An Rud A Lionas An Tsuil Lionann Se An Croi

Years ago I was required to read a book for a psychology class I was taking. I couldn't tell you the title of the book or the name of the author, but it was the story of her struggle with undiagnosed mental illness. The book chronicled her life, the highs and the many lows, as she fought through what she later found out to be bipolar disorder. Prior to diagnosis she had several failed romantic relationships. One, she recalled, was especially passionate in the way many fantasize love to be like, or ought to be like. Romantic gestures, amazing intimate encounters, grandiose proclamations & poetic compliments. Like something from the movies. But in between those moments were periods of violence, anger, jealousy, bitterness. Neither party was mentally healthy & it was abundantly clear by how they treated one another, how they viewed & valued one another & themselves. By the time I was sixteen & reading this book I had learned a few things about love, mostly abou...

As soon as the doctor walked through the door I knew I was in for bad news. He made that face, the aggressive teeth-showing frown that people usually wear when witnessing something revolting. The face that is generally followed by the sound of breath being sharply inhaled through the bared teeth. Then, the final nail in the coffin, the slow head shake. "Is it bad, doc?" I asked, though I already knew the answer. My palms were sweating like crazy, my fingers twisted together like they did when I was a kid and I was trying to work out how my uncle did that thing where it looked like he had one, long continuous finger wriggling through the palms of his hands. "Yeah," the doctor finally exhaled, his eyes lowered towards the chart resting on top of his tablet. I tried to sneak a look at it, but the numbers and acronyms, the results of my blood test, meant nothing to me. "It's ok," I assured him. "Just tell me." He nodded very slowly for se...

My husband & a couple others dug the hole. Not the standard six feet. Only three or so. Wide & long enough for the small coffin, with plenty of room to spare.  Before our priest came I stood & looked down at the grave, at the stone we had placed at its head. It sits under a tree that was sent to us from Oklahoma by the father of a dear friend of ours. He passed away only a few months after we received the tree. We weren't sure how it would fare in our climate, but it's so far survived two New England winters. It seemed like an appropriate spot for our little one, the child that will never grow under the tree that grows against the odds. As I stared into the hole I felt suddenly self-conscious. Silly, even. All of this for a child who was only the size of a raspberry. But it didn't matter, not to me, how big or little she had been. Or if she had even been a she. I had carried her for more than 12 weeks; the first eight weeks alive, the next several for as ...

I never thought I'd be sad to put my maternity clothes away. Usually, by the time I do, I'm so sick of wearing them that I don't want to even see them for at least another year or so. Usually when I put them away there's a newborn baby keeping me company. Not this time. After three babies my body & muscles just knew what to do; they softened & gave way to my expanding uterus, making room for the tiny life growing inside. The bump appeared much sooner than it had before that I wondered if I might be carrying twins, & hoped that wasn't the case. Just thinking of having two babies gave me anxiety - thinking of how that would stretch my body, what it would mean if I tried to breastfeed both of them, thinking of having to buy another car seat & crib. But that wasn't the case. By the time I had my first appointment to go over my medical history, get weighed, have my urine checked the baby, the single baby, was already gone, unbeknownst to me. Par...

I have this newspaper from college that I've held on to for the last 12 years. Though I haven't looked at it in a long time I know it's there, in a box of mementos from my four years of college. The paper was printed shortly after the Virginia Tech shootings. It wasn't that particular event that made me keep the paper, but the article that it contained, about all of the tragedies my generation had grown up with. At the time the article was written the emphasis was on the most recent tragedy, the shooting at Virginia Tech that resulted in 33 deaths; September 11th; & Columbine. I was ten, almost eleven, when Columbine happened. Before that there were a few events I remember seeing on the news or hearing about while catching snippets of adult conversation. The LA riots, the OJ Simpson case, the invasion of Kuwait. I was so young when these things happened that of course, at the time, I didn't understand them, but I do remember the images - the car chase, the bro...

Is there a song that, no matter how many times you hear it, always gives you goosebumps? For me that song is "The Bells of Notre Dame" from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Yes, I'm serious. Earlier this week, on Palm Sunday, my family & I were taking a drive. Our car is an '08 & doesn't have an AUX port, but does have a disc changer so we often resort to listening to a variety of CDs while driving. And, naturally, there is always at least one Disney CD in the mix. That song came on & by the end of it my legs were visibly covered in goosebumps. It made me wonder why that happens: why do we get goosebumps when we hear certain pieces of music? The thought occupied my mind for a bit, but I never came to any conclusions & I resisted the urge to Google it & fall into a Wikipedia blackhole of information on biological reactions to external stimuli. And then I saw the news yesterday about THE Notre Dame. It broke my heart to see those...

Whilst scrolling mindlessly through my Instagram feed yesterday I came across an advertisement for a neat gadget: the Astrohaus Freewrite . It reminded me, at first glance, of those little toy "computers" that were all the rage when I was growing up. Laptops for kids, with a teeny-tiny screen, a keyboard, & access to so-called educational games. In one promo video for the Freewrite a couple of the creators are featured, talking about their invention. It doesn't seem coincidental to me that these men, who looked to be in their 30s, probably grew up with those same Vtech laptops. Though the design is pretty sleek & basic and boasts a keyboard that is far more familiar to those of us that grew up learning how to type on desktops instead of laptops, what caught my eye was the advertised purpose of the device: to provide writers with a "distraction free" writing tool. It can connect to WiFi so that projects are uploaded to the cloud, but aside from that the...