Writing

Music Heals

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“Musick hath charms to soothe a savage breast.”
—The Mourning Bride, Act 1, Scene 1
William Congreve

For the past five weeks, as I’ve recovered from surgery and a nasty case of bronchitis (which hasn’t entirely faded), I’ve been the oft-misquoted being of the above quote–a savage beast. I’ve engaged in numerous online arguments, something I normally don’t do. I’ve snapped at baristas, strangers, family, and friends. I hate being sick, and I hate what being sick does to my mood. I’ve hated every word I’ve managed to write during this time. I’ve decided I’m a hack author who’ll never get more than three reviews.

Yeah, good thing I live alone, because living with me the past month would be a ginormous self-pity party.

Music

My social engagements have been limited in the past month as well. As an extrovert I do better when surrounded by people, but one of my early excursions after feeling halfway human again to a Starbucks for some #coffeeshopwriting resulted in people leaving the tables near me to sit somewhere else because of the coughing.

(No need to suggest home remedies or a visit to the doctor. The former don’t work, and I did the latter. This is a result of my usually well-controlled asthma, and there’s not much to be done but endure until it runs its course in five or six weeks.)

So, I hibernated. I didn’t even join my regular Google Hangout sessions because coughing. But one series of events I’ve always looked forward to since I moved to the Shenandoah Valley is the annual Heifetz Institute Summer Concert Series. (For more information on this incredible series, click here. If you ever needed a reason to visit the Valley, this should be at the top of your list.) How could I go, knowing the urge to cough comes on suddenly and lasts until I’ve coughed a lung up? (That’s called hyperbole used for dramatic effect.)

Music has always been important to me. I sing. I listen to many genres of music, depending on my mood: classical to soft rock to acid rock to opera to rap to… You get it. Music inspires me, calms me, excites me, thrills me, heals me. Music is always at my fingertips when I want it.

I skipped the opening Heifetz events but bought a ticket for “Stars of Tomorrow: PianoPalooza!” Piano performances are one of my favorite concerts. I looked forward to this, but my trepidation was there. Heifetz records all the performances. What if a coughing jag came on in the middle of the performance?

I picked a seat on the aisle so if it did, I could make a conspicuous escape.

Hath Charms

The first performance was a contemporary piece by Petr Wajsar for harpsichord, Harpsycho. The harpsichord is a beautiful instrument which produces amazing sounds, but this piece consisted of a lot of slamming of the keyboard, beating on the sides and bottom of the instrument.

I’m not a fan of contemporary classical aka “experimental” music. Sorry.

Next was a Brahms piece, Romance in F major, Opus 118 No. 5, a piano solo played with technical precision but with little passion.

“Musick” wasn’t soothing anything in me it seemed, and I kept expecting the tickle in my throat to manifest.

And then there was Stravinsky. Three movements from Petrushka: Danse russe (Russian Dance), Chez Petrouchka (Petrushka’s Room), and La semaine grasse (The Shrovetide Fair). Played by a Russian without the sheet music. When he closed his eyes and played with the controlled passion that’s very Russian, my spirit and my mood lifted with every chord.

As if that weren’t enough, next came Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor by Liszt, played by four hands and with some wonderfully timed and performed comic mugging by the pianists.

I felt better than I had in weeks.

Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, M. 60 followed by his La Valse, M. 72 had me floating on air.

I had to clear my throat a couple of times, but no coughing.

To Soothe A Savage Breast

I was so uplifted after this concert, I had trouble getting to sleep, the chords still running through my head. I slept through the night. No coughing, and I’ve yet to cough today.

Music heals.

As I said to a friend at the end of the concert, “I so needed this.”

This morning, my writing looks and feels better to me. I’m not a hack. I’m an author. I’m a novelist working on the next novel. I’m writing, and it’s good because “musick hath charms to soothe a savage breast” of its coughing.

Must be endorphins or something. 🎼😎

Best-Laid Plans

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“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,/Gang aft angly*.” –Robert Burns, from “To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough”

*awry

As you know, I look forward every year to Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. The week-long workshop is the highlight of my writing year. This year, however, was special; the faculty asked if I’d be an alumnae reader. I was thrilled and honored, and because my first novel, A War of Deception, had just come out, it was also serendipitous.

“Class” Reunion

On Sunday evening after everyone’s arrival, we go to dinner, meet with our workshop instructor, meet our fellow work-shoppers, and go over the plan for the week. Because this was my sixth year at Tinker, this has become like a yearly class reunion. A lot of attendees are repeat “offenders.”

I was excited about my workshop, “A Writer’s Retreat,” led by Dan Mueller from the MFA program at the University of New Mexico. Mueller called this a “generative” workshop, meaning we’d read a short story the night before, receive a prompt, and come back the next with something we’d just written to share. It’s certainly a break from the typical workshop where you submit 20-40 pages ahead of time and come prepared to comment in depth on the work of every other person in the workshop.

I left the after-dinner faculty readings with anticipation.

Day One

Monday turned out to be a typical Monday. Nothing went right. I’d discovered the night before that I’d neglected to bring enough of a post-operation medication. Annoying and totally my fault for not double-checking or bringing the whole bottle with me instead of filling a pillbox for each day of the week.

A quick call to the doctor’s office, and he called in a prescription to a nearby CVS. After the afternoon craft lecture by Fred Leebron (on using and creating writing prompts; fascinating and erudite as usual), I walked back to the dorm parking lot to get my car and go pick up the medication.

On the drive there, I felt extreme fatigue, in that I wanted to take a serious nap. I attributed it to the fact I’d walked three and a quarter miles that day and I was 10 days post-op for heart surgery.

I got the meds and headed back to Hollins.

Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop used to be the only June event at Hollins. Then, they added a similar workshop for potters. In subsequent years they added a youth music camp and a youth dance camp. The quiet cafeteria became full and boisterous. The parking lots for the main dormitory became overflowing.

As I discovered when I returned from CVS. There was no place to park near the dorm, and by now my fatigue had become acute. After driving around a bit and waiting to see if someone freed up a space, I flagged down a campus security guard, explained my fatigue and its likely cause, and asked for some suggestions. The best he could offer was to park in the fitness center parking lot, close to the dorm but an extra distance to walk. It was all I had.

I took a nap but felt no better. I was still so fatigued, I asked someone to drive me to dinner. Again, I figured I’d pushed myself too hard, post-op. I decided a good night’s rest and driving myself to breakfast the next morning would mean less walking and less of a chance of repeating the fatigue.

Day Two

A good night’s sleep, and I was ready to go. As the day went on my energy level stayed steady. The workshop was great. I read a piece of flash fiction I’d written the afternoon before and got good feedback. Pinckney Benedict’s craft lecture on “Logos vs Pathos” was intriguing and thought-provoking, again as usual.

I spent the afternoon doing homework in the cafeteria, rather than doing too much walking, had my one-on-one with Dan, and was looking forward to dinner.

As I ate dinner, I felt the fatigue come on again, not as intense as before, but I decided to forego the student readings that evening to make sure I got plenty of sleep.

This time when I got back to the dorm parking lot, there was a parking spot, but by the time I reached the front door of the dorm, I felt as if I’d run a marathon.

In my room, I drank plenty of water and felt better, and I sat down to do a little novel revising. Around eight-thirty, a tickle began at the back of my throat. More water. The tickle became a runny nose, followed by constant coughing, followed by a sore throat and an earache, and sinus pain.

I’ve had hundreds, maybe thousands, of sinus infections in my life, and I knew what this was. Despite that knowledge, I was awake every couple of hours throughout the night coughing.

Day Three

By morning I knew it was time for Urgent Care, but I also knew I couldn’t drive. One of my writer friends offered to take me. A couple hours later, I was back in my dorm room with new meds and orders to rest.

Rest I was going to do because nothing was going to stop me from that Alumnae Reading on Thursday or so I thought.

And I rested, barely stirring from bed, and thank goodness for Hulu because it’s a dorm room. No television. Friends brought me lunch and dinner, but I only grew worse throughout the day and evening.

Tomorrow I’d be better. I had to be.

Day Four

I wasn’t better. If anything I was worse, and I should have expected that. I know how my sinus infections go. By now my asthma had become aggravated, and I made the decision to come home.

No Alumnae Reading, and I was pissed. At myself for getting sick; at my body for letting me down.

I’ve several, well, many decades of life under my belt, but in the last several years my usually reliable body has sabotaged me: a foot injury that took months to heal; episodic irregular heart rhythms that left me weak and frightened; a bout with shingles.

This past April in the midst of prepping for A War of Deception‘s release, I had a serious episode of irregular heart rhythm, so much so I had to go to hospital and get shocked back into sinus rhythm, followed a month later by the surgery designed to eliminate the problem.

Then, as I was beginning to feel like the old me again, a sinus infection and bronchitis took from me something I stood to gain validation from.

Aftermath

Now, don’t say I should have prayed harder or been a better person or that it’s God’s plan, because I’m a rationalist. Believe me, if prayer worked, I’d have been healed in a day. And I’m not a bad person; that threat of punishment over trivial matters is what pushed me away from religion.

No, I can’t and won’t accept my age, but I understand my anxiety about the surgery, which kept me from sleeping well for a month, depressed my immune system and helped bring this.

And, no, 20/20 hindsight is not useful nor appreciated.

I’m four and a half days into recovering from bronchitis, but since I have asthma, it takes me weeks rather than days to fully recover. Then, I expect the old me to make a command performance.

Oh, and they asked me to read again at next year’s Alumnae Reading. I’ll be there–one way or another.

 

#TMWW17

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If it’s June it must be time for Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop.

I got a memory on Facebook the other day about my first time here in 2012 and how I was terrified of what was going to happen during the critique. I had plotted how I could pack up and move out in the middle of the night.

Turns out it was the best writing experience I had in my life. And the best critique experience. That’s good and bad. Good because I’ve grown so much as a writer because of it; bad because I now expect them all to be that way.

I’ve been every year since 2012, and each time I’ve been validated as a writer, I’ve established a wonderful circle of writer friends, and, frankly, my novel wouldn’t have been published without TMWW.

Trying Something New

This year isn’t the typical submit 40 pages for review and critique. I’m with Dan Mueller, who last year taught a flash fiction workshop in the traditional manner. This year, he’s going to make this a true writing workshop. We’ll get prompts and other inspiration, and we’ll write on the spot.

A daunting task to be sure, but I’m looking forward to it.

They Really Like Me

For the past two years a group of TMWW alumna and I have contributed money for an Alumni Scholarship. This experience has been so meaningful to me, I can’t help but provide part of the means for someone else to be able to get the benefits.

That, along with the publication of my first novel, inspired the faculty to invite me to do an Alumni Reading this Thursday. I was surprised and shocked then honored and humbled. It’s my Sally Field second Oscar moment: “You like me! You really like me!”

I’ve settled into my 1950’s style dorm room and am greeting friends as they check in, listening to Leonard Cohen, and writing this.

It’s going to be a great week.

Huzzah! It’s Wonderful News!

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On May 26, 2017, one of my life-long writing goals will come to pass: My first novel will be launched.

A War of Deception Front Cover A

My first published novel! 🙂

A War of Deception is a story about fathers and sons, the past and the present, and retribution and revenge, encompassed in recent history.

The idea for the novel came to me in the early 2000s, but I didn’t sit down and start to write it until 2010. The manuscript has been edited, rewritten, critiqued, rewritten, workshopped, rewritten, proofread countless times, and professionally edited over the past seven years, and I’m proud of the result.

A copy for your Kindle is available for pre-order now. Click HERE to pre-order, and your copy will download to your Kindle on May 26. A paperback version will be available for purchase on Amazon.com by May 26.

For more information on the book, you can look at its description HERE. You can also check on where I’ll be for book signing events where you can purchase a signed copy by clicking HERE.

To celebrate the novel’s release, I’ve rebranded my collections of short stories published since 2012. To have a look at the new covers–and some with new, reduced prices–go to my Amazon Author Page in a few days to see the new covers.

I hope you share my excitement at this milestone in my life. I’m giddy and thrilled and giddy and… You get the picture.

52-9 A Fruit I Hate and Why

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One thing I like about this 52-week writing challenge is the different topics I culled from various writing challenge lists (from Pinterest, by the way). Never in my life did I think I’d write about fruit, but here we go.

Hate is Such a Harsh Word

I can’t say I hate pomegranates. I love the crunchy seeds and that little splash of flavor when you chew them. I don’t hate them; merely, I find them frustrating. As far as I’m concerned they’re unpeelable and getting to the fruity, crunchy seeds is near impossible.

Oh, you say, there’s a special way to extract the seeds. I know. I’ve tried about a half-dozen of them. I’ve watched YouTube how-to videos, read how-to articles, and by the time I’m done trying to get the seeds out, I’ve lost interest.

And, yes, you can buy the seeds already extracted, but they don’t taste as fresh.

The Taste Test

Maybe it’s me, but years ago when I got introduced to mangos in Hawai’i, I thought they were manna from heaven. I had to have a fresh one every morning for breakfast. I even asked the waitress how to pick out a good one at the grocery store fresh fruit department.

Mangos in Virginia don’t take as good as mangos in Hawai’i. I don’t know why. I only know they tasted awful. I thought it was my imagination (actually, that’s what my ex said), but when I returned to Hawai’i a few years later, I had delicious, fresh, juicy, heavenly tasting mangos for breakfast each morning. Back home in Virginia? Meh.

It was the same for me with buying seeds already extracted from pomegranates. They didn’t taste the same. Now, I walk past the fresh pomegranates in my local grocery store with a wistful sigh (I don’t even look at the mangos.) and with only a memory of how they taste, quickly fading.

Do you have a “fool-proof” way of getting seeds from your pomegranates? If so, tell me in the comments, and I’ll try it.

52-8 My Thoughts on Ageism

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This blog post could be short. My initial thought when I first heard of ageism (well after its coining n 1969) was: Huh? How is that possible? What does that even mean?

Of course, I was young, new in my government career, and coveting jobs held by what we called “dinosaurs.”

Then, I became one of the dinosaurs and had to scrap for every promotion and award with kids fresh out of college. In the beginning I’d had to prove myself because of my youth and inexperience. At the end of my career, I had to prove I wasn’t in my dotage.

Until It Happens to You

Like most entitled folk, I sometimes “don’t see” discrimination until it happens to me, and, unlike racism or misogyny, ageism is sometimes subtle.

It’s grocery clerks or wait staff or nurses or anyone half or less your age who somehow decide that calling you “honey” or “sweetie” or “darling” is something you crave.

It’s people who, when you tell them you’re hard of hearing (from noise damage caused by airplane engines not age), they raise their voices, smile sweetly, and speak to you as if you’re five.

It’s having a mechanic try to BS you into believing something is wrong with your vehicle… Oh wait. That happened to me when I was a young woman. That’s more misogyny than ageism.

It’s people in doctor’s offices who look at your age on the chart and offer to “help” you into and out of your chair.

Maybe that’s not exactly ageism, but a preconceived notion that once you hit a certain age, you’re weak and infirm.

No, that’s ageism.

Ageism Can be Deadly

That attitude that once someone reaches a particular age makes it easy for caregivers in nursing homes or even in families to consider that person less than useful, less than what he or she used to be. That, unfortunately, can lead to various forms of elder abuse–from stealing money, emptying bank accounts, to actual physical abuse. The belief that the older a person gets the more useless they are renders them less than human. Dehumanization makes harsh treatment easier to occur.

I remember clearly something that happened in high school. My grandmother was visiting, and she loved the old drug stores that had lunch counters. She particularly loved their chocolate milkshakes. At this particular time, she was in her sixties, an age I can relate to, and she was dressed as she always did for an “outing”: in a nice dress, purple, of course, matching shoes and coat. It was misting rain that day, and she had a bright, fluorescent purple scarf tied around her newly coiffed hair.

To me she was just grandma. She always dressed that way–bright, outlandish colors, usually varying shades of purple–and I thought nothing of it as we sat at the counter waiting for our shakes.

Not so for two girls a couple of years ahead of me in school. My grandmother’s hearing was bad by then, but mine was perfect. I heard them make fun of everything about her, and I was…embarrassed to be seen with her, something I’d never been before. It wasn’t until years later I understood that was ageism, that those two girls decided my bright, active, vivacious grandmother was worthy of disdain because she was, to them, old. They dehumanized her, saw her as a useless thing, and that made it easy, even funny, to criticize her.

What if she’d ended up in a nursing home with people who felt that way?

As a retired nurse, she’d seen quite a few of what passed for nursing homes in the fifties and sixties, and her ardent wish was that she never go to live in one.

Bucking Ageism

I’ve often joked I’m a sixteen-year-old trapped in a sixty-something body. I text. I’m tech-savvy. I’m a gadget nerd. I don’t dress like other women my age. Hell, I wear brightly patterned leggings, some with airplanes on them. One pair I have has a pattern of clouds and lightning, and one of those lightning bolts appears to emerge from my a$$. My version of shades of purple I suppose.

I had a friend say to me not long before my sixtieth birthday, “Now that you’re turning sixty, are you going to dress your age?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Are you going to stop wearing jeans and tee-shirts and odd shoes and wear something age appropriate?”

That was ageism. You can imagine what I said to that.

I’m lucky to have kids who don’t think of me as descending toward uselessness, and I think that’s key. If you’ve brought them up to respect the worth and dignity of everyone at all stages of life, you won’t be an inconvenience they shuttle off to an “assisted living facility.”

So, here’s my thought for those smiling, simpering, young things who call me cute names and talk to me as if I’m incapable of understanding a polysyllabic word: Suck it up, buttercup. Your time will come.

What are your thoughts about ageism? Experienced it yet? Guilty of it?

 

52-6 What Tattoos You Have and Their Meaning

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I came late to the tattoo scene. I’d wanted one for a long time, but I heeded my then-not-my-ex’s advice about how a visible one would be perceived by the stodgy management where we both worked. My personal inclination was not to give a f**k, but he made sense. However, it wasn’t until he was my ex that I got the first of two tattoos I have. Pick your battles.

Tattoo #1

I wanted something to denote my Celtic heritage, but I didn’t want what every other person who thought they were Irish got: a shamrock, a Celtic knot, or a Celtic cross. I wanted something unique but recognizably Celtic.

images

My triskele is similar to this but is enclosed in a circle.

I looked through books on Celtic history and finally came across an article about archeology at the neolithic tomb in Newgrange, Ireland. Prominent among the carvings there was a three-lobed spiral called a triskele or a triskelion. The triskele is sometimes called the spiral of life, and ancient Celts found things in the combination of three to be sacred, likely why they took to the Catholic trinity.

Once I had a sample of what I wanted in hand, I went to a tattoo shop near my house. It was small and clean, but let me tell you it was not like the shops in the reality TV shows popular then–L.A. Ink and Miami Ink. The guy behind the desk had tattoos with a death motif on every inch of exposed skin, and it didn’t take much imagination to figure out what was on the unexposed skin. He didn’t seem terribly interested in what I showed him, but once I mentioned it was a carving from a Bronze Age tomb, he was all in.

The best place I decided was on my left ankle, on the inside. He made the stencil and applied it, and I wanted to watch him do the tattoo. Outlining the tattoo wasn’t an issue. It hurt but it wasn’t excruciating. The artist kept asking me if I wanted to lie down. Nope, I’m good, I told him.

When he started filling in what he’d outlined, which involved a head on the tattoo gun with multiple needles and a scraping motion, I decided it was time to lie down. In all, it took less than an hour and fewer than a hundred dollars to get inked.

I’m a bad girl now, I thought, and relished in my badness.

However, when I went back to work on Monday, I wore slacks for a couple of weeks before I wore skirts, and with them I wore dark hose or tights. Finally, after a month of keeping my tat “under cover” I wore a skirt with nude panty hose and…

No one noticed. Oh well, so much for bada$$ery.

Tattoo #2

The second tattoo is for a far more somber reason than denoting my heritage and wanting to be a bada$$, in my own mind at least.

When one of my grandsons was four years old, he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes–an autoimmune disease which essentially means his immune system attacked his own pancreas and put it out of service. At four, he faced a lifetime of insulin shots several times a day.

My own brother had T1D, but he wasn’t diagnosed until he was in his twenties. He eventually became insulin-resistant, and every system in his body started to fail. He died when he was forty-four. I take heart for my grandson because the medicine and the treatment for T1D is far superior than what it was close to forty years ago when my brother was diagnosed.

My grandson’s father, who has a couple of tattoos also, and I decided we needed to show solidarity with him. If he was going to face a lifetime of shots, we could endure needles for as long as it took to get a tattoo.

On my right ankle, mirroring the first tattoo, is a T1D ribbon.

ribbon

My tattoo omits the words “Type 1 Diabetes” and has my grandson’s name above it and the date of his diagnosis below it.

This kid is the bravest little guy I know. An insulin pump has replaced the syringes, and he’s a normal kid in every way, including getting on Mamo’s nerves. Now eight, he’s decided he has T1D so he can educate people about it. I adore him; I absolutely adore him.

So, do me a favor. Read this and go contribute to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Tattoo No. 3?

I’ve been wanting a tattoo acknowledging the fact I’m a writer for some time, as well. I’m thinking on the inside of my wrist so I can look at it when there are those days where the words won’t come.

I’m leaning toward the words, “I write” or “Write well,” in my own handwriting, with a small quill pen in case no one gets it.

How about you? Are you inked? What do they symbolize? Tell me or show me in the comments.

You’re Invited!

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panel-flyer-facebook-1-31-17How Many Writers Does it Take…

I’ll be in wonderful author company on Saturday, February 11, 2017, when six of us are featured on an author panel entitled, “Love to Write, Write to Love.” The event takes place at the Massanutten Regional Library, 174 S. Main St., Harrisonburg, Virginia, 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm. We’ll discuss our love of writing and our various paths to publication. After Q&A from the audience, we’ll be selling and signing our books.

The event is free to the public–gotta love those public libraries–and if you’re in the Harrisonburg, Virginia, area, here’s your chance to meet some great authors.

Who are These People?

I’m privileged to know everyone on the panel and have read their work–except for Taryn Kloeden, but that’s because her book won’t be published until spring.

Mollie Cox Bryan is the author of cookbooks, historical fiction, romance, and cozy mysteries. I write historical thrillers and speculative fiction. Taryn Kloeden writes dark fantasy. Margaret Locke is a romance novelist extraordinaire–she has to be to get me to read romance! Judith Lucci is an award-winning author of mysteries with a medical backdrop. Tamara Shoemaker writes incredibly visual YA fantasy–and dragons.

Stop by and See Us

This should be a great event. Writers talking about writing. Doesn’t get much better than that! Come hear what we have to say. Who knows? Something one of us says might get you started on your first novel!

52-5 A Place Where I’d Live but Have Never Been

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Easy. Ireland.

No, this won’t be the shortest blog post ever.

Why Ireland?

I have roots there, and my grandmother told me stories and sang me revolutionary songs. If she were still here, she would say, “The bones of your ancestors call to you.” I have enough spirituality left that I get that.

I’ve never been there, and, yeah, that’s a shock. You see, granny believed in reunion, unusual for someone with Northern Ireland roots. However, she was born before there was an Irish Republic, before there was a Northern Ireland. She elicited a youthful promise from me that I wouldn’t ever go until Ireland was reunified.

She’s been dead for forty-three years. Do I dare?

Knowing Where You Come From

A year or so after my father died, I decided I needed to know more about the Scottish part of me. I took three weeks off work, spent a week in London, and two weeks driving the Scottish countryside, from Edinburgh to Dundee to Inverness, around Loch Ness (sadly, Nessie eluded me), and back to Edinburgh.

When I stepped off the plane from London to Edinburgh onto the tarmac, the bones of my Scottish ancestors said, “You’re home.” And I felt it.

Outside Inverness at the museum for the Battle of Culloden, I walked the Moor of Culloden, among the cairns erected for the dead, and I saw familiar names. This battle, family legend goes, was the source of the first Duncans to come to Virginia. They wanted to escape retribution from an English king.

My two weeks there were oddly comforting, as if I’d brought a part of my father home. When I boarded the plane to go back to the states, I felt as if I were leaving home.

My Mysterious Other Half

I grew up acknowledging and celebrating my Scottish ancestry but not my Irish. I’m not sure why, other than my grandmother and, hence, my mother never talked about it much. Even the stories my grandmother told me were “fairy tales.” I learned later there were immigration issues involved, and they wanted no attention drawn to themselves.

I don’t even know what piqued my interest in my Irish ancestry. Perhaps it was a woman who remarked I had an Irish face, or a man from Aer Lingus who gave me a potted shamrock because, he said, I need a bit of Ireland in my life.

And so, Ireland has called to me for several years now, and I need to go. What’s stopped me, you ask. Certainly not a forty-three year old promise. (Well, maybe a little; no one wants to get haunted by her angry grandmother.) I think it’s because once I get there, I’ll feel at home.

And I won’t want to leave.

Okay, what’s the place where you’d live but have never been to before? Let me know in the comments.