Family Generations is the hardest of the twelve to keep looking at. I lost my father in 1968 and I lost my own two children in 2002 — not through their death but through mine, the emotional kind, when I left their mother and hoped to stay close to them and did not. Twenty years have gone by. What I want is to find them and tell them that I am their father, that I love them, and why I left, and I want that far more for their sake than for mine. Beyond that, though, this is about generational pain and generational healing, and about what travels down a line if nobody turns and faces it. It leaves me very vulnerable and I am afraid of doing further damage, so let me have the courage to have no courage at all, and stay facing it.
“Uncle Bertie’s a Protestant!” That’s what we were told! That’s what we believed! Things got exciting when Uncle Bertie came to visit. You see, being the country cousins from Cork, we’d never even seen a Protestant before! Uncle Bertie was Daddy’s third brother who’d often visit from Dublin. They were all fairly well behaved in that family, it seemed, except of course, for Uncle Bertie. I mean, he smoked a pipe and would often drink pints of Guinness and rarely,…
Ours was an early morning flight and the sun had yet to rise as we taxied out past great-big hangers and sleepy planes. That early morning glow, advancing slowly on the horizon and the burning orange and yellow of man’s electric light scattered here and there, warmed my little heart. I rested my forehead against the glass portal to feel the engines roar and breathed a deeply contented sigh as the wheels lifted ever so smoothly from the Dublin tarmac….