Julia

The subject of the lines below is a lady who was very much part of my early and later life.   At difficult times she always seemed to be there, a warm shoulder to lean on.  Her presence during one very painful life event helped me more than she'll ever know.  Amazingly, her voice has not altered with time, which for me is magic because when I hear her speak, I'm once again that little girl, so excited at being in the company of someone who is very special to me.  It's been a few years since I heard that voice, so before this year is out, I intend to right that.  Meantime, this is for you, dear cousin.



Julia

My newest mother is peering down the Brownie camera lens
while I, in your arms, scowl at the box.
I'm two and a half years old
And not used to having my photograph taken.
My newest backyard is still an unfamiliar playground,
But safe within your arms, the strangeness holds no fear.

I'm eight years old,
It's dark, you hold my hand as we descend the cast-iron steps to your underground workplace.
I've never been in a canteen,
My eyes and ears absorb the sights and sounds of tea trays being delivered through little wall hatches
And the merry chatter of people enjoying their evening meal.

I feel certain it's the same evening, you take me to a big house,
Up the stairway to a room where both cheery mother and bustling brood welcome us with lively banter.
I love being here.
I protest at leaving the joyful spirit of this tenement lodging.

I'm ten years old,
I wait at the corner of our avenue on balmy summer Friday nights.
You bring sixpenny bars of chocolate, that's all I remember.

I'm twelve years old,
You arrive to our house every few weeks with your first-born daughter
In her magnificent high pram with the rose on the side.
I get to wheel her up the avenue.   I get to hold her.
I want to be a mother like you.

I'm seventeen years old,
I'm living with your Mam and Dad.
I don't see you as often as I'd like
But I see your first-born daughter some week-ends.

I'm forty five years old,
You hold me in your arms as I grieve the loss of my not-so-new mother.
She had her problems but she was a good mother.

I'm forty nine years old,
We hold each other as we grieve the loss of my not-so-new father.
He had his problems but he was a good father.

We're both older mothers now.
I don't see you at all.
I want to hear your voice again.
I want to hold you and feel your motherly arms around me.
I want to savour the chocolate bars one more time.


© Ann Brien 2012


Above image: Me, taken by Julia in my backyard, 1954


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Too Cold For "Piggybeds"

I'm not quite sure what it is about this time of year but I find myself yet again wanting to describe a winter memory as I experienced it during my childhood in Ringsend, Dublin.   I pray all these  memories I will carry with me to the end of my days, and with some luck, into the next life.

How wonderful it would be if we could transfer our happy recollections into our childrens' minds for them to glimpse what life was like for a child in the 1950s and 60s long before street games were replaced by sitting at a computer monitor where the only physical movement is that of your fingers on a keyboard and the periodic clicking of a mouse.   I suppose it has something in its favour, perhaps the children of today have a level of mental fitness that we could never achieve, but Boy, were we physically fit as fiddles!

Below is a little piece I wrote when remembering the other day, the winter's evening my friends and I had been playing "piggybeds" (a kind of hopscotch) at the end of my avenue and when it became too cold, they went home.

I, of course, with my goulish fascination for bleak winter nights remained in the avenue for a while in the hope that a storm-force wind would suddenly blow up and then I'd also get to hear the eerie fog-horn which always excited and terrified me at the same time!


Too Cold For "Piggybeds"

The street lamp casts its amber glow upon the eight-squared white chalk pattern,
A dirt-filled polish tin lies abandoned just outside square four, its abrupt end to play, the consequence of frozen fingers.
Mesmerised by the bleakness of this November evening,
My gaze begins its long fix on nature's tapestry;
The fog-shrouded moon,
The navy clouds, their wispy pink tendrils trailing off in zig-zag directions and, across the road,
The ink-black Liffey as she rhythmically pounds the sea wall.
Enveloped in the freezing mist
My thoughts now turn to bright red flames leaping in our living-room hearth,
And so, without much inner persuasion, I place the long-discarded "piggy" in the safety of neighbouring hedgerow,
Then make my way homeward to the promising comforts of warm hands and Irish stew.


© Ann Brien 2012


Above image: My avenue, taken by me, July 2011 (hedgerow to right still in existence!)


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Terraced Lives

Every so often, in fact, very often, I browse through the photographs I've taken over the years, and the ones that I linger over the most are those of my beloved hometown of Ringsend, Dublin.

This particular image I took of my avenue shortly before I left in the summer of 1969. As I stared intently at the houses facing onto one another, side by side in a straight row, they looked like dancers waiting for their musical cue to move forward. I believe houses hold memories. I tried to imagine how many family situations made their way through the wallpapered walls of the neighbouring houses, our neighbours on both sides were placid to the extreme.

As I'm fascinated by rooftops I'm so happy to have captured the avenue back at a time when huge TV aerials were essential if you wanted to view television channels from across the water, namely, the BBC and UTV. We didn't have one so made do with Radio Telefis Eireann, great programmes they were too!  Below are my few words of tribute to a time gone by.


Terraced Lives

Like stone-faced dancers
The houses face each other.
Conjoined bricks and mortar hold within them secrets of the dwellers
And, through faded creamy rosebud paper, sounds from distant rooms.
Like grotesque mosquitoes hung in time
Steel grey aerials stand tall against the darkened skyline,
Their rooftop vantage serving the human need to look beyond its own wretched life
Onto an imagined brighter landscape.


© Ann Brien 2012


Above image: Cambridge Avenue, Ringsend, Dublin taken by me in May 1969


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Forgiveness

This afternoon I was browsing through an old shoebox containing bits and pieces from as far back as the mid to late 1990s.  I was amazed to find a piece of paper on which I'd written down my then feelings towards my adoptive mother.  It was a poem I called "Forgiveness" and dated a couple of years after her passing in 1996.  Thankfully, as a result of many years of therapy during the late 90s, in which I dealt with those feelings, no trace of that anger remains.

Mum loved me very much. I will always miss her.


Forgiveness

It can't have been easy for you
I know that now.
There came no reassuring touch or words of comfort as you fought the demons which raged within you
Instead, you unleashed those howling beasts upon a helpless child who could not understand your fury.
They frightened me, damn you
Still, it can't have been easy.


© Ann Brien 2012


Above image taken by me in Allihies, West Cork, February 2011


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First Journey

This is a poem I wrote back in the late 1990s. It appears to be me pleading with my birth mother to ease my entry into the world.









First Journey

Decending ever deeper into the abyss my arduous journey has commenced.
Please mother, let there be a little less urgency in your desire to expel me,
You are taking my life's breath from me, mother
And I must breathe if I am to complete this voyage.
This is not a safe passage.
I am aware that I am not the author of this action,
The decision to remain or leave is not mine.
I have no choice.
I had no choice.
Fiery needles burn my flesh, I cry out but there's no cool hand to ease the pain.
So it is I arrive from the blackness of my pit into the blinding light.


© Ann Brien 2011


Above image via:  http://fineartamerica.com


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Dark Thoughts

The year: either 1973 or 1974. The time: between 1.00am/2.00am. The place: my bed-sit in Rathmines, Dublin. I was sitting on the side of my bed totally frustrated at not being able to get the words out of my head onto my notepad (the old journalist style spiral variety!). I wanted to scream out my fragmented thoughts to anyone who would listen but in that dark hour which is neither night nor day my anguish would have fallen upon sleeping ears. So it was I wrote these words:-



Dark Thoughts

Everything seems so strange.
I am trying to write exactly what I feel but seem only able to describe it in my mind.
When I try to write it down it all becomes meaningless.
It's no longer a feeling, just letters forming words in a sentence.
It's like living in a fantasy or dream world,
Everything is just what I want it to be because I make it that way.
I create my thoughts and live them within myself.
This to me IS my real world.
I see things only as they are through the sleeping eyes of fantasy,
Then abruptly the hand of reality shakes me awake.
I'm frightened.
I am forced to emerge screaming from the warm womb-like sanctuary I've created deep within my imagination.
Outside, a violent world is waiting.


© Ann Brien 2011


Above image via:  www.ownbeat.co.uk


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Song For The Innocents (Song)

Next month will mark the thirty seventh anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings. Like all moments in history that mark death, whether it be expected or untimely, or as in this case the callous, barbaric murder of thirty three innocent men, women and children (twenty six people in Dublin, seven in Monaghan) May 17, 2011 will not only be a painful reminder for us not directly affected (although my friend was injured and had to have immediate surgery on her hand), but for the people who lost loved ones on that dark day, it will undoubtedly only serve to reopen the wounds that have in most cases never healed.

I was so shocked and distraught following that horror that nine days later on Sunday morning, May 26, I wrote these words in my bedsit in Rathmines which would become my protest song against the use of killing machines of any kind.

Living Will Go On

(i)

They say that life's for living

We must live it every day.

Don't talk of hate for others

Be careful what you say.

For love is all around us

Share it each and everyone

Then when we love together

Living will go on.

(ii)

I met an old man yesterday

We walked beside a stream.

He told me how he longed to smile

How freedom was his dream.

So if we walk beside this man

Well, things they can't go wrong.

We'll all join hands together

And living will go on.

(iii)

Child of war lay down your gun

What right have you to kill?

You can't win what you're fighting for

You know you never will.

So forget about destruction

'Cause wars just can't be won,

Together let's try to find lost peace

Then living will go on.

© Ann Brien 2011


Above image: Me in 1971


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