Well played Grandma, well played.

Mum posted a reminder on facebook today that not only is this weekend the festival of Imbolc and St. Brigit's day but that it is also the source of her mother's middle name. My maternal grandmother was born in 1914 on January 31st. Custom in Ireland at that time was to name your child with the closest religious feast day (perversely, the roman catholic church was the original culture jammer). So on January 31st, 1914 an infant girl named Marie Brigid O'Sullivan launched into this world for a much too short life. She died of skin cancer in her 50s after a lifetime of tanning (which is still a strange fascination of women in Ireland, despite all evidence that this practice leads to skin cancer). My grandmother was also the victim of torture known as symphysiotomy. The long term effects on her health due to this horrific procedure we might never know but she got sicker and sicker after each of 6 live births and had to remain hospitalized for a very long time after her last child was born in 1957 (her pelvis had to be rebroken since it hadn't healed correctly after the procedure).

I have written about my maternal grandmother before. She was a fantastic storyteller (or in Irish, seanchai). How do I know this? Well one of my earliest memories involve her telling me the story of the food growing in her backyard.  She was dying and Mum went back with me and my infant sister to spend a few months with her. We were the only grandchildren she ever got to meet. I am the eldest of 18 grandchildren (and a still growing posse of great grandchildren and two great great grandchildren) on my maternal side so there is a huge gap in our lives due to this loss. I remember her pointing to the fruit trees and her telling me that they were planted in that location in order to maximize the sun they would get. Grandma literally planted the seed of my food justice activism because I remember being fascinated with how much thought went into something like the fruit I enjoyed eating.

Despite her early death one particular story of hers continued on in my life and has had a lasting legacy. I had an early talent for mathematics and was often told the story of how my grandfather was also gifted in math and had scored in the top 10% of the national Irish exams in math. Alas, as the only son he had to forgo studies in the subject in order to support his mother and sisters after his dad died just as he was finishing secondary school. As a child, Mum was given strong encouragement by both her parents for learning to do arithmetic in her head so she wouldn't be stuck serving tables. Grandma often told her the story about her dad as an explanation for the talent she was displaying. This encouragement helped her to excel in maths and is was what enabled her to have a successful career as a corporate accountant. And this encouragement also helped me excel in maths and I felt so proud obtaining the mathematics degree in 1990 that my dear grandfather was unable to obtain.

So imagine our surprise when in 1996, after my grandfather passed away, we were all back in my mum's childhood home in Ireland clearing out some bedroom cupboards and we came upon Grandpa's Leaving Certificate. His standing in Maths? Ordinary level/pass.

So today dear Grandma, I am having a good chuckle in your memory as I unpack into a new house and hang up my two framed degrees (one math, one engineering) obtained via a story you told to your daughter and that she passed along to me. In the parlance of today's world:  well played grandma, well played.

Dancing towards Canada

I wore the yoke of an immigrant child often.

But in the past few weeks, with Daughter graduating high school and simultaneously embarking on her first serious relationship, I see how there was no need to wear that yoke at all.

After nearly forty-five years of poignantly feeling the absence of family - with the crescendo happening through my 30s and dwindling down as I coasted through my early 40s.  And perhaps, upon this writing, I may have ditched it altogether.

Mother talked yesterday of her feelings getting on the boat in Cobh, Ireland in January 1967, a mere few months before my birth here in Toronto, Canada.  I have heard her talk of this before but it seems that yesterday I really heard her for the first time.  Perhaps it is because I am now 45 with a young female daughter at the dawn of her own life journey that I can see how the decisions of our forefathers really come home to roost on the subsequent generations.  And I see how the yoke I was wearing is non-existent for my daughter.  I am sure she has her own limiting shackles that will cause fear and trepidation to creep into her decisions since I am far from the perfect parent that I set out to be 18 years ago and heck, life is just like that.  But the yoke I had, the yoke that demanded family where there was none, the one that demanded substitute family in lieu of the real thing (leading to decisions like joining self help groups and immersing myself in, gasp, strict catholicism - complete with an anulled marriage -  until my early 30s), the one that led one early boyfriend to affectionately point out the chip on my shoulder (regularly), that yoke seems rather ridiculous today.

Because, what I heard from my mother yesterday was how she wanted to dance when the boat pulled away from that dock in Cobh.  I heard about how all of the immigrants nearly danced with joy.  There was celebration and no tearful goodbyes.  The people that got on that boat wanted very badly to leave Ireland.  My parents themselves were literally escaping the shame of my too early birth and on the boat my mother was relieved to let the waist of her clothes out and be publicly very pregnant for the first time.  On that boat, there was no talk of regret, there was just anticipation of a new life in a country that offered a religious and personal freedom that was unimaginable to the immigrants on that boat.  A country where a marriage date and a subsequent birth date would not be held up for inspection and judgment by an entire community - a community that shunned regularly, with females being the favourite target.

And now, over forty five years later I wish I could go back in time and join my parents on that boat and lead the dance.  And then go back in time again and tell my 18 year old self to drop the yoke.  But heck, life's just like that, right?

And oh yeah, Happy 145th Birthday Canada and thx for welcoming a couple of knocked up newlyweds back in 1967 - this vast country provided a safe refuge that has allowed our tiny family to explore cultures/lifestyles/cuisines/ambitions/relationships/careers/places that would never have been dreamed possible had I been raised in the not-quite-former-church-state known as Ireland.

We rise again.

Incredulous.  That is the look people would give me after I responded to their asking me if I was wearing my boyfriend's university jacket.  The jacket is black leather and has the University of Waterloo crest on the front and big white letters spelling out University of Waterloo on the back.  On one arm is 90 which signified the year I finished (and planned to...the choosing of this year for the sleeve was a bit dicey since that meant a commitment to finishing the program on time or looking foolish for the year/years that you hung around afterwards).  The other sleeve says HONS MATH.  The Honours Math thing makes me chuckle even now.  I picked this generic sleeve label since I switched programs within the Math Faculty about a dozen times before settling on the program that I actually completed which was an Honours Mathematic degree Operations Research major with a Computer Science minor.

I proudly wore that jacket and enjoyed the incredulity on people's faces when I would say, um, no it is not my boyfriend's jacket it is my own and why would you think otherwise?  These questions always came from people not on the University of Waterloo campus since I am happy to say that there were quite a few of us women sporting these jackets on campus in the late 80s.

Other than these first glimmerings of cultural bias against women (a woman studying math in university?  whoa) I lived in a cocoon throughout my youth.  My mother raised me on Michele Landsberg, Marlo Thomas and Our Bodies Ourselves and I believed that the hard work of early 20th century women had paved the way for equality for my mother and my own generation.   I neglected to listen to the stories my mother told of inequality because I felt she was just angry and perceiving sexism where basically it did not really exist.  I mean, even those questions about my jacket were kind of quaint in a redneck way, right?

It wasn't until I became a mother that I started to see how awry our world was.  Once I turned into a breeder the whole world got turned upside down for me.  I perceived everything differently.  And giving birth to a daughter made me recognize how connected all of us with wombs are.  The day I gave birth to my daughter I visualized the literal extending of the womb back behind me throughout my maternal ancestors.  Generations of women giving birth had led me to the birth of my own daughter.  I was connected to these women.  Permanently.

It was powerful imagery that remains with me almost over seventeen years later.  For the first time I had tapped into the strength of my feminine power and my blood memory was activated.  I could no longer think any sexist action was quaint or excusable.  Sexist against men or women but far too often it is directed against women.  Women with no voice.  Women with no choice.

As an exercise in hope during these darker regressive days for women I now invite you to play the below song while perusing the following hashtags on twitter (you don't need to belong to twitter to do this...that is the beauty of twitter).  While doing this I ask you to also think about the image of all of us descending from a womb and the chain of wombs behind you that allowed you to walk this planet right this very minute:  #IDidNotReport #MissRep #SlutWalk.  It is time to Rise Again.  Enough it enough.

Aboriginal Irish Blood Memory

I have been searching for a word lately. The lack of this word has seriously impeded my ability to communicate on this blog.  The word, or rather the lack of the word, has been the metaphorical brick blocking my creativity.  My writer's block had become a word and the lack of it was preventing me from writing.

I was in northern Ontario, Kenora, recently.  My dear friend has lived there for nearly twenty years now and it is only the second time I've gone up to her.  Now that my own child is nearly grown up I can avail of the independence both of us now have.  I am enjoying being able to make the time for trips and people I deeply care about.  This friend in Kenora is a special connection that I hope continues for many many more years and with many more shared trips such as the one I had last month.

In the early 90s, this friend of mine got her teaching degree and obtained her first position at the school I first attended in Toronto.  I only attended this school for not quite two years (junior and senior kindergarten).  My parents moved to Brampton before I finished kindergarten.  My friend and I thought this was an interesting coincidence since she moved to the very area I spent my early youth exploring with wild abandon.  She was not long for the city though.  Whilst knocking herself out in her first years of teaching she embarked in Ojibwa lessons at night so that she could move north and teach on a reserve.  She has native blood and it was screaming at her during our early friendship so she honoured this and arranged her life to be more in touch with this calling.

It is fitting that during my trip up to see her that she introduced me to the native concept of blood memory.  I had been mentioning a research article I had recently read that announced the fact that yes, the cells of our maternal ancestors never leave us and as mothers, we carry the cells of the all the children we have ever borne.  That moment, when she connected the native blood memory legend to the scientific reality of it was like turning on a light bulb to me.  I have always been drawn to native lore.  I think most people can't help it. Everything they talk about resonates with clarity in my being.  I heard Clayton Thomas-Muller, the noted indigenous activist, talk last week and not only did that one lightbulb of blood memory awareness get brighter but an additional stadium of lighting got lit up in my mind.  [If you want to see Clayton in action yourself, check out this fantastic 25 minute video of him talking about the indigenous perspective on the Occupy movement.]

My people are pure Irish.  I am Canadian born but my Irish ancestors go back at least two hundred years and most likely for thousands.  The burning of nearly all Irish records hinders the ability of the Irish to prove this reality.  The practical ramifications of the pillaging of Irish culture by the British means that we can not go back more than seven generations or so.  During the live talk that I attended, Clayton mentioned the many native legends about the seven fires prophecy.  I started to tingle when he mentioned this.  You see, while I was in Winnipeg I had written the following quote, penned by Lois Riel, and transcribed by myself into my brand new travel journal gifted to me by my Kenora friend, on Manitoba's Lois Riel day 2012:  "My people will sleep for 100 years, and when they awake, it will be artists who give them back their spirit."

And yet another interesting thing has happened as of late.  My maternal grandmother has visited me recently in my dreams.  This has occurred in the past and I've always found comfort in these shadowy meetups.  She died when I was quite young so have very fleeting memories of the last trip I had to Ireland when she was alive.  I was four and I'm the only descendant of my generation to carry any memory of her since I am the oldest of my cousins.  My mother is working on a memoir of her life and I eagerly await it.  There have been other Irish-themed occurrences that have demanded  my attention as of late.  An Irish friend gave me a necklace crafted in the manner and form that my ancestors would have done and in the area where my maternal line descends from.  In this relatively new blog I've already written twice (here and here) about ancient Irish celebrations.  Orangemen Order references by high school mates.  I reconnected with an Irish acquaintance who had been not far from my thoughts.  Etc, etc.

And now we return to that metaphorical brick, the word I was seeking out.  I felt it was Irish even though I do not speak Irish.  And after talking to my mother today and trying to suss out the word I realized that perhaps it wasn't a 'word' at all.  Perhaps it was my aboriginal Irish blood memory screaming for a voice.  And so here it is.  For me, the prophecy of the seven fires now includes the Aboriginal Irish.  We too are awakening and joining indigenous people across Turtle island.  Our ancestors, the ones oppressed, starved, murdered and culturally nearly annihilated are screaming in my blood.  I am listening and writing, once more.

This quilt was made by Kim Ratuski and is one of seven exquisite quilts made by her and are
 hanging in the music room at a Kenora high school.