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Wild Blue Yonder

Wild Blue Yonder

It’s the 70th anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe) Day and what I’m thinking about most is that my dad is not here to see it. How he would have loved to see the planes roaring down Independence Avenue and soaring above the Capitol.

It’s being called the “Arsenal of Democracy Flyover” and is the largest array of World War II aircraft ever assembled.

If we were watching it with Dad, we would have needed no cheat sheet; he could have identified all the aircraft himself with his still-sharp (at 90 years of age!) eyes.

“There’s a Mustang, there’s a Wildcat, there’s a Lightning,” he would have said. Of course, he would have been most excited to see his beloved B-17 bomber, the Flying Fortress. I grew up hearing stories of that plane and his special spot in its, the tail gunner position. He flew 35 missions over Europe — two on D Day — and in every one of them he was facing backwards.

The WWII veterans are over 90 now, but there will be a great gathering of them today, too. This flyover is in their honor — and the honor of all their fallen comrades. 


(The Missing Man formation.)

The Watch

The Watch

After Dad died (a year ago today), I brought his watch home with me to Virginia. He had worn it almost to the end, said it drove him crazy not to know what time it was.

It’s a plain watch with a metal case, easy to read, with a simple leather band bent at the second smallest hole. It sits on my dressing table — one of the last things I see before I go to bed at night and leave for work in the morning.

I brought it home because it’s a small, humble thing that belonged to Dad for years. Now it reminds me not only of him but of all that’s happened since he’s been gone. The college graduations, college returns, graduate school and medical school acceptances, trips to Africa and Afghanistan and back. All the mornings without him at the table, sipping what he liked to call “Brazilian Novocain.” All the trips home without him walking out to greet me, rubbing his hands together in that way that he did.

The watch reminds me, too, that time is the only currency we have. Dad spent his well. Which is why his wife, children and grandchildren, his coffee buddies, basketball buddies and friends old and new — why all of us smile through our tears on this day. How we miss him! But how lucky we were to have him for so long. 

Visits to Ireland

Visits to Ireland

“The people here look familiar,” said Mom, a few hours after we’d landed at Dun Laoghaire off the ferry from Holyhead, Wales. At first I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. But after a few days in Dublin I began to understand. The people looked like a lot of the Irish Catholics we knew back home, people like the Bryants, a family with 10 children who lived on Providence Avenue across the street from Christ the King School and Church. They had freckles and round faces and a pleasant way about them.

A week later, down a long lane in County Clare, Mom and I found her cousins, a pair of bachelor uncles who lived in a cottage without electricity. They served us tea in thin china cups that they produced with great ceremony, and they reminisced about meeting my mother’s aunts when they were little boys.

A few days after that, in County Galway, we came across a man named Paddy Concannon, whose connection to us was unknown except that he was the spitting image of my grandfather, Martin Joseph Concannon.

I’ve visited Ireland only once. But I have to remind myself of that fact; it seems like I’ve been there at least a half a dozen times.

Writing About the Kids Again

Writing About the Kids Again

“What will your children think of this,” she asked me, this jolly woman who pens lovely essays and is one of the writers who meets a few Monday evenings a year. We were sitting in a large corner booth at a down-on-its-heels pizza place where the waitress never forgets your name or your order.

“I haven’t asked them,” I said, the words sounding more clipped than I intended.

After sharing anecdotes about my children early and often — making a living from writing parenting magazine articles and a book — I stopped this practice cold turkey after the book came out. Not because I wouldn’t share the stories but because I stopped writing the articles.

And then there were the years of teenage angst. Those stories may never be told.

But my youngest child is 20 now. I thought I was in the clear.  Am I really?

So I fretted and rearranged words — I even considered removing the stories entirely. But in the end I kept them in. And yesterday, just for the heck of it, I told my youngest what I was doing. “That’s OK, Mom — just as long as you don’t use my name.”

I didn’t. I won’t. But I’m sending the piece out today. It’s time.

Big House

Big House

Suburban roads and American cars aren’t the only things looking big to me these days. There’s the house. With Celia back in college the place has grown overnight.

As the youngest and last child in residence — and in love with clothes and shoes — she had spilled out of her bedroom and turned her sister’s room into a big walk-in closet. So two rooms are emptied, not just one.

And then there was her habit of falling asleep in the office — enough so that I would automatically tiptoe when I came downstairs early in the morning.

In other words, she was here, even when she wasn’t (which was often). But now she is most assuredly not here. No music pulsing out of the bathroom as she gets ready for work. No Chanel perfume trailing in her wake.

She’s fine, she’s happy, she’s where she should be.

The house is too big. That’s all.

In Benin

In Benin

In the last 24 hours I’ve been on two continents and in three countries — but I’ve finally come to rest here in Benin. The sun was setting as we took a walk, Suzanne showing me the route she takes to work, to church; introducing me to her favorite merchants. “Bon soir, Mama. Bonne Fete!”

The sights and sounds and smells overwhelm the senses. Motorcycle taxis zip around from all possible angles. Chickens rest in cages ready for slaughter. Markets offer pineapples, mangoes, onions, carrots. Busy main streets give way to dirt side alleys that dead end at the train tracks. The smell of burning trash mixes with the aroma of roasting meat.

Another continent. Another world.

As the plane prepared to land today I kept thinking of Suzanne as a baby, a girl and now a young woman. Suzanne who chats up shopkeepers in French, who grabs her mother’s hand as we cross the street. She brought me to this place. This is where our children will take us — if we let them.

Back to Africa

Back to Africa

I tracked Suzanne’s flight across the ocean — her plane was off the coast of northern Europe by the time I went to bed — and am now checking the status of her connecting flight to Africa. That plane is flying south over France, the Mediterranean, Algeria, Mali and Niger, and is scheduled to arrive in Cotonou at 9:30 tonight (3:30 my time) — 24 hours after we said goodbye at Dulles Airport.

Suzanne returns to a life I can barely imagine — a place where taxis are motorcycles, kings ride on horseback, and electricity and running water are sometime things. Her digs in the capital are relatively deluxe compared to her life in village, where she drew water from a pump, took bucket baths and shared a latrine.

What struck me most from the stories she told is the deep faith of the people. Some worship Jesus, others worship Allah, most all believe in magic of one sort or the other. Many educated people live their whole lives without riding on a plane or leaving their country. Their lives are hemmed in by the unknown far more than ours are.

I was thinking of this today while reading Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness: “‘The Unknown,’ said Faxes’s soft voice in the forest, ‘the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action.”

Farewell to Suzanne

Farewell to Suzanne

For six weeks I’ve been joking that I would tie Suzanne to a chair to keep her from boarding the plane back to Benin. Now the moment is here: she leaves today.

But I’ve come up with a better idea. In a month I’m planning to visit her.

So it’s “see you soon” instead of “goodbye” — “a bientot” instead of “au revoir.”

Don’t know how I could let her go otherwise …

Farewell to the Teenage Years

Farewell to the Teenage Years

This is the second to last day of the month — but the absolute last day for me to be the parent of a teenager. It was an era that began innocuously enough in October of 2001 — but stepped up in intensity as years progressed and there were three teenage girls in the house.

Oh, the drama! Oh, the laughter! Oh, the driving lessons, the boyfriends, the required parental participation in track meets and band concerts and cookie dough sales. Oh, the anger and the misunderstandings and the hours spent waiting for texts and phone calls to be returned. Oh, the late nights and the early mornings and the long talks after which things finally seemed right again.

It’s all part of growing up, I know, part of separating and achieving independence. Also nature’s way of preparing parents to be empty-nesters.

Now that the waters are calmer (notice I said “calmer” not “calm”), now that I have three young adults who are kind, generous and funny — in other words, now that the teenage years are ending — it’s possible to write a post about the teenage years. Before now, it hasn’t been.

So here’s to the next era, when all three girls are in their 20s. Can they be that old? Can I? Nah, it isn’t possible!

The Guestbooks of Thule

The Guestbooks of Thule

I’ve always been an adventurous traveler, preferring trips to places
I’ve never been before. I’m seeing now what great good comes from
returning over and over to the same place, a family place, in this case a cottage named Thule. 

Flipping through the old guestbooks here, seeing the girls’ handwriting change through the years, reading entries from those no longer with us, I gain for a few minutes what I’m always craving but so seldom have — perspective.

I remember the party boats, campfires and paddles into secret coves, the skits and the late-night swims. I also recall how nervous I was when the children were young. Would they fall out of the canoe? Could they swim across the lake and back?

Reading the old journals, it all comes back to me — the time when Claire split her foot on a shell, the visit when Suzanne almost drove her grandmother’s car off the road, the summer when Celia learned to kayak. All those visits are part of them, part of me — and part of this place. Reading the guestbooks brings them alive again.