Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Try
- Becoming Brenda Starr
- Off Beat
- Scattered
- That’s It
- So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
- The Spoon
- Sciatica
- Sweetheart
- A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
- However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
- After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
- As with everything in life, balance is key.
- Slow down, you move too fast…
- Yeah, I know. I have issues.
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Leave Them Alone And They’ll Come Home (#936)
The last time I posted was May 2, and here it is May 15. What can I say? I mean, what did you expect after I revealed that bit about the lingerie shop? Just kidding!
Truly, my excuses are as few and far between as was reliable Internet access. For a couple of countries advanced in oh, so many ways, the Internet thing is just not happening in Ireland and Scotland the way we hoped it would be. People, I’m spoiled! I’m so used to free wi-fi that I refuse to plunk down a couple bucks at Starbucks for T-Mobile—it’s the principle of the thing, right?
The hotel in Galway was the only place we stayed that even pretended to have access, and sure enough, the server was down. But the people were up—all night. It’s a great town, kind of like Dublin as far as culture and night life goes, but not quite as international. We didn’t do Dublin this trip, concentrating instead on the west and north mostly.
I have SO much to write about, I don’t know where to begin. But, boy, have I taken good notes. I may end up writing a book in which I fictionalize my Scots-Irish family story, about which I found out so much more that I’m thrilled just contemplating it.
I hope you’ll hang with me a few more days as I get back on Missouri time. It’s 10:30 am here, and to me it feels like 4:30 in the afternoon. I’ve been up since 5, after heading from the airport yesterday evening straight to a huge McKenna Mother’s Day party for my mum! (We didn’t even know about it until we landed in Kansas City, but hey, who can resist one more crazy accumulation of McKennas?)
My plan is to write a series of vignettes about specific ways that Ireland and Scotland changed my life—again. So it won’t exactly be as if I was blogging it day by day, but at least my connection is reliable, and my memory is fantastic.
I’ll leave you for now with this: On one of the last mornings of the trip, I awakened during the wee hours (one of only three hours in which it’s actually dark outside) with that question that comes upon each of us from time to time, even occasionally when we’re in the most familiar place.
“Where am I?”
For the first time in my life, I fell back into a peaceful sleep without needing to solve the mystery. If I’d thought about it another few seconds, I would have realized that I was in Ft. William, Scotland, in a hotel called Clann MacDuff, but finally—finally—it didn’t matter a bit.
As for “Who am I”? Well, now, that’s a different story altogether.
Permalink
Too Much Irish Information? (#935)
So we spent a lovely evening in Galway Thursday night. I know all those many days ago must seem like ancient history to you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a story to share. And so I will.
In Galway City, as in Dublin, there are loads of street musicians of all ages and abilities. They open their guitar cases or plunk down their caps, put a euro in for seed money, and hope to attract listeners with spare change. Some sing solo, some play instumental, whatever. You can tell that many are trying to raise just enough money for another night in a local hostel and maybe a pint to go with iot.
Doug has always wanted to be a street musician in whichever other life might present itself as he goes forward along the path, and I thought a bit of needling might get him to commit that night in Galway.
“Go ahead,” I said. “You’ll never see any of these folks again. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“I don’t play well enough,” he lied, and believe me when I say he really lied.
“I dare you,” I said, feeling like a gambler. I scouted the length of Quay Street, looking for a vacant corner. “Just play until you earn enough euro for a night’s stay at a B&B.”
He looked at me like I was crazy and said a firm “No.”
We passed a teenager of the angsty Irish variety, attempting to make his way in the world with a poor rendition of “Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.” No lack of confidence in that lad.
“Come on, then,” I urged. “You’ll be knockin’ on heaven’s door soon enough. Just play your whistle till you’ve got enough for fish and chips.”
“No,” he repeated.
Another young couple sang what was supposed to be harmony in a language neither English nor Gaelic. I was unimpressed, and even more sure that Doug would be a huge hit in Galway City, if only he’d take a chance.
“All right, then. Play until you earn the price of two lattes.” By now I was losing my patience, for which I am famous the world round.
“It’s not going to happen.”
All of a sudden, I spotted a store next to a spot on the brick road that begged for a musician.
“OK, mister. How about I agree to a trip into the lingerie shop?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Hand over me whistle.”
Permalink
Catching Up (#934)
We’re in Westport, County Mayo (sister city to our own Westport area in Kansas City) for the second time in three days. Friday morning we passed through here on our way to Louisburgh, which held the festival we just returned from. It was SO great!
Doug got to sit in among a few wee lassies, taking whistle instruction from the one I call “his girlfriend,” the wonderful Joannie Madden, of Cherish the Ladies fame. We’ve seen Joannie’s Irish traditional band perform three times in the states, so to be in her class in a local setting was a treat. At the same time, I brushed up (ha!) on my Irish singing in a class taught by Tim Dennehy, an Irishman who’s made many recordings over here and is well-revered.
I first took a class in a small festival in Riverstown from this same man six years ago. He told us then that a singer should choose two or perhaps three songs a year to master, adding ornamentation after mastering the words and melody as we’re able. In six years time, then, I suppose I should have a repertoire of a dozen or so Irish songs under my belt. Thankfully, Tim did not quiz me on this!
We worked on six songs over the course of the day, unheard of by any of us before we arrived. I was the only American in the group of six students; the others all being Irish themselves. They thought I was a rather good sport, I’m thinking. :)
Internet access is still spotty here. To say the next Internet cafe is only a “short stagger” away would be to not tell the truth of the thing at all. In the cities, we’re good, but we’ve not spent much time in the cities, except for one night in Galway. In the remote areas and the small towns, they only chuckle when you ask.
Everyone has a cell phone, though. The past three nights as we’ve sat in the pubs, with Doug joining in the sessions whenever possible, we watch the young fiddle and flute players. They plop their phones down on the table with their Guinness. When a call comes in, they notice the name and then turn to their mates (while each are playing their various instruments at blinding speed) and say, “It’s Jenny. I’ll call her back.” When I say they don’t miss a beat, I mean that literally!!
I’ve been sick the whole time we’ve been here. The chemist in Louisburgh has me on acidopholus, figuring I’ve attracted an Irish bug. You’d think with my credentials, I’d be immune to Celtic bugs of all types, but not so. Today, I think I really am better.
And happy, sick or not.
Will catch up again soon, I hope. Need to go wade through three days of email, both personal and buisiness. Yikes! Then it’s off to enjoy the sunshine in Westport, and then on to Donegal.
Much love to all. xoxoxox
Permalink
Morning Has Broken (#933)
Well, here we are in an Internet cafe in Ennis, County Clare! We didn’t sleep a wink, Tylenol PM notwithstanding. Ah, well. We sat with a lovely man from Cork on the plane over, and who needs sleep when you’ve got brogues? That’s always been my motto, anyway.
I’m kind of shocked that we got farther than New Jersey, to tell you the truth. We sat on the tarmac in KC for an extra hour, because the pilot said that “as always happens this time of day,” the New Jersey runways were so backed up that they wouldn’t clear us to fly there. Then, once we got to New Jersey, we circled for more than thirty minutes before they’d let us land.
That would have all been cool, except for that our layover in NJ was only to have been for one hour and twelve minutes! We raised only a bit of a stink, so that the customer service person just off the plane called over to the other gate and had the plane wait for us. Then a guy driving one of those nifty carts zoomed up to the gate and we piled in. It would have taken us the rest of our natural lives to make it to the plane headed for Ireland without the cart.
But we’re here, and we’re happy, and someday I will pee again. Amazing how things kind of shut down when you’ve flying over the pond. I’m pouring the fluids in, though, and you know what they say about what goes in…..
More later, and I promise not to concentrate too much on my bathroom (or lack of bathroom) related difficulties.
I do have standards, you know!
Permalink
Gloatin’ Through The Gloamin’? (#932)
Maybe you weren’t raised on that old Scottish song, “Roamin’ Through The Gloamin’,” but I was. And since I’m being blessed to roam through it with my own two feet (and my own one husband) once again, I hope you’ll join me on the journey!
I started this blogging adventure in December of 2000, just two months after Doug and I returned from our first (and only) trip together to Ireland and Scotland. So I don’t know exactly how or even if this will work, but I’m sure hoping to blog my way through the heather and home again.
A lot will depend on Internet connections, of course. We’re going to some rather remote areas way in the far north in Ireland, so bloggability may be in a bit of a grey area, along with the rest of the island.
I promise not to gloat here at fallible, but I really do want to share our travels as they unfold. Hope to visit with you in the comments section from across the pond. (And for those of you who are already across the pond—any pond will do—perhaps we’ll meet along the way!)
We’re leaving in a half hour. Can’t remember the last time I had this much fun!
Grab your blogging passport, and let’s get going!
Permalink
Croak (#931)
I won’t deny that over the years I’ve spent some energy contemplating my own demise, whether timely or untimely. I’ve planned for the old guy’s, too, just so you know.
It’s pretty complicated, not like back in the day when you could have a simple will or a verbal agreement with a few folks about how to dispose of your effects and divide your few possessions, in case the inevitable happened early.
The last time we went to the Old Country, in 2000, we still had two minor-aged children. Back when Scott was a minor as well, we appointed guardians for our kids and drafted a living trust so that our wishes would take place with a modicum of red tape.
Doing anything to prevent red tape in the future, of course, means cutting through a lot of red tape today.
Still, even though I’ve spent several weeks trying to make sure our affairs are as orderly as possible before we leave the country, I left an outline for the kids which contained all the salient information on a single post-it note.
Doug was just a bit offended when he saw it, I think.
“That’s it?” he asked. “Our entire lives, condensed into a few lousy bullet points?”
“Yep,” I said. “And if it weren’t for the love notes I added, I could have fit it all on one side.”
We haven’t croaked quite yet, but I’m getting the love notes down to a science.
Permalink
Half A Million Little Dollars (#923)
If you haven’t seen this story, you should.
Honestly, what are people thinking when they sit down to claim a hefty $500,000 advance from Little, Brown? Do writers really imagine that the technology doesn’t exist to discover whether or not they’ve plagiarized? How does a chick get herself into Harvard without knowing she shouldn’t copy chick lit from the chick in front of her?
James Frey messed up big-time, claiming fact where there was merely story. But this gal? In my opinion, this is even a more agregious literary offense.
But, hey. Who am I to judge? I don’t even like it if I think I might have copied myself.
Permalink
A Tale Of Two Grandpas (#922)
I’ve told you how my father’s father died—the poor fellow drowned in the River Clyde in Scotland.
There is—and always will be, I guess—a lingering uncertainty about the circumstances which might have caused him to be “seen falling” (the words used on the death certificate) off the boat that dim and dreary February day. At six in the morning, it’s a little late to be still drunk from the night before, I’d think. At least, not drunk enough to fall overboard.
He could have been thrown or pushed, I suppose. I don’t know for sure if Grandpa Bernard had long or short-term enemies of the type that might perpetrate such a crime, but of course even back then there would have been random acts of senseless violence. One can always hold out hope.
Because then there’s the other awful possibility—you know the one I’m talking about. I guess I have to admit it’s the one that seems most likely in my mind.
Did I ever mention that as an infant, Grandpa was baptized at St. Dympna’s Catholic church in Feebaghbane, County Monaghan? In case you’ve never heard of St. Dympna, here’s a bit I found about her patronage: “Against sleepwalking; epilepsy; epileptics; family happiness; incest victims; insanity; loss of parents; martyrs; mental asylums; mental disorders; mental health caregivers; mental health professionals; mental hospitals; mental illness; mentally ill people; nervous disorders; neurological disorders; possessed people; princesses; psychiatrists; rape victims; runaways; sleepwalkers; therapists.”
That’s exactly how it was worded at the Catholic forum I visited. I don’t think St. Dympna was really against “family happiness” or various others of the items, professions, and conditions mentioned, but yeah, I can see her being against sleepwalking.
Suffice it to say, and you can take this with more than a grain of salt if you are so inclined, that St. Dympna is the patron saint of the mentally ill. Now that I type it in so many words, it occurs to me that I might have shared this information with you before…in fact, I distinctly remember Michael Main commenting about another saint’s credentials….Oh, well. Saints Preserve Us!
So, Grandpa Bernard died at age forty, in an obviously tragic and possibly mentally ill state. But, you’re probably thinking right about now, didn’t you have another grandpa? Wouldn’t your mother also have been fortunate enough to have a dad?
Yes, yes she was. The grandpa I knew my whole life was called Papoo. He lived until the summer of 1976, when I was twenty-two. We lived in the same town our whole lives, and he was a thoroughly wonderful man to know and love.
I’m thinking about him a lot these days, as Doug and I are leading up to hopping on the plane for the Old Country.
The first time I went to Scotland was after I’d grown up and moved out on my own. My parents had decided to go and take my brother and baby sister who still lived at home. I had the brilliant idea to fork over a wad of cash and piggyback onto their vacation.
Papoo spent the night at Mom and Dad’s house the night before we were scheduled to fly. I spent the night, too, because we lived far from the airport and a limo was scheduled to retrieve us and all our stuff fairly early in the morning.
Before I awakened, Mom cooked a full Irish breakfast for her daddy, who then kissed her good-bye and headed back to his house, a twenty minute drive from hers. Did I mention Papoo was a widower, lived alone, and that Mom was his only child? To say he felt a bit of panic about his daughter leaving the country for five weeks, when he was used to her calling him twice a day, would be putting it mildly.
We got the phone call about an hour later, just as the limo was scheduled to pull up in front of the house. Papoo had called my sister Liz and said, “I’m not feeling too well. Can you come over to the house? Don’t tell your mother, though, because she and the rest of them are about to leave for Scotland.”
Liz and her new husband Big John rushed right over to Papoo’s house and there he sat in the kitchen chair, the phone in his hand, way past only mostly dead.
You might say that Scotland laid claim to both my grandfathers, then—the first, whose loyalties drew him home to Ireland over the waters and back again, and the second, who with his final earthly thoughts could only imagine seeing the place through his lovely daughter’s eyes.
Scotland is fascinating and frightening, beautiful and bleak. The memories and the might-have-beens it recalls are as jagged as the craggy mountains that cut into the mist-enshrouded landscape.
At the same time, though, there’s healing in the heather. And so, once again, Caledonia calls.
Permalink
Sometimes I Feel Like A Daughterless Mom (#921)
Have I mentioned that sometimes it’s hard to have a child you can’t get to when you know she needs you?
Or when you know, at least, that if she was five years old and this happened, she would have needed you? Or when you know, at the very least, that in the old days, you really did have a little girl who got all better with hugs and kisses from her good, old Mom?
My daughter, who is still in the mountains high above Kingston, Jamaica, working with kids at an orphanage there, has apparently inherited from my mother a disturbing propensity for falling in the john.
That’s right. She slipped getting into the shower and is now, in her words, “being tended to by two American nurses.”
The fingers in splints don’t worry me too much, although they sure would limit her ability to take care of the kiddos. But the “bruised ribs” thing? Too many unanswered questions for my blood. I’m praying there aren’t any broken bones in there, getting all tempted to puncture a lung or whatever else those puppies do. And, I’m sorry, but herniated discs aren’t much fun, either….
Right now, I’m waiting for more information than she gave me in the very sketchy email (due to busted fingers) she sent last night. She might not have sent it at all, if I hadn’t sent her one asking, “How shall we be praying for you right now?”
Moms know when stuff is happening, people. They just do. And boy do I wish I could get to her right now. Because the only thing better than being tended to by two American nurses is to throw one old-fashioned Mom into the mix.
I love you, Carrie Woman!
Permalink
Eight Cousins (#920)
Remember that book by Louisa May Alcott? I read it immediately upon having just devoured Little Women, back when I was twelve. Wow! It’s been a cool forty years—time for a second read, don’t you think?
Anyway, Doug and I leave one week from today for our time in Ireland and Scotland. Have I mentioned I have seven girl cousins in Scotland? So if you throw me into the mix, we make our own grand version of Eight Cousins!
Then of course, we need to factor in their husbands, children, and grandchildren. I’m thinking the crowd approaches fifty, all told. They call their American-born cousins “the Yanks,” which always cracks me up.
I wish I could tell you right this minute what’s been going on with my genealogical research. I have quite randomly begun comparing notes with a McKenna I found on the Very Extremely World Wide Web, and—wonder of wonders—we may be related. And if we are, well…you may have to wait till the book comes out!
This McKenna is going to show us some of the family sites in County Monaghan, Ireland, and I’m going to share with him what I’ve already uncovered about the family tree. He and I are both excited to see how this unfolds going forward.
Now, I’m going to go put together seven photo albums of our last trip for my peeps, just because I can.
I CAN’T WAIT!!!!!
Permalink
Where? (#919)
“Where have you laid Him?”
Imagine poor Mary Magdalene, exhausted with grief over losing Jesus, arriving Sunday morning before dawn at the tomb where Jesus had been placed on Friday evening, and finding it empty. She trips through the burial grounds until she practically collides with a Man who, through her tears, looks like the gardener.
“Where have you laid Him?”
She believes, of course, that He is, without a doubt, dead. She witnessed the brutality with which He was crucified, the finality of the spear stabbing Him in the side. She felt the final anguish of the last of His blood spilling out of the open wound, drops of it falling like tears on her feet.
Who knows if while He was yet with them, she had already come to believe in the resurrection of the dead?
Jesus faces her in the garden and when He says a single word—“Mary!”—she realizes her mistake. He is not dead, but living! And not only living, she realizes with the joy that comes from being purchased back from death herself, but alive forevermore.
“Where have you laid Him?”
The words came to me out of no where in the middle of the night, a question that pierced neither my hands nor my feet, but my heart.
Because if I’ve laid Him anywhere—in the empty back pew at my once-on-Sunday church or inside the crisp pages of a Book I seldom read—it means that I’ve left Him for dead.
I don’t really believe He’s dead anymore—do I?
Where have I laid Him?
Permalink
They Got Some Crazy Little Scriptures There, And I’m Gonna Get Me One! (#915)
I’m awash in paper, people.
It hasn’t been too long ago that I took on solving the Medicare Part D puzzle on behalf of my mother. If you can believe it, her former out-of-pocket cost for her prescription medications was $1500 per month—more than her total income. Now, thanks to moi, she’s only forking over $300. Of course, the taxpayers—and believe me, I am personally and painfully aware of this—are shelling out the other $1200 for her, and about that I have VERY mixed feelings.
But taxes are a subject for another day, namely, next Monday. Today’s topic is the never ending plethora of college brochures and application forms which has become such a long-term part of my existence that I truly don’t remember what I ever did before.
Look, folks, I’ve got so few college credits under my own one-size-too-big belt that it’s still debatable whether or not I’ll ever actually be a sophomore. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know my way around the essay portion and can’t take my turn on the FAFSA dancefloor with the best of you!
Kev’s getting his associate’s degree in a few weeks, and then onward and upward for him. He’s applying to maybe eight different schools and I guess you could say I’ve volunteered to be “involved.” He’s my baby, you understand, and how would I feel if I looked back on this last paper-intensive foray into his educational future and realized I didn’t help at all?
I’d feel just FINE, thank you. But I’ve still volunteered to pitch in, at least with copious amounts of what we shall euphemistically call “encouragement.”
“Kev, you’ve really got to get on this, you know…”
“I am, Mom.”
“Because time’s a wastin’...”
“I know, Mom.”
“We’re leaving in just two weeks for the old country, and I want all the applications to be in the mail by then.”
“Yeah, OK…”
“And don’t just apply to those fancy Swiss schools, Kevin.”
“I’m not—”
“Because maybe you should go to a school here and do a semester in Europe instead…”
“Right.”
“So make sure you ask all the schools upfront for their semester abroad info—”
“I am.”
“Cause you know what the Bible says, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Cast your bread upon the waters, and…”
“And what?”
“And, umm…I think…something like…”
“What are you trying to say, Mom?”
“Cast your bread upon the waters, and after many days it will…”
“Mom?”
“It will come back to you. Yeah…that’s it.”
“But, Mom, won’t the bread be—?”
“Yes, IT WILL BE SOGGY! When your bread returns to you after many days, it will be SOGGY! So what’s your point, Kevin?”
“Mom, are you OK?”
These are the times that try Moms’ souls.
Permalink
Upon The River’s Shore (#914)
In February of 1926, my Grandpa Bernard booked a passage in steerage aboard a cattle boat called the Magpie.
My father, age four at the time, always said that his da had left Grandma and the children behind in Scotland to go visit his parents back in Ireland. He was only to be gone a week, Dad said, but then he ended up being gone, well…forever.
Today, I looked a bit too closely, perhaps, at my grandparents’ marriage certificate. I’m trying to make a timeline of family members, places, times, and events, trying to superimpose it upon the events of a troubled and troubling bout of Irish history, trying to find some answers that make more sense than the ones I’ve been given.
I looked too closely and noticed for the first time that my grandfather’s parents were both dead by the time he and Grandma got married. He couldn’t have been going home to Ireland to see his parents, and he himself hadn’t lived there for more than twenty years by the time he decided to take the journey back.
There’s a mystery here somewhere, that much I know. My father always told us that his da, who drowned after falling from the boat in the River Clyde, was never found. Until four years ago, when a Scottish cousin I met online provided articles from the Glasgow Herald to prove otherwise, I accepted Dad’s story.
But my grandfather’s body did eventually wash up on the shore, several months after he went missing, and several miles closer to home along the river bank than he’d been the dark morning he died.
I couldn’t help thinking about these things as I shuffled through birth and death and marriage certificates today. I couldn’t help wondering at the mysteries we the living must unravel during our short stay upon this earth.
I put pen to paper then, to jot down the information from my Grandpa’s death certificate on my sketchy timeline. I automatically wrote the year 2006, instead of 1926, and laughed at my silly mistake. Until I looked more closely and realized I’d written today’s month and day, too: April 11.
But he died in February, I said to myself. Why did I write today’s date instead?
I looked at the death certificate once more and saw two dates: the morning of his disappearance into the water and the day the River Clyde finally gave him up—April 11, 1926.
On this very day, eighty years ago, Grandma Mary, surrounded by fatherless children, opened her door and someone—who, I wonder? someone she knew and loved, I hope—told her the end of the story of his life.
Tonight, I’m thinking of her, and of my father—gone himself these twenty-two years—and my aunts and uncles, all dead now, too. As much as I wish I could, I can’t write them a better ending, but I’m starting to believe there’s a middle to this story that’s never been told.
And I believe I’m the one to tell it.
Permalink
Narrowing The Field? (#913)
Doug and I are in deep discussions with our youngest child, Kevin, about the course his studies should take after he completes his Associates degree in May.
He’s enrolled in a hospitality management program, and is considering a number of schools at which he could finish his Bachelors, including a couple in Switzerland. It’s a lot to think about, pray about, and decide.
Last night, I emailed him some links I thought might help him, for schools that hadn’t made it onto our radar screen until yesterday. Time is of the essence, of course, as it always is, so I urged him to take swift action in making application to the schools he’s interested in. I awakened at 5:45 this morning for no good reason and checked my email.
Here’s the message that awaited me from Kevin:
“thanks for all the good info. yes i am emailing you at 3:23 in the AM but as you know life is crazy here at the bachelor pad. i will look into all this info more tommorrow and then go to my advisor’s office on either monday or tuesday. probably tuesday because i have a three hour break on tuesdays in which i usually have lunch with colleen krista irene and evelyn but i can skip that just this once.
love you much”
Here’s my question: If you were him, would you really want to leave town?
Permalink
Feebaghbane (#912)
You read that right: Feebaghbane. A tiny cross in the road, near the miniature village of Scotstown, in the section of the county called Tydavnet, in County Monaghan, Ireland.
Poor, little Feebaghbane. From everything I can gather so far, my great-grandfather Bernard McKenna was born there in 1847, smack dab in the middle of the famine years. Why his parents stayed, I have no idea. A significant number of McKennas from Tydnavet took a boat, under the direction of a kindly Catholic priest, and ended up on Prince Edward Island, where they’ve eaten well ever since.
Perhaps my people feared the ocean more than the plague. Who can say? All I know is that they did not emigrate, they stuck out the famine years and beyond. My Grandpa Bernard was also born in Feebaghbane, presumably in somewhat less hungry times, in 1884.
He moved to Scotland as a young man, and only returned once to Feebaghbane, as far as anyone knows. By that time, he was forty years old, married, and the father of five children, with a sixth on the way.
He made an overnight trip there on a boat called The Magpie, which carried cattle mostly, and a few poor humans. He went to see his mother, perhaps, if she was still alive. His old man McKenna, who’d been the famine baby, died in 1905, and by the time Grandpa Bernard made his journey home, it was 1925.
Who can say exactly what was in his mind? No one spoke of what happened after the body was found, once it washed up on the shores of the river Clyde near Glasgow. Or if they did, it was only in whispers.
Grandpa Bernard very nearly made it back to his wife and children, one of whom was my father—only four years old at the time. He was seen falling from the cattle boat early that dark morning, only a few miles from home. The boat was stopped and the waters searched, but no sign of him surfaced until three months later, after Grandma had given birth again and after most, if not all, hope for his life had been lost.
If you google Feebaghbane, you won’t come up with much, I’m afraid. There’s a florist who might deliver to an address there if pressed. There’s an outfit called simplyweddings.com that appears in several of the few results, but I don’t imagine they get much business in the Feebaghbane area.
I’m going to visit there in a couple of weeks, regardless. Because whether on the map or not, Feebaghbane has risen to the top of my personal search engine.
Besides, there’s a little spot named “Eternal Beauty & Tanning Centre” which proves once and for all that the Irish still believe in miracles.
Permalink
