NOTHING IN MING (NO, WAY) AH,
TO SLEEP LATE, DRINK BEER,
GET WILD, HAVE FUN AND
DRIVE FAST ON EMPTY STREETS
WITH NOTHING IN MIND BUT
FALLING IN LOVE AND NOT
GETTING ARRESTED.
Bill
(THIS WAS MOSTLY PLAGIARIZED)
NOTHING IN MING (NO, WAY) AH,
TO SLEEP LATE, DRINK BEER,
GET WILD, HAVE FUN AND
DRIVE FAST ON EMPTY STREETS
WITH NOTHING IN MIND BUT
FALLING IN LOVE AND NOT
GETTING ARRESTED.
Bill
(THIS WAS MOSTLY PLAGIARIZED)
Estos dias tan especiales se celebra el amor y la amistad. Hoy estoy celebrando el amor de mi familia a mi madre, mis hermanas, mis hijos, mi esposo…el amor vive siempre en nuestros corazones! Raquel Mondradon 2015
It’s Back Door Thursday where the uncensored is celebrated! It’s not just naughty thoughts that are written in the Back Door. The Back Door is just uncensored where you can be more honest. The Back Door is Not Yet Rated.
Irregardless, it was funny…
Dear
Megan,
I don’t know what exactly you trying to do, but I think its your hobby or something else. You are the first person who give me a pen and copy for write something after one year.
Thank you.
Bimal
Here is some background info on this page in the Original Journal.
1. It is the current Original Journal (I am carrying this one around with me now in North Carolina).
2. Emery Smith was an administrator that I worked for (as a teacher). He is also a redhead.
3. Anne Lamott is one of my all time favorite authors.
4. Emins or Emily Ashley is a random person — have no idea who she is. She is obviously an Original Journal signer. I love what she says and I also love that it is on the same page as Anne Lamott’s Original Journal signing.
5. That is red ink that bled onto my notebook at the top. I am not one to put caps back on pens and of course, the journal travels with me everywhere I go.
Hope. Wish. Dream. Be.
Journal Your Journey
“Irishmen are dreamers, musicians, and stubborn people…” That is the lead for the newspaper article that was written about my father. That is what he said. He was a dreamer and a true musician of the mind. Although he did not play an instrument, his hard working spirit and his decency as a person make me honored to call him my father.
So many people are getting ready to eat their corn beef and cabbage and drink their green beer. For me, this holiday is about the roots that are deep like the crevices in the Emerald Aisle’s shoreline. These crevices go back to Ireland, as my great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from Ireland. I have his immigration papers.
I don’t know if the Irish are secretive, but I do not know that much about my grandparents or my great grandparents. I never met my dad’s parents as they died before my parents met. I do know how proud my father was of his Irish heritage. I asked my dad when he was sick with cancer, “Tell me about my grandparents.” He said, “They were secretive,” and he gave me a cold look. I know my dad had a hard childhood. He was literally born into the Great Depression (October 1929). His family owned movie theaters on the South Side of Chicago and lost everything in the Crash. I think that is what makes the Irish so beautiful is the pain they have had to endure (as a country, as a culture, and in history) to survive. It was never easy being green, like they say.
I get sad when I think about my dad. Here is a link to a post I wrote about him teaching me the beauty of nature and poetry: My Father — My Thoreau. I want to tell him so many things and hear his voice. I know all about prayer and how “I can still talk to him,” but it isn’t the same. Sorrow is a deep ocean.
I wish I could walk into the kitchen of my home in Wyoming, circa 2002, before he got sick and smell his corn beef and cabbage stewing on the stove. I wish I could sit down in the living room (Dad would be in his white arm-chair and Mom would be in the other) and listen to him tell a history lesson or recall a St. Patrick’s Day from his childhood in Chicago. I wish I could tell him how brave he was fighting his way out of Inchon in Korea.
I wish I could tell him I finally mustered up the courage to watch, Chosin, and now I understand why he couldn’t sleep through the night, why he wouldn’t let us watch M.A.S.H. on TV, and why he never talked about the war. I wish I could tell him everything I never said, with just one more hug, one more hand shake, one more gentle Irish kiss on his cheek. But I tell him through words, through my writing. My best friend, Heidi, was my maid of honor at my wedding. She is in the photo below. My father told her at my wedding, “Make sure Megan writes. She is a writer. It is in her blood.”
I wish I could tell him how deeply grateful I am that he quit drinking, cold turkey, to be a better husband, to be a better father, to be a better man, and ultimately to save his own life. The memories of war and the Great Depression as his childhood backdrop haunted him. He lived through so much and never complained about it.
The fact that he got out of bed each day, with 70% frostbite effects to his legs, from Inchon, to go to work as a security guard at the Northern Trust Bank in Chicago and work the second shift, makes me so grateful. He was a man of integrity, honor, and true Irish spirit. I wish I could tell him thank you. Someday I will go to his grave site at Arlington National Cemetery and introduce him to his grandson, Benjamin. For now, I honor him on his favorite holiday, St. Patrick’s Day.
As most of you know, my mother has brain tumors. She is in a nursing home. She says my father comes to visit her. They were soul mates. Here is a picture pre kids, when my parents were falling madly in love. My father, ironically, was a photographer. He did not have a zoom lens or a fancy camera, but he captured the magic in a photo. I get my “eye” from his Irish eyes!
I leave you with a video of images and music from Ireland.
* Originally posted on my personal blog on March 17, 2012: http://memomuse.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/irish-eyes-irish-hearts/. My mother passed away on Christmas Eve, 2012.