County Wicklow. Her mother’s family, though, stretches back through generations in Spiddal in Connemara, where Clíona and her siblings spent every childhood summer. Her father, a Dublin man, had such a great love of the Irish language and culture that he became ‘more Connemara than the Connemaranians’, building his own Galway Hooker – http://www.galway.net/galwayguide/todo/sights/galwayhookers/ – on which many a great ‘sessiún’ was held: traditional music is as much a part of the Galway Hooker culture, as the sea itself.

They have always been a close family, seeming to move – like a swarm of bees – in mass migration to follow where some of the family have gone before. This time it’s Leitrim. Aideen, the eldest, moved there first, with her partner, Liam, and built a lovely bungalow in Ballinagleragh, overlooking Lough Allen. Since then, two sisters – Fiona and Clíona – and two brothers – Fionn and Louis – have already followed, with their families, as well as some of the next generation.

So a weekend in Leitrim automatically meant finding oneself in the middle of large family gatherings, whether lunches or talking and drinking around the fire or walking through the hills around Lough Allen, and it was funny to see the similarities among the siblings – especially the sisters – and the differences.

A love of discussion, a love of music, and a love of animals have to be counted among the similarities. Clíona has three small dogs, all from the local animal sanctuary – Tika, Thelma and Louise (Thelma’s daughter) – and four cats, although I can only remember Rua’s name. Aideen has one dog, a lovely young collie called Dandy, with whom I enjoyed a mutual admiration society (he admired the way I scratched behind his ears and I fell totally for his steady intelligent gaze and his abandoned delight when he got out for a walk), and, I think, three cats, all pedigree. Fiona has one cat, Felix, a painting of a beloved Cocker Spaniel called Toffee, who is still mourned, and two horses – the magnificent Buck Rogers, a sixteen year old retired steeple chaser, and Sam, a twenty-nine year old pet.

The differences between the sisters’ lives can best be seen in their houses. All are comfortable, all are beautiful, but they are as distinctive in size and style as the sisters themselves, and as the various stratums of society that are emerging in modern day Ireland. It reminded me of the story of the Three Bears…

Fiona and Ron’s house has a gymnasium on the top floor, and a wine cellar and games room in the basement, with spacious living rooms on the ground floor and wonderfully decorated bedrooms above. There’s plenty of room in the grounds for the horses’ paddock and stables.

Aideen and Liam’s house is a comfortable bungalow overlooking the lake, with light streaming in from all sides.

Clíona’s house is a two storey cottage (which she plans to extend because of the size of the McLoughlin clan), where you sleep under sloping panelled ceilings under the roof. It has a cosy, book-filled living room, and a light spacious kitchen with its dresser full of sparkling crockery, and the animals wander in and out of the long field behind the house, leading down towards the lake.

All three homes are hospitable places, where a guest feels warmed and wanted, but it was naturally in Clíona’s little cottage that our talk went on long into the night of old friends and new books, and loves and losses, and it was in Clíona’s cottage that we sat over breakfast in pyjamas and dressing gowns, talking again until it was time to dress for lunch in one of her sisters’ houses.

I have often wondered whether a profession chooses a person, or a person chooses a profession. I became a freelance journalist, and I still don’t know if it was because I ask so many questions. Clíona became a nurse, specialising in midwifery, and spent several years nursing in Bangladesh among the poorest of the poor. I always feel when I meet up with her again that whatever aches of mind or body I feel will be made well by her particular healing presence, as well as her vast experience.

…And, when I drove back down the road towards home on Sunday evening, I watched the glorious red setting sun in my mirror going down over the lakes of Leitrim, then the pink sky of the West almost until I could see the red glow of Dublin’s lights in front of me – and I knew that back there, beyond that setting sun, I had left a home in which stray dogs and cats and people will always find a welcome.

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