I mean WHY ARE YOU EVEN TALKING!!!

DONE WITH THAT NOT DONE WITH THAT 

You know the hardest thing I tell my best friend (on the phone), the thing coming back at you, every time?  It's this, that somehow, anyhow, you still have to navigate, I mean, connection? to have the conversations? 

 like I mean with all those sad souls gone the other way?....  and there you are traversing like a rickety bridge over a widening ravine, and I mean walking on eggshells and dancing through minefields and riding lightly lightly,  over rough terrain?  All that, and, I mean,  verbal fencing? With you know, tact, calculation, self censorship?  All that just to hang on in there by your fingernails,  keep your friendships, relationships and all, I mean,  your lifelong loves?... the cruellest thing (it is ) that love becomes the hardest thing, though still the only thing to keep you there?... attached and holding fast the fractured space where once was holy ground... 

She sighs, she knows. I'm not done yet.  Like listening  I say, that all that's left?  Don't speak! The thing is who would actually hear you if you did? Who would or could hear what it is you have to tell them?  So listening,  don't speak! don't scare, don't bring the bad thing in the room. Just hold the line?  observe the SOS in skittering eyes, touch terror under the safe and effective,  bear....the glazed eye stare,  judgements about conspiracy theorists. And just... don't speak! don't name the thing that can't be named, that can't be told.  

Oh... well I'm done with that, she says. I'm done with them, I'm done with that. I'm never no-more looking back. 

......................

 COULDN'T DO ANOTHER  PLEASE DON'T SAY WE HAVE TO HAVE ANOTHER, LOCKDOWN 

Hello,  how are you, (you say)...  they say                                                                                                                                       grand, you know yourself,  hard times! I'd say they would,  they could, they might now,                                                                                                                                                                                               lock us down again next week, next month, again, or would you say? or                                                                                                     Christmas, after Christmas,....sure they have to let us, let us... have the Christmas?                                                     surely let us have the Christmas let us ......let us. Hopefully ( you say),  Maybe, (you say ) yeah they know... you need the Christmas?  Yeah, ah, no, we couldn't like, I couldn't me, I mean I WILL NOT DO another lockdown? no, they wouldn't say another lockdown, no, I couldn't no..... they wouldn't... try..... like could they? ...would they? ...                                                                                        

I know (you say) I know and yeah they know we couldn't, mightn't, stand for that?  Well yeah,  (they say) I mean I'm fully vaccinated now? I've done my bit you have to do your bit, the Grannies, Daddy died... he died I don't... feel... safe, you do it for the others like,  they.... haven't... can't get...vaccinated...we all have to, or it won't be,  won't feel, isn't,  safe... 

oh right (you say) so does it actually, I mean,  work?

DO IT  FOR THE OTHERS AND YOU'LL BE SAFE (FOREVER)

Does what.. it works! It works! It works... you won't get sick, too sick, in, hospital, die! Only the unvaccinated....like, if only they would... far right terrorists you know....tin foil hatters,  conspiracy theorists they are, heard about it on the Television like, those people? get their information from the internet you see, the science says, the TV says, I mean the papers say the science says we have to yes, my doctor says.....you do it for  the others and you don't get sick!  Or only like a cold... the radio says... 

BREAKTHROUGHS

The break through cases now? (you say) like everywhere, they aren't best described as breakthroughs now?

THANK GOD THANK GOD SO LUCKY HOW WE TOOK THE COVID VACCINE 

I know I know, my friend, her neighbour, Mammy, all the teachers at my daughter's school got ....yeah but sure you catch it, spread it sure you do, of course you do, it doesn't... matter, doesn't....  everybody knows you won't get actually sick? or really bad, or go to hospital, things like that, I mean people, everyone I know, has covid yeah.  So all us are....vaccinated,  yeah,  and John, like after, he was really sick, ...and someone that I know's in hospital now with covid, and her heart, her heart.... but thats not anything to do with....vaccines, no, imagine just how bad it would have been,  it could have been if we  hadn't all, we didn't have the ....don't  you see. ..like everyone I know is vaccinated!  No, they weren't sick before but anyway I mean they had to get the covid  sometime?....lucky like it's lucky...that....they got the covid now, after being I mean  vaccinated, ....like we have to follow ...I mean science, everybody knows...

THE SCIENCE SAYS

Science is a work in progress though?....I mean things change...and scientists differ, learn from one week to the next, contradict each other, TAKE  the  money from the global groups you only hear....the media pets  (you say) ( you're off again) , (you're saying way TOO MUCH again )

Well, I believe the Science? sure it's in the NEWS, and Luke O'Neill... Clare Byrne and Nephet know The Science. All that other stuff is.... just the right wing, racist, TERRORISTS on the... on the internet.  My doctor, and my TD, sure the TV, say...!

But now, (you say),  it's looking like the vaccinated need the booster, would you, will you... take the ....

AND LINING UP THE VULNERABLE FIRST, WHY DON'T WE

Boosters? ah I wouldn't want to take another, thats for older people sure, with like I mean co-morbidities like I shouldn't..... have to, really, like the first one wasn't bad, the second though....I mean it only meant it worked but still......I'm done, my mother now is going for it when she's called,  she should ... she's  vulnerable... old, it's better than the covid... eh?

 you wouldn't think to... stand with people choosing  not to have the vaccine, would you?  maybe... stand with them against the vaccine passes (you say... softly, softly)

TRACK ME 

covid passes!... I have mine, the QR code it's on my phone, it's shocking handy, all your info's there about like vaccinations.... for travelling like,  your boarding pass, it runs like clockwork, straight through  airports, no delays, the ones without the passport have to wait ...they have to... queue?...

Was it to travel then, (you say), why you took the shot or, I mean, on account of covid?

Travel? yeah, I never got to go away, like ANYWHERE for two whole years and now I can,  and so can you and anyone,  if only you would, they would do the right thing stop the spread the SCIENCE says...

TRACE ME 

                 but still, (you say) like, contact tracing means you never know the day the hour you'll be locked down again, and so it's never I mean, ever, over, dearest one.... 

the Contact tracing? sure you have to really, like my kids are home from school  'cause some one had the sniffles. Then you have to, I mean get them tested too, to see if they'll, like, have to  be like quarantined... the testing? no, the kids don't mind, they have to sure, the covid's bad in all the schools...

                                         PASS ME ONE MORE ANTIGEN TEST WHY DONCHA

 but testing, like inserting swabs up, up, your nose, til tipping off the blood brain barrier, daily, up, your children's nose, its tipped with ethylene oxide dear one, hydrogel, it's carcinogenic, (you try)

MASKS ARE PRETTY 

Ah no... I never heard of 'ethylene oxide', anyway how else can they I mean find out, if you have it,  covid? Blood brain barrier? no! they wouldn't send us tests that....no...  I mean, the kids  do sometimes cry, a nose bleed maybe but... sure what else can you do... the virus ...never isolated? ah now, get a grip! the science knows. The kids are just protected, by the tests, the masks... 

                                                                    MASKS ARE WARM 

So what about bacterial pneumonia, from like breathing back you own breath's waste? dear heart (you say) 

bacterial pneumonia, naw... they don't mind wearing masks? The little children have to be reminded, yea, but covid's in the aerosols you know, you have to stop the aerosols.  Waste on your breath? now who says that, the internet? like, sometimes I feel faint in supermarkets or at work but so? I go outside? I take a breath, don't make a fuss.... they make you wear the masks outside? Well, sure there's aerosols outside... hello! Stay home, I'd say,  just order in your food and watch netflix, how hard is that? it's there for you, if you just won't, you can't, you WILL NOT  do your bit. Can't do your bit? ah now I kinda like the masks myself, you don't want people always looking at your face, and sure its even warmer in the cold,  It's grand, its fine, it's pretty!

  SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN/VACCINATE THEM ALL

The kids get vaccinated, yeah, to keep them safe?  already safe? not necessarily, like, some end up in the ICU... it said that on the news, and, like, we have to vaccinate them... they can spread... infect us all?  I mean I have, like,  vulnerable people in my house, I'm living with my granny and you have to have your children done...to save us, save us, save us... all?

CHOICE

 I blame unvaccinated people, spreading, getting, passing covid, stopping this from ever being over, yeah, the Taoiseach says, sure only lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations works with them, I wouldn't want to... even mix with them, the anit-vaxxers, indoors... don't feel safe, I always ask in restaurants, bars, say ' have you checked their covid passes', first,  insist,  my friends and me... before we'd even go inside...

IMAGINE IF WE HADN'T  GOT THE VACCINE 

So now well yeah, you might get sick....but not too badly, not enough... to fill up hospitals, infect the vulnerable people...and, I mean,  of course, of course you DO still get it, I know lots of people got it after their vaccine ....at home with symptoms, lost their sense of tase and smell, your mouth all sore with blisters, stuck in bed for weeks with weakness, yeah, but just imagine how MUCH WORSE  it would have been without your.....yeah, at least you know it won't be fatal, if you're, fully ,vaccinated, yeah at least you know...you don't...you won't...

DYING

Never over? yeah, but no but yeah at least you know you're safe. I mean so many people sick, with heart attacks and strokes,  my boss at work, my neighbour, friends, the priest is dead... they're in the  hospital with strokes and blood clots, heart conditions.... dead, it's like... it's scary now.  They say, the TV says, it's lockdowns, covid....normal.  Normal. God oh god, you know, I'm sick and tired of going to funerals?  

.....................................................................................

IN THE SLIPSTREAM 

Leave them at it my friend says. It's, basically, not your business anymore?  

But 

People (yours) they tell you now they can't eat dinner with their family Sundays, Christmas day. They  can't go home, or even talk to former friends... or brothers, sisters.  Can not bridge the yawning chasm now, they fall...let go.... They tell you how they stand for reason, truth.  So here are Truthers. here the Normal People... call each other names. break ties of blood and heart, and still you must, you have to try... to bypass ranting, raging politics, downloaded narratives... seek and look for,  offer, to your loved ones all your good attention....I mean, love?

The children argue with me, buy their antigen tests, and speculate.  Our good friend Ursula is sick, her kind heart crushed, (a huge blood clot). So was it Covid caused it did they say, my son is asking his sister here in my house as I sit at my kitchen table writing.  No (I say) no,  they don't know that! You can't say that!  He looks at me, he turns his head away ... I mean, he says, whose talking to you anyway?,....I mean, why are you even talking? 

.............................................................................................

Yeah I tell my most beloved friend, I said that yesterday,  tomorrow maybe,  'done with it!  I'm done with that, I'm done'.   Today I'm trapped here in the slipstream,  voices of the people rushing though my blood like water,  tinnitus, hopeless,....unconditional,... confounded, you know, love? 

l

A Mother's prayer before Winter, 2021.

WINTER'S COMING

Sunday morning, August 16th, 2021. It's chilly here, it's raining, grey.                                                                     Autumn's here. Autumn! you realise it reaching for a jumper, socks.                                                                                                                Summer's gone and winter's shadow darkens warp speed Autumn in these strange, unlooked for times.

On the way to the shop for water, eggs, no newspapers,                                                                                 (the chanting propaganda in the paper makes your teeth ache, your head spin,  triggering an actual cortisol flood? )                                                                                                                                                           you step aside for nervous people needing distance.                                                                                                                                           You step aside for the other kind,  the likely inoculated. Like you know the inoculated now?                 Loose limbed and grinning, vague,                                                                                                        relieved.                                                                                                                                             Something's gone they haven't missed and something's added you don't recognise. 

You take the river walk your earphones in, walking, walking, walking, wanting                                             ...this, headspace. This only safe space.                                                                                                                     You listen to the talking heads, alive across the internet, the Indie news.                                                                They are here, on air, awakened to dystopia.                                                                                                  Men and women, medics, truthers, ranters, priests and preachers, immunologists... fathers mothers,                  they have gone to the edge,  they have looked into the abyss for you...                                                        Your attention moving in and out, you sometimes only see the river tipping gladly, trees, allowing the rattling breeze, serene.                                                                                                                                    Able, (you are able in the moment) not to know. You are able to let go.  Detach, from information wars, the walking wounded, and all the energised truthers whose time has come round at last. 

You know it all, the great reset, magicking of the 'rona numbers, programmed fear in people. All of it.  You see it too                                                                                                                                                   (this) Hypnotic dance of Mainstream Media and The People.                                                                              oh The People are that girl, they're in the Red Shoes now, dancing helpless to their doom. Hans Anderson take a bow.                                                                                                                                                                You watch them, disappeared, an endless stream, behind the media piping Panic,                                    follow! follow! follow here.                                                                                                                                        You see, you see...you can't  unsee... lost souls, lost rhythms after lockdown,                                         snuffed out weeks and months in time,  Energy diverted, human schemes and plans, adventures, dammed.  Denied.  

You find you do not understand the fear, not really, until a woman jerks away you, recoils, at the bridge, her eyes skittering over the rim of her mask. 

The breeze is singing for her, water flows, and here she takes her air through a mask fashioned in India by children sitting on dirt floors caught smiling by the camera of a truther as they fashion graphene oxide,...other particles, into the grubby gag she fastens on her face.                                                                 Shuttering her airways, she allows...the blowing back of her own excreted waste.  Back, back inside to clog the lungs to fog the incredible shrinking brain.  

You find you do not understand the fear, not really,  not... until you see hysteria,  relief, in people telling you they've had it, yea, the first one, second one... the double vaxxed.                                                                    They call it "my vaccine". You didn't ask. 

You steady your own foreboding, your runaway catastrophising, with research.  Yes.                     Independent Media.  Doctors, Scientists, Legions of the Censored (there are legions)                                                           offering frameworks, understanding, sanity here.                                                                                      There is sanity here, beyond the gaslight. 

so WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS

I do this some of the time,  I look for truth, I search for... something... approaching an explanation?

I listen/learn.  I do this on my Sunday walks,  my earphones in...                                                                but                                                                                                                                                                 always, ever,  past engagement with like minded, past, yes, comfort of like minded, is only sorrow (in me), mourning                                                                                                                                             grief.  For what is gutted out, what's lost, what's human; work, small businesses of busy humans, parties, joyous drinking, all that restless vibrant stuff.  Withheld.  Snuffed out. No, never, (actually) coming back?                                              No snuff movie ever quite as final, frightful, as this dying of the light 

FOR WHAT FOR WHY!

for entertainment, the satisfaction of an insane, meglomaniac plan,                                                       effected by surrendered governments,  media, doctors,  captured regulatory bodies, boastful billionaires                                                                                          ....all the willing foot soldiers                                                                                                                                                to effect a (unworkable) global plan.

                                                                               

 and WHAT IN GODS NAME HAVE YOU DONE 

Always, always, the political, the critical understanding is swept aside, it falls away, returns to this;                            my loved ones splitting from me,                                                                                                             enacting a shocking surrender.                                                                                                                        the fear for them, the vision of them, rolling up the sleeve,                                                                 succumbing, lost                                                                                                                                              the knowledge that they will, they will, they likely will,                                                                            (regardless of my best, oh carefully construed,                                                                                      arguments,                                                                                                                                                     anit-vaxxer! conspiracy theorist! she wears the tinfoil hat)                                                                      swallow unexamined, lies,                                                                                                                            they will,  they will, fearing death, disease, embrace that...                                                                                        they will, see only here!, accept the dissonance whole.                                                                                          This glassy eyed turning away from what you have to tell them,                                                            cognitive dissonance,                                                                                                                                      this adamant shutting down that neither you nor they, it seems, can help.

so I AM YOURS AND YOU ARE LEAVING

All I care for these days, really, are my children, each and every one,  (MY die is cast)                                                        my eldest, and the boy, my beautiful girl, her knowing dreaming sister.  Scattered from me in this, taken, by the whirlwind of false narrtive/dystopia, the pied piper.... promising...                                                                           travel, nightclubs, college, inclusion in a herd.  Our children, all our children challenged,                                                   by lockdown, exclusion, lies...lies.  Lies.                                                                                                                     Taken as effectively, as shockingly, as in war or death...                                                                                but always held, here where you can't reach Klaus Schwab inside the heart.                                                                                                            I am yours, and you are mine and we are family. Yours. I am...your  own nut job,  your tinfoil hat if ever you look to wear it...                                                                                                                                 brought you in, I brought you in,                                                                                                                     the hours and days and years of making, minding, marathons of planning, holding space, and meeting trouble for you at the pass.                                                                                                                                                                   mother.

oh WONT YOU AWAKEN, AWAKEN, AWAKEN

I want a bomb, a gun, a sword of ages to defend you, ready here for those who hold the needle,  push the serum into my children's precious blood, their every miracle organ, body, brain                                          that held the living spirit spinning as I'd nurtured, watched.  

I want the universe, the heavens vengeance be there such, for those who mean to steal the flame that lights my children's eyes,  to take from them that which is theirs, and only theirs to flame..

I want, must have, the strength of armies, angels,  to dispel the cozening lies that lure my trusting children,      to blow apart these systems....                                                                                                          (cunningly) placed, in play over decades to allow, create, this evil,  poisoning trance.                                                                                                                                            this narrative leading to this place... where all our human children walk in blind to the tent, the needle waiting ....                                                                                                                                                     see here they roll up the sleeve themselves...                                                                                                 so eager are they, for the holiday, for ersatz life and light,                                                                                   so willing are they for the deathly mrna, the graphite oxide, serum of nanoparticles of luciferase, generation of spike protein, til darkness has them.

                                                                                                                                                                             I pray for a great awakening...                                                                                                                     before Winter comes and they are gone beyond my power to follow                                                               and winter comes and they are gone beyond my power to mind.  

  

A Child in a Yellow Blanket Gripped by a Nun. Snapshot in Time.

I went to Temple Hill Catholic Adoption Home to visit my baby every day for the week after he was born.  We left the hospital separately. It was 1979 and I was not married and babies were adopted from that place. If I did not let the adoption go ahead I would become an unmarried mother.

There were two long bus trips across the city to reach the place. The bus fare had to be carefully budgeted for. I remember, I will always remember until my last day, the nuns there.  One of the indelible memories. The pale closed faces of them, as though they rarely saw daylight, when they brought my baby out to be viewed, tightly wrapped in the yellow blanket I had bought for him. The brief time they allowed me hold him, the detached tone they used in refusing to let me feed him, one time I asked. I will always remember that. At that time I was detached from myself. I see that now. The intense, one-on-one and no other, bond forming between my baby and me in the hospital, the tearing apart when I handed him over to them,  headed back to the suburb where I had found work as a nanny, all that intensity had deserted me.  I had handed him over and gone back to the only refuge I had,  raw with loss.   I had only a flickering hope that there would be help for me there to keep him. By the time I got back there everything, what had to be done, seemed immense. To prepare a place of him, to stand my ground, to recover in my body from the birth. Immense.  I was, simply, burned out. 

I used to be thinking, on those bus journeys, that I ought to be feeling something. Recalling over and over  the day when I had left the hospital, had handed him over, the agony and the wrongness of it. The crying jag that had lasted into the evening when I got back, a neighbour handing me one of her valium in the end, so that I crashed.  I had fallen through the floor of loss and it had emptied me.  I was numb.

I told myself then that, no matter what, no matter my numbness, no matter the nun's contempt when I had said I was keeping him, no matter the shame at having nothing for him, no matter the illegitimacy of keeping him, no matter, no matter, I would bring him home. This time would pass, this emptiness would fill, and he would be home with me.

                                                                                11

Everything about being pregnant in Ireland in 1978, for me at least, from the time I was sure that I was, was about managing it for myself. To prevent everything being taken from me (was how it felt). The loss of autonomy, of self control. I wanted to do the best thing, whatever that was, for the baby. I wanted to do the right thing for myself. I did not want to be interfered with. I did not want to be controlled. That prospect was a horror to me.

I was a little adrift back then. I had left school, passed the Leaving Cert more or less, with no sense of what could come next.  Also, and increasingly, I was having panic attacks, some very grey days too. It wasn't like there was a name for those days, back then. Though people had them just the same, and doctors knew about them.  But you had no words then for anxiety, depression. You were given none. I remember going to a doctor at that time, on my own (there was no-one you could tell or take) and being asked casually whether I had been studying too hard. That was all he asked. He gave me a prescription which I was too terrified to take. He gave me no understanding about what was happening to me. No answers to what I needed to know. I mean, whether I was mad or not, whether I was broken as I feared. Or whether he knew the answer to that. Or if you could become addicted to the Ativan he gave me. If you could get even more lost in the hell you were in. He gave me nothing. 

Life went on. Anxiety didn't, entirely, define it. I read my books, went drinking with my friends, helped out at home with the younger children, got a job as a kitchen porter. I went, uncertainly, to random interviews. And, as it turned out, got pregnant. 

Missed periods were the only way of knowing, at that time. And so I didn't know for sure until I was three months on and a doctor confirmed it to me. He asked me, casually enough, if I felt it moving yet. I assured him that I did not. Horrified at the reality of it, confirmed at last, unable to imagine a child's presence in me. There were no scan pictures then, no peeking ahead for the sex. 

The doctor seem to be oblivious to my situation. 

I was not oblivious. To any aspect of it. A girl, I was 19 years old, did not have anything in those days, not in my world. A job until you married. Or after you married, maybe, if you had a professional job. A job that paid you properly, that was. A job worth having. Otherwise, and far more likely,  you had a little job, a part time job to keep you going. Your best ambition was to get out of home, achieve a little independence for yourself. A slice of life if you were able. To live in a city, Dublin maybe, where you could breathe. To support a child on your own was not an option in that world. House sharing with other girls, breaking even, was all you expected until maybe you married. 

And then there was your shame, your sense of aberrancy, working away at you on the subliminal level, judging. You did not need your parents, the priest, to judge you. You judged yourself. 

And yet, it seemed the very job of having to manage this gave me a sense of purpose. I got a job as a childminder in Dublin, (getting myself to Dublin after all). I found the phone number of the Catholic Adoption Society in the Dublin phone phone book at the post Office, arranged an appointment ahead of time,  packed my bags and left.  Told my sisters before I left. We made a pact of silence outside the sister circle, they gave me what support they could mange within. It was the best that we, all of us, could do.

In the ensuing months of pregnancy life was good. As it turned out. The couple I worked for would not let me stay alone in my room in the evening, when I attempted it, insisting that I live with them as part of their family. They were engaging, kind, and in time started to feel like my tribe. At the six month mark, when I told them about the pregnancy, there was no change in their attitude towards me. That I could detect. Other women I had gotten to know there all expressed a kindly sort of interest, a benevolent kind of curiosity.

It, the baby, would be adopted I told them, told myself, with confidence. I had this. I was in charge of it. There was still some panic, still the grey days, but less than I had experienced before. As though the competence I felt in me about managing this, diminished the other, unnameable, afflicting fears that had dogged my days back home. 

The day came for my meeting with the Catholic Adoption Society. A tense bus trip into town,  to the massive Georgian building where they were, the solitary wait to be called into a room there, the two nuns facing me over a heavy oak table, had the air of a summonsing. Even though, I reminded myself, I had made the appointment. They pulled out forms from a drawer, asked questions, ticked off boxes, about myself, my family circumstances,  our financial and social position back home. It was very smooth, very professional, and they were asking the questions.  I was answering obediently enough until I hesitated at the box stipulating that the adoptive parents should be Catholic. They were incredulous. Insisting that I would say yes, that I could only allow adoption to a catholic couple. 

The tone of incredulity, the message in it, hardened my will to assert myself in this. I had thought about it before I came there. I had bought into the narrative that the decent, moral thing to do was to allow an adoption, but also that this was my choice, and that the best people would not necessarily be Catholic. The child did not have to raised as a Catholic at all. His life need not be controlled in that way, prescribed as mine had been.  As catholics required.  I suppose I thought that life should be different fo him or her, the child.  Life should be broader, more expansive. I felt this on an instinctive level. His life would be better. He would not be hobbled by the elements shadowing mine. Otherwise what was the point?

I stuck to my guns on that at least. Of course I have no idea whether they respected my choice, whether they ticked that box. They moved on to the next question smoothly enough. They assured me at the end that I was doing the right thing. I remember feeling very small on the way home. 

I mostly felt that the child in me, it's welfare, was paramount and that my aberrancy, carelessness was atoned in putting the baby first, I can see in retrospect that that view of things was detached, logical, and apart from the growing reality of the child. I can see that it could have been described as a sort of conforming acquiescence dressed up as logic.  Expiation for my sins, at work. A loving sense of the child, my son as it turned out, formed in my mind and my heart as the months passed. He grew, started moving independently, made his presence felt. It became an interaction, a dance with two. 

At six months I sat before a Community Welfare Officer after a long wait in a longer queue, wanting to get in and out again, as soon as he would release me. (at that point I was applying for welfare payments as my agreed employment period had passed and, while I continued on with the family much as before, we had agreed I would do this) He asked me all the questions I expected. And then he asked me why I was giving up my child.

Just that, and the whole edifice of my plan, the projected adoption, became makeshift, a house of cards and a possibility only. I answered quite as directly that I couldn't afford to keep a child. I did not realise until I said it that it was that simple. I could not afford to keep him. The Welfare Officer wouldn't have it, went on to describe the kind of social welfare supports available now, the allowances and rent subsistence I could look for.  It would be hard, he told me, but it could be done. You did not have to give your baby up. You had a choice.

I mulled it over, agonised, played with this idea of having a choice for the rest of the pregnancy. Should I? Could I? Would they let me? And that was the head stuff. In the heart a web of connections grew between the child and myself. I suppose a problem with this see sawing was that I wasn't able to do any actual planning, preparing for a child I would bring home with me. Other than the adoption planning I mean. I couldn't sit with the decision to keep him with me.  I did not feel empowered sufficiently, entitled. I did not feel capable. 

It only needed the birth, all 24 hours of it, the emergence of the baby into the world, his firm little body, his head of long dark hair, the vision of him tucked in one arm as I had a cup of tea afterward...yes it took that, to confirm what I already felt. I would not, should not, could not, give him up.

The Dublin neighbours rallied around.  Someone had heard of a woman wanting to let a room in her house, there were baby clothes, all the baby stuff, aplenty on that estate and they gathered it up for me. I would have a place to live for now. A way of taking care of a child. 

The Community Welfare Officer was right, it was hard. Very hard. A series of dark unheated flats, in one case mice infested ( I was grateful to find it),  the bleak queuing for welfare payments, isolation, and an ever present threat of homelessness. Ever present money worries. The worsening of my panic attacks, my grey days shading to black. But then, one red letter day, I stumbled on a book called Self Help for your Nerves. A book of revelations about what ailed me. I began a slow trip back from fear to wellness. The relief of what the writer, Claire Weekes, had to say in that book! A ripple expanding to heal, to transform my ocean of torment and ignorance. And the child thrived. He inspired and motivated me to battle and batter my way into University, a Profession afterward. I was determined to find legitimacy in the world for him, and for myself. As I recovered and thrived people were prepared to give me ground. There were always the helpful ones to extend a hand (there were always the others).

The tide was on the turn in time for Unmarried Mothers. The status of illegitimacy was abolished as a legal status in 1983. I joined a group called Cherish at that time. We were activists, making the personal political. Illegitimacy as a legal status was to be abolished, maintenance payments from fathers enforced in law for the first time. I vividly recall the long and impassioned arguments at meetings about that, the fear that these changes might mean that a man could claim access, custody even, could take control. Particularly if they had to pay. Because they had to pay. No one wanted that. The experience of patriarchal control had been too powerful, too damaging for most of us. The battle for agency, to keep your child, to live as you choose, too hard fought for.  Our view of men forever coloured by their behaviour up to that time. Many of us had experienced a blank wall of rejection and denial when the fathers (who would not be fathers) were told about our pregnancies. Accounts abounded about this, about men bringing their mates to court in maintenance applications to say they'd all slept with you. Yes.

DNA testing put paid to that kind of denial a few years later.

My son is a father himself these days. He is successful in the world, a very good father, a good person and what more can any of us hope for in our children. I know that that might have been the story anyway, if he had been adopted. But that was the story when I kept him. And I never doubted the decision. In time our bond was restored and the damage of that final interview with the nun, after he was born, healed. The  memory of it never leaves me. 

                                                                               111

She is ensconced in another tall ceilinged room, barricaded behind another oak table in a room in the hospital, when I am again summonsed on that last morning. Not smiling now. No-one is smiling now. I walk in stiffly, injured form the birth. 

(In those days there were humiliating enemas beforehand, administered when you went in, along with rough shaving, so that your first hours in the delivery rooms were spent dashing to and from the toilets in your dressing gown, your stomach cramping alternatively from birth contractions and bowel contortions.  I am there still,  crying in humiliation, rinsing my dressing gown out at the sink when I don't quite make the toilet bowl as another mother bangs on the door. At the other end of the delivery, vaginal cutting was the order of the day. There were many stitches following your average birth. In between, your  crying, howling, or any other eruptions of pain were firmly hushed, were not encouraged, as part of your birth experience.  Your plan made not for you)

The thing I say to her, straight away and as I walk in, is that I am keeping the child. I know that this, that she, is the rock I'll likely perish on. I have to come in strong and certain. At first she doesn't seem to hear me, does not respond. She does not look at me. There are more forms, her pen busy ticking, underlining. "And how could you mange that!" she says at last, still looking down.                                                                    I I tell her how I could manage that, stumbling over my words, delivered to her bent head. She looks at me finally, tells me how inadequate, how lacking my child's life will be, how selfish my choice. I am afraid that that is true but I hang in there anyway,                                                                                             "You'll surely put the child first.  It's all arranged. We have very good people for him" she says.                                        "You can surely see it's the right thing to do".                                                                                                                                            And I can see the good people,  decent, married, comfortably off,  people who deserve a child, unlike myself. I decide to keep it simple, accepting that there is no way I'm going to feel good or valid about this.             "I'm keeping my baby' I say to all her objections and persuasions after that. She asks me where I am going to take him, what I have to offer him. I tell her that I am going back to get a place sorted, that there are some people who will help me. She stares at that. 

She says that they, the nuns, will take him till I've managed that.                                                                                 "A week, at most, I say.                                                                                                                                       "Oh, we will see," she says.                                                                                                                                         It's all in the tone, what she thinks of me. It seems to me, as I walk out of that room, that her will, her righteousness, will previal no matter what I try to put in place now. But I have her measure and the measure of my own vulnerability, my weakness,  in this, and somehow I will do it. I will keep him. I will not give him up.

I go back to my Dublin refuge, and he to their holding centre. I start the work of bringing him home.    

......................................................................................................................................................................

Check out Anna's book,                 " The Chemical Angels Came for Us "                                              (available on Amazon book,  apple books, and other platforms.)         

Shroud Waving Days.

                                                                  Look away look away

People talk about death these days as though it was a threat, a promise, a consequence of, a punishment for. A badly made bargain. Better house arrest than a coffin, better absolute isolation than turn, turn again  helpless, on an ICU bed.                                                                                                                          Better beggary, lining up for hand outs allowed to you, than ending.                                                             Better breathing back your own food smells, subverting breath's need to exhale through your sweaty, your  slipping down mask, hours into your masked working everyday,                                                               Better that... than chancing infection.                                                                                                         Better not looking in somebody's face, than suffer the small dislocation, the instant impression  of facelessness?  Subliminal strangeness.                                                                                                    Better not stare at the jaws outlined by the face cloth, all massive, receding,  unsmiling bone, than slip a notch more on the rope from all that was decent and normal.

                                                               Close down your poor ears 

Better not hear the dissenters, deniers, contrarians, they being, all being, far rightists, covidiots, something like that.                                                                                                                                                    Better not hear; for a thing once heard is hard to un-hear as you're walking the line. When you're marching in tandem, line dancing,  warmed at the hearth of inclusion. Better not hear  (I can't hear you) else a coffin awaits you.  

                                                  and no need to think about Science is Science...

Better not think: or aspire to know better than Nephet, or doctors or science, least people will die.  You will make people die.                                                                                                                               Better not read, or consider,  the terrible story being told,                                                                        Better not question...what's told to you... eyes straying over the contrary articles, videos, doctors dissenting the light of hysteria, resolve in their eyes. Factually fake stuff awaiting to trap the unwary, seduce the too careless down paths of heretical,  just isn't possible, alternate facts... that way waits a shroud.

                                                          oh why would you speak!

Better not speak: give a voice to a doubt,  a stray thought, a discrepancy,  ah would you upset and  perplex  the dear people, your family, the  neighbours, all stumbling though Measures, down shop isles, strung out along paths, county roads as they mumble through masks, use their words, about pulling together, and when will it end...                                                                                                                                                          Better far better admire all the face masks, the blue ones,  the flowers masks, pretty masks, black masks, the ones in the gutter, the ones cradling chins, slipping down below noses, impeding the eye-line. 

Don't speak! least you send a dear heart to the coffin, you murder the vulnerable, hasten the end of all things. 

                                                        most secret and shameful pleasures

Better not see though you saw, oh you did, the young, partying just down the road, the neighbours, out laughing in groups on the green, the call of the seagulls, the screams of delight from your kids on the beech back in August, your women friends chilling and laughing together in somebody's garden last week, how the coppery leaves fly out spinning in front you walking these days in the fields,  those times thinking nothing, of covid, or dying, or measures,  that dream of your throat stretched open and screaming, your breath given back to the universe, hands holding hands in a circle of randomers, lit by the moon. 

                                                       Better not better not better not better.... 

hear daily the death rates, infection rates,  something called R rates,... You will see you will hear you will speak. You will play your part and you will do your bit, you will ...come together in this marvellous collaborative WILL to eradicate Virus.  Infection,  disease.  And all death. 

Staycation. Kiss a human. Bury a Friend.

So I and some other exhausted members of the extended Fam did a Flight Into the West before Kildare County locked down (though not entirely). For a staycation (native hol) in August. I, having taken three days in Cork in July with Beauty and the Boy, was having a second staycation ( holiday at home) to be truthful. Three nights in Galway, Spiddal, was bought and paid for, to top us up to a week away from Our House.  Our cave and our prison, where we'd all spent more time than we'd ever foreseen or asked for.  Five strange months. Co-exisiting.  Sheltering in Place.  Within walls we'd left behind a year before.

I mean, hey, it wasn't so bad? Not for us.  We were adults all.  We knew how to ignore each other when it was required, come together when it was needed.  It was, I mean,  bonding? Over Netflix, online yoga, knitting (ah yes), messing about in the back garden.  Books. Coffee brewing, and shooting the breeze about the crazy pandemic tornado, howling past Our House, swirling around our boundary line. Out there, at bay. But still, and anyway, time and living in this manner takes its toll  We were getting a little reluctant to leave the house at all, in the end.  In a way. We were obsessing, overthinking things we had to learn to leave alone...

...will I die, will I soon, intubated and drugged, will I scream, inside will I scream? will I....have only strangers masked strangers, masked strangers are turning me turning me turning me... and I'm done? will my mother, my father, my children call out for me, dying, call out for us ...stop! all that fuss, all that hope coming in, coming here, now masked strangers who don't know or forget we must pass with our people....and can I or do I exist now? beginning or ending, if no-one contain me...infection I am..

We must behave like everyone we met including ourselves are infected. I am infection. 

 

We were looking at the world from a position of retreat, peering out at a place at the end of a lengthening tunnel....had to get out!

And how my lungs expanded as miles flew,  fields streamed past the car on the motorway. Speeding. Probably.  A little. Being anywhere, away, was exhilarating, kickstarting, strange, scary-strange. Scary? Well, the gutted towns we slowed for, shop fronts boarded up on high streets in towns. in a city, gaping absences on main streets like missing teeth, exposed, down an out, were disturbing.   Edgy waiters washing down your seat your table,  before you crossed the threshold, dis-infecting your seat your table after you had eaten, was that, scary. Chilling even. The sense of dystopia was there and everywhere.   Like you're getting back to normal, not. Never.  You're on the road to nowhere, or somewhere not mapped (maybe in horror movies?).

But, you know,  the Family was there. Those dear familiars, to meet for meals out, to walk the beech with, and wander through the streets. To drink with, and debrief. Despite that invisible fence hampering essential connection. You know the one. You've learning  not to cross it.  A scared new world. Where you can't have a drink, in a dark warm pub with your people, a mate.  (you can't)  Just drink together and talk, and your talk getting wilder as pints flow, til you're in the zone? If you're Irish, if you're human.

Well I knew where the invisible fence was, and didn't expect to leap the perimeter in  Galway. But walking through a properly cavelike lounge, as we checked into the hotel, I realise it is not empty, as all pub lounges have become. There is the brother in law, gazing philosophically at the far wall, nursing a pint. At 4pm in the day! Hurrah! Turned out there was a way of having one, or a few.  If you were eating, like later, or staying, or something like that. "Come join me" he called like the Host of Drinking, only waiting for us to arrive.

So we joined him and once I got over my fear of the barman snatching the second pint from my hand, or the third, had the most fun I'd had in I mean, five months? A seriously laughing dissection of everything, happening or stalled.  Interrupted, finally,  by dinner when we absolutely had to shift ourselves into the restaurant. How I used to take this,  connecting, for granted. How it is judged by the non-partakers, naysayers,  as valueless, dispensable, not allowed, in these long dark days of panicked pandemic. 

That, my dear readers, was an an actual session?  And then there were communal meals, cooked and served up to you in actual restaurants, while all you had to do was eat, talk and smile (like a good thing).  Compulsivly. Your grown children arranged at the table behind you,  distanced, their chairs shifting closer and closer to the adults to join in the talk. 

My sister,  her daughter and my daughter, eat with me the night before we leave.  Just us, at our socially distanced table, marooned near a window, well served by a not busy waiter. We are all still giddy/happy to be able to do it,  to be in.  All animation, forthcoming and confessional, that night. My sister and I talk of secrets,  family things, happenings, only ever taken for an airing in closed door spaces.  Spilling beans as the wine flowed, the food came and went. The time when someone's mother, on her tenth birth, did  not recognise the child the nurses brought... or so the mother said said.... "Apparently, the nurse said that that was a thing, you know, if your own mother died when you were expecting" my sister says. But the child who was not recognised felt this deeply,  enduringly, for years and years afterward, when a chatty aunt spilled the beans about it.

...and then there was the Uncle Misplaced, a new born babe given to another mother in a nursing home, whose own mother took the stranger baby to her breast, took it home. A fact the lost child never forgave when the mistake was uncovered, the babies replaced. 

....my own memory that may not be a memory, (the chatty aunt again) of hanging upside down from my pram by my pram-straps for an eternity, as I screamed and choked, no one coming, in a field.  Mother having left me in my father's care, the pram parked in a corner of the field he was ploughing, his eye trained on the churning earth. His mind fixed on... ploughing. Evidently. "I didn't remember this, til I was told about..I mean. Then I did?".  I explain. And, (explained)  that I figured it may have given me an interesting and permanently upside down view of life...at the best view of things...

Our daughters listen carefully, silent for a change. As though they are imputing information, receiving key instructions concerning  themselves, for their journey.  And they are, and so it goes.  We pass it on, we rid ourselves of memories that laced, curled about and floored their conception, their making.  One day maybe, they will pass on such stuff to their daughters, to shadow, or illuminate the way. Of course, they will, in telling, medicalise, catgorise  each perfect story, as people do now.  Instead of leaving it perfect, released in it's telling. Illuminating all around it happening in that time.

We left there replete, unequivocally happy and hugging like Americans at the door, tipsy and sure that we'd covered all bases. Like, we said, who knew when we'd do this again? Precarious good times!  Giving urgency, heat,  to the good food we eat, to everything said.  A glorious airing of things needing presence, close contact, the smile in the eyes and the head cocked for listening.  The energy linking, co-mingling your body my body, the only way ever we humans connect.  

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Who sees The Crow. A Suicide.

                                                 

                                                       seeing though a glass darkly

                                                                                                                                                                 A messenger call from the Angel Girl. I remember at the time I was easing off my shoes, the kettle singing in the quiet of my room. The soft whirring ring persisted as I sat thinking about where my bag, the phone was, exactly?  Stupified, I guess after a day in the sun, in the city with her.  A bit reluctant to bestir myself although I did.  "Mum?... Mother? (heightened) and she was straight into it, some unlikely story about a crow attack?

"Yeah, I was like minding my own business? waiting, on my bike, when he, when something hit me hard, on the back of my head... so...so, it was a crow? a big black crow, and he hit me, hard?"

"Oh...um, a... a bird?"

"yeah yeah, a Crow!  I saw him flying back unto the sign above the bins, after.  Sitting there,  staring at me."

"oh...well isn't that kinda strange and..."

"It hurt! It really, really hurt.  He meant it to hurt?  Like I don't mean that he...I mean he probably has a nest or something in the bins, and babies that he has to, he has to,  you know, feed? protect?  He has...he has to... to guard the food. And I was, I was standing in his...like his food source, so he had to..."

"Oh.  Well... anyways (the Angel Girl puts all her felt experiences through a sort of conscientious, analytical wringer of logic and gives you the politically correct fully analysed version on sharing ) are you,  you know, all right?

"I mean he hit me hard.? My head's... still...  So what should I do."

"Oh well, right, (Angel's fears of damage/danger are an undercurrent to her cognitive analysis in these kind of situations. She wants to understand, she wants you to understand, she wants to cry her a river of tears.  But she will not)

"I mean, you know, why not have a little lie down... to get over the...I mean shock, sounds shocking (I know so little about crow attacks really, but it does sound that. And I try) Shocking!"

"Oh well, It's not actually the crow's fault?  if he, I mean, had to protect his territory?  I mean Crow Attacks are becoming common,  I've been looking it up.  (Sternly) ( Had I been, in sympathising, in fact judging the crow?)

"Well, yeah, but still and all we can't have crows going around attacking..."

"Reports of Crows Attacks are increasing, online? Look it up! Cos birds are I mean, they are driven out of their habitats. By humans? Left with no option but to defend, like, their food sources?"

"Right. Good to know know (mea culpa) So hey, kettle's boiled here and I want to make some...I mean make some..."

"So what about my head! Infection! from it's you know, claws?"

"Oh well (robustly) my darling, I daresay you can hold your own against bird germs?  Sure we'd all be dead long ago if it was that easy for...birds. Sure they'd all be at it. (I think the sun had worked on me like cannabis resin here)

A wave of exhaustion then.  I assure her glibly that birds are harmless entirely,  to apply a damp cloth to the affected area, update me tomorrow.
(I heard the underlying note, the pain,  the panic without words,  but I'd kinda run out of road on this one,  to be truthful)

                                                  in fact I'm actually bleeding...

Next evening she comes and sweeping back the hair, shows me her wound.  A bloody cut where Mr Crow has scraped her skull.

 "But...you didn't say he had cut you?" I protest, feeling that I had less than kind.

 "But I didn't know! only felt it. There was no one to look at it, then." she wails "Is it bad!"

Her friends had had a look while drinking in the park I discover  (sprawled under the kindly sheltering trees, toasted by the sun, knocking back cheap wine from Albert Heijn). They had located the wound.  It was in fact a super cool story necking wine, laughing at your war wounds. Anaesthetised to any consequences.

We look at ways of cleaning the cut, discuss infection. I notice her pallor,  her forehead clammy.  She wants to talk, to process.   She describes the blow's force when the crow swooped, behind, how she didn't see it coming, how she was unaware of what it was.  I listen. I see that I haven't understood this properly, if at all. Somewhere between her hurt and her indomitable logic, and my shrinking from her inconvenient need, I failed her here.  Failed to grasp the gravity of the situation. I am more culpable really than the Crow.

                                                     Facebook death notification

Unsettling days, that one and the one that followed. I learn that a very good friend has died by suicide some months before. I learn of this on the day after the crow attack via a FB notification that it is his birthday! Wish him happy birthday! facebook thrills. His page, still up, contains one message, wishing him a happy birthday in heaven. Right.  Heaven. I knew something was up. He had not contacted me at Christmas as he always would. I message the Facebook poster who messages back to tell me that he has died, a few weeks after we, he and I,  last met in fact.

The realisation then that I knew, some instinct told me, he was gone (which I had dismissed), got me to thinking about our last meeting. Recalling the meal, (last supper), our interaction, looking for clues.  Wondering,  not about what I didn't know but rather what I knew and did not acknowledge,  swerving maybe to avoid.

Thinking long hard on this one, wanting to understand if and how I'd failed him on that night, at least.
Thinking about him...

                                                         oh, I remember you
                                                 

He was a good friend, same age. He fought the good fight and was functional in the world, at some cost to himself (I see) ( No, I always knew that)

                                                 you started here, you ended over here

He worked, had worked from when he was 16 years old. His father showed him how to sell things and that's what he did. He sold, bibles at first, really well.  He progressed to Life Insurance.  On the road, touching base with people, persuading, advancing, serving people.  Good at it. So good he got promotions, more and more of it, hours and hours of it.  And then he stopped.  He had to stop.  He  had the health insurance, a pension fund to stop, you might say.  He started a new self help group which  seemed to work, people were sent to him,  OCD sufferers, people tormented with panic.  He began a Masters as a therapist. He hadn't finished that. It was his first experience of third level education. He took it on, puzzling over assignment referencing, memory sticks, continual and unrelenting assessments.

He had distracting demons. He had to travel miles to and from the college, negotiate with college tutors, explain his methods, persist in his self belief.  Sometimes his demons ruled. Mostly he wrestled with them, carried on.  He never would let go.

                                                            you lived for this

He was gregarious, a drinker, who denied himself that solace when unwell. He was a talker,  loving pub talk, connection. He lived to connect, to fellow sufferers, to all the people hobbled by OCD, panic,  to his many and varied friends and acquaintances, to me.   He was passionate, a passionate man.  He lived for his GAA, the matches, the players, the dissections afterwards. And Leonard Cohen. He came with me to see Leonard in Dublin, and to Lisadell where he sang the songs all through that magical night, while ferrying drinks for us, chatting with randomers,  surrendering happily to every good thing.  He came to Seville with me one fine summer, happy as any child with the city, the people, our dinners in the warm evenings, walks in the shadow of the Alhambra, sucking on an ice-pop in the heat of the afternoon.  The warmest, sweetest of companions.

                                                       you suffered, died, for this...

He suffered, always, all his life. In his forties, when I met him, he was a slight, open faced man walking crookedly, from backache. Meetings with him involved an exhaustive search for suitable seating. I, never having suffered that, indulged him (I felt)

In time he told me why he spend so long in toilets.  Washing his hands over and over. Never having suffered that, I listened patiently (I felt)  He went to therapists, messeuses, doctors seeking alleviation, with energy, purpose.  And this is true, he never ever allowed his torments ruin a good night out. Nor did I (allow his torments ruin a...).   He lived, like a marathon runner, keeping on keeping on, pushing through the burn, until one day he was fished out, extracted, from the ocean. A bottle of whiskey in him, having, as he told me later, made up his mind.

He went patiently,  afterward, back to the drawing board.  Starting an actually effective OCD group, applying for his course, and always and ever seeking love, a woman, a life.  His lifelong quest. The road he travelled (never to arrive). I was not she, although it would have suited him and me if I had been. I was his friend and there were times when I relied on him and he on me.

Before our last supper, he had fallen again into a black hole of depression. He didn't see me for a year or so...and that last night, he told me about it.  He had crawled back doggedly from the brink, was planning things again, deciding to stop the meds, to resume his course.  Because, he told me, he was better, yes, he was, and did not want to heed the warnings to hold up, wait up.  All the cautions to take the meds and keep to the shallows in the future, hereinafter.  And I, I told him what he wanted me to, agreed with what he said he wanted to do. Understanding, I thought, his need to live his life, if life was to be worth living.

We eat and drank, talked, listened, happy for that night at least. I'm sure of it.

He was not his suffering?


                                               wanting to live wanting to die

But when he didn't call, or sent his inevitable Xmas card, his new year's text, I knew.  I didn't heed my knowing, didn't actively grieve.  Aware, if it were true, I might not actually be told. Not knowing anyone, really, knowing him. I housed an elusive ghost of loss regardless, and on this year, on his birthday, he managed, I think ( maybe) to let me know his ending. At last.

I recalled that last time we met, re-called and again re-called it.  And I see oh yes I see how sad he was, how depleted, how eager to get past it,  to connect, with food and talk, with me,  I was always good for that, for talk and fanciful forward planning.

I wonder if I'd asked him, how he actually felt ( he didn't seem to want to go there though he would have gone anywhere I asked him to...) (but if I'd asked, would he have said?)  He and I so busy, busy, there, sailing into the mystic, having raucous craic, while all the while his poor sad child was sitting numbly on the restaurant seat, awaiting him. I see it now, I see myself unwilling to connect to pain, his sorrow. Least it took me too, maybe. (and what good would I have been to him then?)  It took him, anyway.

                                       so don't be bothering me with all that now (I CAN'T?)

I think about that, about gliding over peoples dreadful sorrow, taking them to other places, they eager for it as you yourself, wanting only to be transported.  I think of a girl attacked by crows, who could not say the words 'I'm wounded', whose wound I could not/would not see. I would not look. There, but for fortune....  Sometimes you will not look at suffering humanity, lest they drag you down there with them, or, blindsided, hobble you, so that you cannot haul them out?  A polite refusal to connect with suffering, drowning, begging humanity, the dreadful inability to connect.

The knowledge is heavy in me, when I find the painting in the Van Gogh Museum, The Cornfield. I stand before it drowning in the vibrant corn, his shimmering blues, the colours pinned and pinched to canvas by the crows. So many of them.  Hovering, poised against the deep blue sky to fall on, to devour, the harvest of a life.

(Note to Angel:I do not mean to blame the crows. Also, what doesn't kill you makes you laugh))   

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