I tell people I have a good memory, and that’s less true than it used to be. I’m a bit forgetful. I’m also differently forgetful these days.
It used to be that I’d file stuff away in a mental cabinet and retrieve it later, usually right after the time I needed it … people’s names, titles of movies, passwords, the season finale of whatever series that won’t be back until next year.
There’s evidence to prove I’ve been to hundreds of concerts – a book full of ticket stubs and set-lists and anecdotes from friends who went with me. But I don’t actually remember being at lots of those concerts. I suppose I don’t remember where I put my mental filing cabinet.
At the same time, there’s other stuff I remember effortlessly – my first phone number 64604, the shade of lipstick I bought at the Mac store in 2003, what you were wearing and what I was wearing when we went to see that movie, what I heard you said about me to someone you didn’t know would tell me. That goes in a whole other filing cabinet.
This realization reminded me of Nora Ephron’s collection of essays, “I Remember Nothing,” published in 2010 before she died. I remember I bought it at an airport bookstore, but I don’t remember where I was going. This morning, I discovered that I remembered to bring it with me to Mexico.
My favorite entry in this book isn’t an essay; it’s a list of what Nora Ephron will miss and what she won’t, after she’s gone. I suppose it should have been a sign to us in 2010 that she wouldn’t be with us for much longer.
Now, I have no intention of dying anytime soon, but if I were to make such a list today (it might change tomorrow) it would include the following:
What I’ll Miss
Sophie – Scott – Scott singing – Dogs – Texts from my brother – Phone calls with my parents – Strangford Lough – Dreams of living in Strangford, Portaferry, Ardglass or Groomsport – Slippers – The Christmas Tree – An Ulster Fry – French Toast – Butter & Marmalade on Toast – A whistling kettle – A turf fire – The pub – The idea of a turf fire in a pub – Vegetable soup & wheaten bread in the pub – A session in the pub – The first sight of the little church on the road to Ballintoy – Reading in bed – Clouds the color of buttermilk hanging over Lough Neagh – The Glens of Antrim – Botanic Gardens on a cold, dry morning in Belfast – the Arizona desert in December – The sun rising over Lake Chapala – Online friends that become best friends in real life – Pajamas – Shirts fluttering on a clothesline – Windchimes – Castlerock – Rediscovering something Seamus Heaney wrote – Tea in a china cup – Traybakes – The Last Waltz on Thanksgiving Day – Boots – Scarves – Sunglasses- Second chances – Davy Spillane on the Uilleann Pipes – A good hair day – Bluebells – Church bells pealing in old villages – Van Morrison’s “When the Healing Has Begun” – Airport arrivals – Finding the right word at the right time – The craic – The first cup of coffee.
Over forty years ago, I made three purchases that would change the trajectory of my life – an InterRail travel pass, a 35mm camera, and a hi-fi stereo system. At the time, I lived in a red-brick terraced house on Ridgeway Street in Belfast along with four nerdy male engineering students who tolerated my girliness – but didn’t really “get” me. At the lower end, stood The Lyric Theater and at the top, The Belfast Wine Company, well-stocked and convenient. In between, the row of houses teemed with university students, all of us imaginative misfits, attending class only when there was nothing else better to do. There was often something better to do. I recall one evening when we spilled out of our houses onto Ridgeway Street to pelt each other with water balloons. Watching us, the frontman of Thin Lizzy, a very cool and somewhat bemused Phil Lynott, leaning against the door jamb of a house full of Derry girls. I have no idea why he was there, but he was in no hurry to leave. Because this was in the days before the Internet and smart phones, before Facebook and a steady stream of random pics of food and famous people, the only photograph is the image in my mind’s eye. There he is, a few doors down from mine – a rock star – smoking a cigarette and smiling as we soaked each other on the kind of Spring evening that transforms Northern Ireland into a Game of Thrones filming location.
Decades later, most of the vinyl records bought with my university grant, are stowed away in cardboard boxes in my father’s shed Castledawson. Some, Bob Dylan’s Bringing it All Back Home, made it to Mexico. Faded and stashed between the pages of an old diary is the Inter-Rail pass that took me to places that have stayed in my heart to this day – behind the Berlin Wall, Paris, Florence, Rome, Capri, the Greek islands. The 35mm camera? It was stolen from my first apartment the summer I arrived in the USA. It would be another 30 years before it was replaced when for my 50th birthday, the year after my breast cancer diagnosis – because he thought I might be ready to take stock and see things differently – my late husband gave me a 35mm Nikon.
Back in the saddle, I enrolled with a great friend in a college photography class. I loved it. It required us to pay attention to shapes and patterns and all the lines and curves we might otherwise miss going about our daily business. Like a couple of teenagers, we competed for an “A” from our photography teacher, a badass with a Nikon who was also dealing with breast cancer with neither time nor patience for pink ribbons and platitudes. I loved her. Less technician than artist, she had a penchant for Photoshop and its post-processing capabilities that she knew would made us look more competent than we were. With a dead-pan dead-on sense of what mattered, she inspired me to do my homework and to never miss class. Bristling at our predictable photographs shot unacceptably straight-on, she would remind us, with a sigh, that “photography is just light.” We just needed to find the light. Photography, she said, was “writing with light.”
I wanted to find that light, the thing Amyn Nasser describes as the photographer’s magic:
He has the ability to stir the soul with light and shape and color. To create grand visual moments out of small and simple things, and to infuse big and complicated subjects with unpretentious elegance. He respects classic disciplines, while at the same time insists on being fast, modern, and wild.
Believing in us the way the best teachers do, she assigned as homework the week of Thanksgiving, a “prepositional scavenger hunt.” She instructed us to shoot from various angles – against, across, beyond, beneath, around, behind, below, between, inside, outside, on top of, toward, through, upon . . .
So it was that before sunset on Thanksgiving , I found myself wandering the grounds of the Arizona State Capitol, eventually stopping beneath a canopy of shimmering green and pink.
I don’t remember how long I sat there in the shade of those trees, looking skyward and thinking, but it was long enough for prepositions and perspectives to give way to a kind of gratitude. For the day that’s in it, Thanksgiving has something to do with wherever you find that moment of transcendence – among trees in a desert city or at the break of day on the edge of Mexico’s largest lake.
Thanks is the prayer of relief that help was on the way, that either the cavalry arrived, or that the plates of the earth shifted and that somehow, you got your sense of humor back, or you avoided the car that was right in front of you that you looked about to hit. And so it could be the pettiest, dumbest thing, but it could also be that you get the phone call that the diagnosis was much, much, much better than you had been fearing. And you say the full prayer, and its entirety, is: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
But for reasons of brevity, I just refer to it as Thanks. It’s amazement and relief that you caught a break, that your family caught a break, that you didn’t have any reason to believe that things were really going to be OK, and then they were and you just can’t help but say thank you.
At the end of the first year of the COVID crisis, Rabbi Bentzy Stolik urged his congregation in Olney, Md, to start each day by getting “on the treadmill of gratitude,” to get in – all in – to the spirit of a season that nudges us to take stock, a toll of all that we should appreciate with optimism for brighter days ahead. The pandemic forced us to reconsider and replace known ways with new routines and rituals; it inspired new reasons – reminders – to be thankful – for all we had previously taken for granted – hugs and handshakes, hanging out and happy hour, multiple trips to the grocery store on the same day and meetings without masks; hair appointments and pedicures and parties and graduations and weddings and funerals – and our kids going off to school every day. We promised ourselves, didn’t we, that we’d never take those things for granted again. I wonder if we’ve maybe forgotten some of that, which reminds me of a lovely minute or two from “Waking Ned Devine.”
The hapless Irish Lottery official has just arrived unannounced at Ned Devine’s funeral, right as Jackie O’Shea is beginning the eulogy. Quick on his feet and realizing his scheme to cash in on Ned’s winning lottery ticket is about to come crashing down – Jackie pauses. He looks over at his best friend, Michael O’Sullivan, who is posing as Ned, and as an easy smile spreads across his face, he looks out into the congregation and begins:
As we look back on the life of . . .
Michael O’Sullivan was my great friend. But I don’t ever remember telling him that. The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. To sit at the front and hear what was said, maybe say a few things yourself. Michael and I grew old together. But at times, when we laughed, we grew young. If he was here now, if he could hear what I say, I’d congratulate him on being a great man, and thank him for being a friend.
Some of the best money I ever spent was in 1982. Flush with my university grant, I made three purchases that would change the trajectory of my life – a Eurail pass, a 35mm camera, and a hi-fi stereo system. At the time, I lived in a red-brick terraced house on Ridgeway Street in Belfast along with four nerdy male engineering students who tolerated my girliness but didn’t really “get” me. At the lower end, was The Lyric Theater and at the top, an off-license, The Belfast Wine Company, well-stocked and convenient. In between, the houses teemed with university students, all of us imaginative misfits, showing up to our classes only when there was nothing else better to do. And there was often something better to do such as that evening when we spilled out of our houses onto Ridgeway Street, pelting each other with water balloons. Looking on, the frontman of Thin Lizzy, a very cool and somewhat bemused Phil Lynott, leaning against the door jamb of a house full of art students from Derry. I have no idea what he was doing there, but he was in no hurry to leave. Because this was in the days before the Internet and smart phones, before Facebook and a steady stream of photos of food and famous people, the only photograph is the image I see as plain as day in my mind’s eye. There he was, a few doors down from mine – a rock star – smoking a cigarette and smiling as we soaked each other on the kind of Spring evening that transforms Northern Ireland into a Game of Thrones filming location.
Decades later, most of the vinyl records bought with my university grant, are stowed away in cardboard boxes in my father’s shed Castledawson, and some made it to Mexico, like Bob Dylan’s Bringing it All Back Home. Faded and stashed between the pages of an old diary is the Eurail pass that took me to places that have stayed in my heart to this day – Berlin, Paris, Florence, Rome, Capri, the Greek islands. The 35mm camera? It was stolen from my first apartment the summer I arrived in the USA. It would be another 30 years before it was replaced when for my 50th birthday, the year after my breast cancer diagnosis – because he thought I was ready to take stock and see things differently – my late husband gave me a 35mm Nikon.
Back in the saddle, I enrolled with a great friend in a college photography class. I loved it. It required us to pay attention to shapes and patterns and all the lines and curves we might otherwise miss going about our daily business. Like a couple of teenagers, we competed for an “A” from our photography teacher, a badass with a Nikon who was also dealing with breast cancer. Like me, she had neither time nor patience for pink ribbons and platitudes. I loved her. Less technician than artist, she had a penchant for Photoshop and its post-processing capabilities that she knew would made us look more competent than we were. With a dead-pan dead-on sense of what was important, she inspired me to do my homework and to never miss class. Bristling at our predictable photographs shot unacceptably straight-on, she would remind us, with a sigh, that “photography is just light.” It was just light that we just needed to find. Photography – she told me – was “writing with light.”
I wanted to find that light, the thing Amyn Nasser describes as the photographer’s magic:
He has the ability to stir the soul with light and shape and color. To create grand visual moments out of small and simple things, and to infuse big and complicated subjects with unpretentious elegance. He respects classic disciplines, while at the same time insists on being fast, modern, and wild.
Believing in us the way the best teachers do, she assigned as homework the week of Thanksgiving, a “prepositional scavenger hunt.” She instructed us to shoot from various angles – against, across, beyond, beneath, around, behind, below, between, inside, outside, on top of, toward, through, upon . . .
So it was that before sunset on Thanksgiving , I found myself wandering the grounds of the Arizona State Capitol, eventually stopping beneath a canopy of shimmering green and pink.
I don’t remember how long I sat there in the shade of those trees, looking skyward and thinking, but I remember it was long enough for prepositions and perspectives to give way to a kind of gratitude. For the day that’s in it, Thanksgiving has something to do with wherever you find that moment of transcendence – among trees in a desert city or at the break of day on the edge of Mexico’s largest lake.
Thanks is the prayer of relief that help was on the way, that either the cavalry arrived, or that the plates of the earth shifted and that somehow, you got your sense of humor back, or you avoided the car that was right in front of you that you looked about to hit. And so it could be the pettiest, dumbest thing, but it could also be that you get the phone call that the diagnosis was much, much, much better than you had been fearing. And you say the full prayer, and its entirety, is: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
But for reasons of brevity, I just refer to it as Thanks. It’s amazement and relief that you caught a break, that your family caught a break, that you didn’t have any reason to believe that things were really going to be OK, and then they were and you just can’t help but say thank you.
At the end of the first year of the coronavirus crisis, Rabbi Bentzy Stolik urged his congregation in Olney, Md, to start each day by getting “on the treadmill of gratitude,” to get in – all in – to the spirit of a season that nudges us to take stock, a toll of all that we should appreciate with optimism for brighter days ahead. The pandemic forced us to reconsider and replace known ways with new routines and rituals; it inspired new reasons – reminders – to be thankful – for all we had previously taken for granted – hugs and handshakes, hanging out and happy hour, multiple trips to the grocery store on the same day and meetings without masks; hair appointments and pedicures and parties and graduations and weddings and funerals – and our kids going off to school every day. We promised ourselves, didn’t we, that we’d never take those things for granted again. I wonder if we’ve maybe forgotten some of that, which reminds me of a lovely minute or two from “Waking Ned Devine.”
The hapless Irish Lottery official has just arrived unannounced at Ned Devine’s funeral, right as Jackie O’Shea is beginning the eulogy. Quick on his feet and realizing his scheme to cash in on Ned’s winning lottery ticket is about to come crashing down – Jackie pauses. He looks over at his best friend, Michael O’Sullivan, who is posing as Ned, and as an easy smile spreads across his face, he looks out into the congregation and begins:
As we look back on the life of . . .
Michael O’Sullivan was my great friend. But I don’t ever remember telling him that. The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. To sit at the front and hear what was said, maybe say a few things yourself. Michael and I grew old together. But at times, when we laughed, we grew young. If he was here now, if he could hear what I say, I’d congratulate him on being a great man, and thank him for being a friend.
To my great friends, thank you. Happy Thanksgiving.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is…
T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”
Almost a decade ago, I enrolled in a college photography class. Not a bucket list kind of thing by most standards, but it was something I had been meaning to do for over thirty years, but had never been able to make time for it, too busy being busy and bemoaning the pace of life as a woman trying to play equally well the roles of mother, wife, daughter, sister, best friend, teacher. At the same time, I had also been waiting for Tom Petty to show up on my doorstep and beg me to be one of his Heartbreakers.
My friend signed up with me, and like a couple of teenagers, we competed for an “A” from our photography teacher, a badass with a Nikon. Like me, she was dealing with breast cancer with neither time nor patience for pink ribbons. Less technician than artist, she had a penchant for Photoshop and its post-processing capabilities that she knew would made us look competent. Her dead-pan dead-on sense of what was important inspired me to do my homework and never to miss a class. Bristling at our predictable photographs shot unacceptably straight-on, she would remind us, with a sigh, that “photography is just light.” It was just light, and we just needed to find it and appreciate it when we did. Photography was “writing with light.”
I wanted to find that light, to be the photographer with the magic Amyn Nasser describes as
I believe in the photographer’s magic. He has the ability to stir the soul with light and shape and color. To create grand visual moments out of small and simple things, and to infuse big and complicated subjects with unpretentious elegance. He respects classic disciplines, while at the same time insists on being fast, modern, and wild.
Believing in us the way good teachers do, she assigned as homework the week of Thanksgiving, a “prepositional scavenger hunt” requiring us to shoot from various angles – against, across, beyond, beneath, around, behind, below, between, inside, outside, on top of, toward, through, upon . . .
So it was that on Thanksgiving afternoon, I found myself wandering the grounds of the Arizona State Capitol, eventually stopping beneath a canopy of shimmering green and pink.
I have no idea how long I sat in the shade of those trees, looking skyward and thinking, but it was long enough for prepositions and perspectives to give way to gratitude and grace – Amazing Grace – and thoughts of Van Morrison in full flow at The Hollywood Bowl, mystifying me the way he used to do before he became dangerous, denying the COVID-19-pandemic that has left so many families grieving the loss of loved ones again this Thanksgiving, contradicting doctors, and protesting the protocols that prevented him from performing where and when he wanted to and making people sick in the process.
I prefer to think of Van Morrison as the man behind the music that is the soundtrack of my youth, the soundtrack of Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast – the city that made him in the place that made me. I prefer to think of him – on Thanksgiving – as the man behind the beautiful Astral Weeks/I Believe I have Transcended, a song he once described as “one where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
For the day that’s in it, Thanksgiving has something to do with wherever you find that moment of transcendence. Among those desert trees that afternoon, looking up and losing track of time, I saw the light, I suppose, and the kind of gratitude Annie Lamott once described in her Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers:
Thanks is the prayer of relief that help was on the way, that either the cavalry arrived, or that the plates of the earth shifted and that somehow, you got your sense of humor back, or you avoided the car that was right in front of you that you looked about to hit. And so it could be the pettiest, dumbest thing, but it could also be that you get the phone call that the diagnosis was much, much, much better than you had been fearing. And you say the full prayer, and its entirety, is: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
But for reasons of brevity, I just refer to it as Thanks. It’s amazement and relief that you caught a break, that your family caught a break, that you didn’t have any reason to believe that things were really going to be OK, and then they were and you just can’t help but say thank you.
Thank you – a powerful phrase that often goes unsaid right when we need to hear it the most.
Although the celebration of the holiday does not come naturally to me, even after living an American life for over thirty years – and now living in an ex-pat village in Mexico where, yes, I will have turkey later. Some of my friends are still surprised when I tell them there is no such holiday in Ireland and that Christmas is the holiday that warms us. I can relate to Carole Coleman, an Irish woman living in Washington D.C. when she apologizes to her American family and friends:
. . . we will be doing the turkey thing all over again five weeks from now.
Last year, Rabbi Bentzy Stolik told his congregation in Olney, Md, to start each day by getting “on the treadmill of gratitude.” The pandemic forced us to reconsider and replace all our known ways with new routines and rituals. It has also inspired new reasons – reminders – to be thankful – for all the people, places, and things we took for granted and swear we’ll never make the same mistake again. Hugs. Handshakes. Hanging out. Happy hour.
Keeping it Irish, I’ll leave you with this lovely minute or two from the film, “Waking Ned Devine.” The hapless Lottery official has just arrived unannounced at Ned Devine’s funeral, just as Jackie O’Shea is beginning the eulogy. Always quick on his feet – and realizing his scheme to cash in on Ned’s winning lottery ticket is about to come crashing down – Jackie pauses. He looks over at his best friend, Michael O’Sullivan, who is posing as Ned, and as an easy smile spreads across his face, he looks out into the congregation and delivers this:
As we look back on the life of . . .
Michael O’Sullivan was my great friend. But I don’t ever remember telling him that. The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. To sit at the front and hear what was said, maybe say a few things yourself. Michael and I grew old together. But at times, when we laughed, we grew young. If he was here now, if he could hear what I say, I’d congratulate him on being a great man, and thank him for being a friend.
The hapless Irish Lottery official has just arrived unannounced at Ned Devine’s funeral, right as Jackie O’Shea is beginning the eulogy. Quick on his feet and realizing his scheme to cash in on Ned’s winning lottery ticket is about to come crashing down – Jackie pauses. He looks over at his best friend, Michael O’Sullivan, 
