Blog Jam: Music.

I was playing this album for the umpteenth time today and had this heart stopping moment when I realized I fell in love with it 55 years ago!!

Which got me thinking of other songs, other albums other earth shaking moments of music. 62 years ago I heard this. I was 19. A man (boy?) I dated for a while (oh what a handsome fellah, from Liverpool, attending our university in Cork) who gave me a copy of this from one of his friends, John Lennon, from around the corner from his home). A brand new sound, no idea of the upcoming fame to come.

And then the song my father sang me every night (I was an only child for a while) and I loved it and still do. I am sure I drove him mad, night after night. "Singie Kacky, Daddy" was my first complete sentence. The song was "I'll take you home again, Kathleen".

And oh my God, when I was searching for it on line I found this: Elvis Presley sang his own version of it. WT...?

But this fellow below does a version very close to my father's, he was a fine tenor, my dad. Frank Patterson. Very pure. over 80 years ago when I heard this song first.

For Don: The Real Meaning of Christmas.

Don will never read this. He is basically fairly illiterate. He comes from a very well do to family who have given up on him through many rehabs, handouts, and giving up between bouts of giving in.

When he lived here I gave him the odd job of cleaning off my car from snow and ice. And doing a fine job if it was in the mornings, which it usually was. And gave him the odd handout and then stopped realizing I was enabling him. He often took my garbage out to the big bin and I'd slip him a five. If he was passing, he took my groceries up from my car. There was a great kindness in him. Sometimes he refused a tip, waving me off.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, his behaviour when he was drunk with other tenants in the community rooms was often aggressive and confrontational and threatening. Too many times. So his tenancy was terminated. And the management found him another placement in a building they have for troubled and addicts. He was brokenhearted leaving here, last September. But most of those who were involved in community activities were relieved. Understandably.

I open my door today and in the hall with my boots was a stuffed green bag and a card.

From Don.

It was packed to the brim with either gifts he had been given - warm gloves, a beanie, socks, soaps, deodorant, toothpicks, toothpaste, toothbrush, or freebies from motel rooms. You get the picture. Small packages of treats, a travel kit.

And I broke down and cried. 

This is one of the the most wonderful gifts I've ever been given. And as I write this, I'm still bawling my eyes out. The time, the effort, the lovely card, his access to our building. His walk from where he lived.

He had no way with words did Don. He was a pretty broken man from the booze and whatever pain he suffered in his life. I will never forget him.

You're a star Don. And a gentleman. And you will never know it.

"The Holidays"

 .....As we used to call this time. The time of "Santy", the time of anticipation, a mad excitement infecting all of us - as children, then as parents, and, if lucky, as grandparents.

I was chatting with a dear friend this morning when it struck us both that these feelings are now absent. I said, and meant it, I think I'd prefer if I was alone, to savour some memories, to play my own music, to not worry if I am unable to leave the family parties early as I don't drive at night, to just work on making myself smaller, more invisible in the excitement around me. To forget, if I can, the constant pain punching in my back lately which makes me sleep deprived and balancing pain meds so I don't zombie out but find that delicate balance of pain reduction while still being alert.  

I received a lot of cards but didn't have the energy to send out any this year. I become stingy with meting out my energy, some days I use it only for medical appointments, this past week it was a sleep management expert and a calibration of my home BP kit which was reflecting high BP for the past couple of months but at the clinic was proved false. I'm within normal for my age and condition.

I miss the old guard of my friends, now passed on or in brain deterioration of some kind. One in terrible depression. 

I tried to keep up with Grandgirl who stayed with me for a few days. She is wonderful company and we "Swifted" out together watching the Taylor Swift documentary. If I were younger, I would be one of those mad fans at her concerts. Maybe I could get an obliging young 'un to push me in a wheelchair? Worth a thought, right?

So a selection of random photos to Celebrate Sunday Selections and to remember dear Sue, what an awful loss. She lives on in so many of us.

A  "boreen"  (little road) from West Cork, Ireland. Undated. Taken about 20 years ago.

Another one of a boreen on Sherkin Island that I took. I had frameable prints made of this for all my siblings. John Willie was the famous ferryman who was drunk quite a lot and assigned a passenger to take his boat over to the island. At the age of 13 I was so designated one night. In a storm.

A view from the front of my building where you can see both the lake and the ocean in the distance.

May the season be kind to you and those you love and the coming light dispel any darkness or distress.🌲❄️🎅

Choices

 A longish post dear readers but I could have tripled the size. Count your blessings 🤣💕

Peter Paul and Mary sang it best. "We are only one river."

One can make the most of it or the worse of any situation. Choice, I know is a facile word. And sometimes overwhelming situations remove the luxury of choice.

I’m in that mode where I find I shut myself off from the old protestations of others’ entrenched, harmful positions on race and emigration and the othering of peoples they don’t even know and if presented with an opportunity, would turn away in disgust.

When such people are in your own circle it makes things challenging for an old woman, whose voice is often discounted. Who is basically invisible to most now apart from her own generation who often sigh, accept the inevitability of aging and keeping their mouths shut just get on with it

Old hippies should simply fade away. We should stop spouting tolerance or compassion or empathy for those “others”.

And mother of god shut up about that wokey stuff.

I have learned most from talking to strangers. From my brave delivery people who bring in my groceries, clean my home, deliver my medications, take my laundry and return it pristine and folded. Some are young. Some are refugees from appalling war-zones, starvation and threat. Eking out a living in a new country, struggling with English, hoping for a better life, taking menial jobs. One I have been blessed to know is from a “shithole” country as the Fat Felon likes to call them. He is taking classes, drives for DoorDash in his cousin’s car, shows off with his carrying of multiple bags to my home, balancing a coffee cup in the other hand, making me laugh. I always tip these wonderful helpers extra. A tiny boost along the way. What did you leave behind I ask them. "lady, you don't want to know" is a common response.

You see, I was an immigrant myself, I struggled in a new country, learning Canadian English, very different from the Hiberno-English I was brought up in. Learning completely different accounting systems from library books. Trying to fit in and knowing now how lucky I was to be white.

Immigrants, no matter the country, are NOT a monolith. They are never the same religion, race, sex or sexual orientation. They have the same desires and hopes I had. And many of the same reasons I left Ireland in 1967.

To “other” immigrants is to tell more about yourself than any self declaration of “I’m not a racist, but...” or ”you can’t tell a good immigrant from a bad immigrant.” Well, the same applies to any human, buddy, white, brown or black or mixed. It applies to you when you spout hatred and intolerance as if it’s normal discourse.

Choices.

We must always choose kindness.

We are only one river.