Mommy Brain

Remember that ambitious list of reading I planned for the autumn? Well, here’s my progress so far.

Finished:
~Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church by Phillip Yancey
~Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
~Trinity by Leon Uris

Started:
~Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books by Maureen Corrigan
~The Collected Works of Emily Dickinson
~Persuasion by Jane Austen

Since September is almost over, I am left to assume that I will not come close to completing my list. But that’s okay - I’ll have fun trying.

I had forgotten how heartbreaking Trinity is. It is beautiful and sad and leaves me melancholy.

Long Dan Sweeney had steeled himself beyond his capacity to make the trip without being a burden but the pain was destroying him before our eyes. “Lads,” he rasped, “and lassie, I never thought I’d live to see the day that twenty Irishmen would ever prepare such a mission without creating utter chaos. But…here we are…and there it is…over there. We don’t care if this shot isn’t heard around the world so long as they hear it in London. This war [World War I] has been used by the mother of parliaments as their latest excuse to further deny the legitimate claims of the Irish people. It is entirely and poetically fitting that we use the very same war to advance those claims. The success of this mission could well spell the achievement or denial of our goals for this generation of Irishmen. Do your jobs well. This moment belongs to all of us and to the Irish people as well…but to one in particular. Do you have words for us, Conor Larkin?”

So there it was, round and round the universe, round and round the circle of life. It all begins and ends in the same place, doesn’t it? Conor and me in Ballyutogue. We all come home eventually. As he stood before us now he was no longer the stern commander, but he bore the look of a young boy, smoldering…far away from us…how strange, how very strange. He was surrounded by men who worshiped him and a woman who loved him beyond loving. He seemed unaware. Was he fulfilled at last? Had he reached so much as a single answer to his long, sorrowful journey? Ah, Conor lad, Conor lad. It is so good to be here with you at this moment. I would not have missed it for anything. Not even for the day of the rising.

“If there are some among you who do not come back, I am sorry I was not good enough or thorough enough. As for words? Well, there is too much magnificent literature and too many pedantic ballads as well that spell out our longing for freedom. What can a fool like myself add to all that? As Catholics we learned to accept mysteries as children. Some of those who questioned mysteries found that they weren’t mysteries at all. But there is a mystery that defies all attempts to explain it. There is no mystery more intense than a man’s love for his country. It is the most terrible beauty of all. No greater tragedy has befallen our people, who, through generations of suffering at others’ hands, have lost this furious love of country. Tomorrow, we open our case to rekindle that flagging spirit.”

(snip)

When all this was done, a republic eventually came to pass but the sorrows and the troubles have never left that tragic, lovely land. For you see, in Ireland there is no future, only the past happening over and over.