SAVOR The VICTORY

  Today is a happy day for me.  I can rest on the laurels of Al Horford and  LeBron James for a full day.  Tonight it all begins again as the Celtics go into the first game of their  battle against the 76ers.  So in that brief interim of victory for both my teams I am  also free of pain--rare--and the day is sunny.
Yash and I  decide to put together a little gift package  for our one and only grand daughter Rowan.
I have stayed away from talking about her because I did not want to  see my prose dissolve into saccharine  praise.  But she is my delight.
My mother Margaret  and my mother-in law Hilda both adored  my son Joey.  At the time I did not understand the intensity of that devotion.  Now in retrospect I understand and feel how much it must have hurt them when  Joey's father and I departed  Pawtucket to venture  out to Illinois for graduate school. Joey was only  two and a half and neither of us had  ever  even visited Urbana, Illinois.
Now I see how the Holy Spirit must have guided us -- so ignorant and provincial as we were.
The University of Illinois is a TEMPLE OF EDUCATION and  I felt it the moment  I stepped on campus and saw the glorious quad.
The amazing library holds millions of volumes and changed the whole  experience of writing a research paper.
I made a great choice without  knowing it, and it was a lucky place to be.  I have been grateful  for the last  50 years and I had my first and best  experience of what a University could be when  I went there in 1966.  I had finally found my people .

So we drove to the post office near Saint  Teresa's  Church and Yash went in to mail the package.  After we left we stopped at BK on Newport to get what Yash calls the 3 dollar lunch--their 2 Whoppers for 6 dollars.  Then into Slater Park where we  ate the  burgers and watched the geese while listening to Leonard Cohen --one of my favorites.  I decided to take a leisurely tour home so I drove back via Columbus Avenue and  down Pond Street.
 When I passed the old Memorial Hospital, I  stopped the car to look at the  building that once housed the  Nurses Residence. It is a lovely late Victorian style, gracious and a little ornate. I remember as a child watching the student nurses coming in and out in their capes and lovely caps. Whenever I watch CALL THE MIDWIVES I think of those crisp and lively young women.  I do hope that  they preserve that  building.

 Once I am in that nostalgic mood, I  want to go downtown. In my mind I am walking it.  There once was a drugstore at the corner of Prospect and Pond Street and it was a perfect stop on the way  to shopping on Main Street. Now there is just a vacant lot. 
 Continuing down  Prospect Street just before the intersection  with Division Street,  I would come to a  small grocery store.  If you know what to look, for you can still see on your right the entrance  and  window of the store--the first  floor of a three-decker. They had a well stocked candy counter, and the  girl who was the  child of the owners often  waited on me behind that counter.  How I envied her that job!
 I gave her a  nickel and pointed to the  varieties of  penny candy that I  wanted,  and she  gave me a nice selection in a  small bag.  That would keep me happy for the rest of the walk to the  downtown.  Once I got to the Main Street  Bridge I would stand there and watch the waters foam beneath until I had finished the candy,  I was exactly where I wanted to be. I still feel that flush of pleasure when I cross the Bridge and look over to the Slater Mill perched on the Falls.  
I am in a Pawtucket state of mind.

THE PLAYOFFS

You  probably guessed where I am these days.  Watching  my favorite teams  play seven games in the NBA Playoffs.  I had just enough time to recover from MARCH MADNESS  when they came upon us.
Yes I did say TEAMS --I am rooting for two teams  the BELOVED CELTICS and the  team that has a KING  leading them --Cleveland Cavaliers.

Now we have a crisis--somehow we have lost  my Cleveland cap that sat on the Back of the couch  all season.  Yash cannot find it. How mysterious ! N ow I see it under the couch.  SO now  it is placed firmly on my head for this  seventh game.  I hope the Cavaliers accomplish what the Celtics did last night.
MY devotion to the Celtics goes back to High school when I also played basketball for Saint Xavier Academy.  I had no  skill but I grew to 5 feet 9 inches and I can recall when the  nun-coach  gripped my shoulder--I want  you to tryout  for the team. AND I did and with no  skills but height I got picked.
You know the saying --YOU CAN'T TEACH HEIGHT.

CAT GOT MY TONGUE IN PAWTUCKET

Tongue Tied  Misery

Just finished reading a book  by Benson Bobrick about the history of stuttering and attempts to treat it.  The author ends in the last section by  telling his own tale of  struggle with the affliction of stuttering.  This book which I must have purchased and read several years ago  brought me  back to the memory of my own history of stuttering. and I decided to write a narrative and not stay hidden even to myself in the stuttering closet..

 I realized that as an adult I have  very rarely mentioned or told anyone that I  stuttered for the years of my childhood.  I try not  to think of it -it was extremely mysterious to me both in its inception and its conclusion.  I am afraid of it on some deep level, and I was not sure of any of the facts of stuttering. As a child no one ever spoke to me about it although they did attempt to cure it--unsuccessfully.
  
I don't remember my mother or anyone at home making comments about my speech,  In fact they exclaimed with pride when the first word I said as a baby was BOOK! But as soon as I started in the kindergarten at Prospect Street School they said that I had  a speech problem. And I knew that I did: I had trouble with A VERY SPECIFIC CONSONANT--I COULD NOT EASILY SAY ANY WORD THAT BEGAN WITH  M.

Funny to admit, I found  one hard piece of evidence of a "compensation" that I resorted to  in the Saint Patrick's Day Program that surfaced recently.  It seems that one song was sung by someone called Clumpy. I was startled when I saw  it written in my  hand--I had  "Forgotten" that I called my mother Clumpy.  Why? Because every night she told repeatedly the story of a movie called ELEPHANT WALK to my sister Sheila.  And I  could hear her imitating the sound of the Elephant  She would call out CLUMP! CLUMP!  CLUMP! Well that was how I justified the substitution  of Clumpy for Ma, Mommy, Mother  or even Margaret. I hated using it because she hated it.  But at least it allowed me to address my mother without seeing the horror in her face as she turned and watched and waited as I struggled to  produce the M-words.

So I began to be sent out of the classroom to  meet the speech therapist who  came to help us improve our speech. We were a motley crew--some were the students who could not yet read or write.  Some  looked dirty and disheveled, sat with bowed heads, and being put in that company dismayed me.  Because both of my sisters had Down Syndrome, I wondered why I did not have it and  I expected retardation to show  up any day in my life as well. 
Here it is--I remember thinking when I went to the Speech sessions.  The therapist was a man, and he seemed to believe that stuttering was about tongue action because he  put us through a regimen of tongue exercises. At one point he  put  his hand into my mouth to grab my tongue.  Something fierce in me refused  this invasive move and I clamped down my jaw and bit him hard.  I  think that he yelled aloud and hit me slightly. I am not sure, but he sent me to the principal's office . No one was there, and they sent me to my class and my teacher  asked me what had  happened and I could not speak--I  was crying. And she made me go and stand in the cloakroom. ( For any younger reader-the cloakroom was a sort of closet with coat hooks off the classroom where we left our coats and were often sent for that era's version of time out.) 

After what seemed like a long time,  the principal came in to see me.  "How can a smart girl with books all over her dress be in the cloakroom?"  I turned and looked down at the dress I was wearing which my mother had sewn for me and  whose fabric  was a design of open books with letters showing. It was my favorite. 
"I bit the finger of the speech teacher. I am  very stupid--"
"No, you are the only child in kindergarten who can already read and write."
She sent me back into the classroom and that was the end of speech therapy.  I did not dare tell anyone at home what I had done.
Instead I started longing to be in another school away from my sisters.  In the tradition of manipulation I began telling my mother that I wanted to go to a Catholic School, I knew that would please her. I also asked my father and said that I was  teased about my sisters. And next year--halfway through  the first grade I was switched to Saint Joseph's School.

AFTER THE BATTLE

MARGARET HAD A FIERCE  LONGING   FOR JUSTICE

I know that when I  wrote about my Aunt Anna Coleman one of the things that I stressed was her  participation in "Shows" that  I would  arrange with my sisters Janie and Sheila as a sort of last resort  to amuse them--it was  my ace card that never failed.  For the past  months I have been having unexpected finds when Mikey, a Conlon cousin, helps me twice weekly to go through the endless boxes of books and household items stored in our  patio and garage.
Recently I found tucked in a collection of Irish poetry a little folded  blue paper with my childish penmanship listing the  sequence of songs and performances for one of those shows that I recall so vividly but of which I am the only still living participant.

So finding the little program is like discovering evidence that I am not  making these memories up. Sometimes I  doubt myself  and wish I could  talk  about them with a witness,  but that is difficult when no one but me is  alive to remember them.
So I was amazed when I found  the little folded paper that listed what must have been a Saint Patrick's Day show. All present were  full participants, and my Uncle Joe must have been visiting because he is included as Brother Cyril.

Here is the program:
 Intro --Me
WHEN IRISH EYES ARE SMILING ---Sheila (my younger sister
THE WEARING OF THE GREEN  ---All join in
DANNY BOY   ---  Norma
recitation  by Norma of
AFTER THE BATTLE  by Thomas Moore

After the Battle by Thomas Moore

Night closed around the conqueror's way,
And lightnings show'd the distant hill,
Where those who lost that dreadful day
Stood few and faint, but fearless still.
The soldier's hope, the patriot's zeal,
For ever dimm'd, for ever crost --
Oh! who shall say what heroes feel,
When all but life and honour's lost?

The last sad hour of freedom's dream,
And valour's task, moved slowly by,
While mute they watch'd, till morning's beam
Should rise and give them light to die.
There's yet a world, where souls are free,
Where tyrants taint not nature's bliss; --
If death that world's bright opening be,
Oh! who would live a slave in this?

McNamara's Band---  Aunt Anna with Drum
 and all join in with pots and pans 

Comic Recitation  Dinty McCarty spoken by Anna

(I don't recall how this   goes and could not find it on the internet)

Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms--Margaret, my mother

My Wild Irish Rose-- Janie, Sheila, and Norma

Molly Bawn--Norma

The Rose of Tralee--Brother Cyril--Uncle Joe

I am sure  there were a few Irish jigs thrown in  since Anna often led Janie and  Sheila in  dancing.
We always  ended with a group recitation of  a section of SAINT PATRICK'S LORICA 

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,
Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length,
Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the
Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the
Oneness of the Creator of creation.
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord.
Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

My mother called this the Breastplate or the CRY OF THE DEER  and  told us that once when  his enemies were  waiting in ambush to kill Patrick and his followers  they were seen by their would-be attackers as a group of deer passing.

PAWTUCKET HOLDS A FENIAN GRAVE

Easter Rising thoughts in Pawtucket

The historical fact that there is a Fenian Grave of  Wilson buried in Saint Mary's Cemetery  was made known to me by an old family friend Al McAloon.  By the time Al told me the story we were colleagues teaching at  Bryant College--now University.  He taught psychology and was a  fervent  disciple of Carl Jung; I taught English lit  and was a fervent disciple of Bernard Shaw. 
Once Al learned that I was born and raised in Pawtucket, he figured out our family connections--his wife was a close neighbor and a distant cousin of my mother Margaret Coleman. My dissertation was about Shaw's connection to Ireland and his attitude towards the National Question as displayed in his great play about Ireland, JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND.

Discovering that I was unaware of the role Pawtucket played in the drama of the rescue of some Fenians imprisoned in Australia, Al took me  Saint Mary's Cemetery to see Wilson's grave with its Celtic  Cross marker and told me the amazing story of how a Fenian  fighter for Irish freedom had been captured and tried and sent to Australia  for imprisonment by the British government  then occupying Ireland.  Al could recall the very day of Wilson's burial vividly because he  was a schoolboy at Saint Mary's School and the nun teaching them brought them outside to watch the great man being buried  right before their eyes.
All Fenian graves are a great source of patriotic devotion for Irish Nationalists. It is considered a blessing and honor to have the  graves of these patriots in  a community.
Padraic Pearse, one of the leaders of the Easter Rising,  is  remembered for  his funeral oration that set Irish hearts on fire with renewed  zeal  to fight for Irish freedom.  Pearse was speaking at the graveside interment of another Fenian O Donovan Rossa, and he concluded his remarks with these  words that have sent  pride running through the veins of  every Irish person worldwide and should rouse fear in every British Imperialist :

They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! - they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.

How amazing to think during this Easter season that Pawtucket  is  privileged to hold one of these graves . Be aware that the spirit of  rising against oppression that marks the ME TOO Movement and  the BLACK LIVES MATTER and the  Parkland students ENOUGH IS ENOUGH-- again shows the constant  motion of human history towards  justice.  And this Easter as with every Easter -- still we rise with the Risen One  who came to SHOW us that  the sacrifice of a person in the struggle for freedom does not end the struggle, it sanctifies it.