The Other Side of Eighty

 

Exile

Definition

“the state of being barred from one's native country, typically for political or punitive reasons.” 

I would add "religious."

I am an exile from Ireland. I have been so for fifty six years.

It’s a strange word, exile.

Me, I left because of religious intolerance – which infected entire families – of a woman/girl who became pregnant outside of holy matrimony. Back then, if this happened, there were three choices for a woman in that condition.

(1) Get married if the fellah was honourable and didn’t vanish or deny his responsibility. A choice not available to raped women or girls who were blamed for their condition and were now “spoiled” and deemed unmarriagable for any decent man.

(2)Be incarcerated in a Mother and Baby Home, run by nuns, giving birth in agony (suffering being a reparation for carnal sins committed) and then have the baby whisked away immediately and sold to a decent Catholic family in the U.S.

(3)Become a slave for life in the infamous Magdalene Laundries, mocked, beaten, demeaned and the baby yanked and sold immediately post birth.

 (4)Emigrate to the UK, Australia, South Africa or Canada.

I chose options 1 and 4. I was twenty three years old.

To be pregnant and getting married (in a side chapel away from the prying eyes of relatives and friends who would be counting the months) was no joyful event. Disgusted judgment would be wrought upon the family of the bride for raising such a tramp. Fathers would forbid the errant daughter from darkening their doorway so the neighbours could observe their disapproval as would her siblings as a signal as to what could happen to them.

I hid my condition from everyone. I was, luckily, tall and carried high.

My wedding was a grand affair. Absolutely no one knew of my four month’s pregnancy and the Canadian Embassy blessed my potential emigration with free passage to my new country along with free rent on an apartment until we “settled in.” Many employment positions were lined up as Canada was in need of more bodies in the work force. Economically then, Ireland was dismal.

Shortly after the wedding we vamoosed on the SS Carinthia.

The SS Carinthia.

Standing on that deck, looking down at the tender taking my grieving family back to Cobh Harbour, I finally realized why it was known as the “Irish Wake”

I didn’t cry. I turned my face to look west, to the new land that awaited me with open arms.

I had exiled myself and my little one to Canada.

I was encouraged today by a friend, a best selling author, who wrote of the mundane in his Facebook post.

There is always something to say.

I spent two days both prepping and undergoing some pretty brutal hospital testing procedures, under partial sedation and with minor surgery, Grandgirl never left my side and I am still in awe at her courage, competence, determination and organizational skills, down to sitting in on the post-op consultation with my specialist and handing me my bagged post event safe snack. There are two cat scans yet to come, as some diagnostics were inconclusive and need further analysis. I could never in a million years have foreseen her in such a role and frankly, it moves me to tears.

I offer you a glimpse into a budget journal former husband and I maintained to track every single income and expenditure in 1969, no matter how small. We emigrated from Ireland in January 1967 and bought our 1st house near the Beaches in Toronto exactly 3 years later.

Hair bow and pack of gum        $1.07

Lunch                                         $0.70

Groceries                                    $0.39

Present for Marion (?)                $1.00

Cigarettes                                    $1.45

K-Mart book & record                $1.76

Booze for party                            $3.00

Outfit for Daughter                       $1.29

Bell Telephone                            $10.00

2 Theatre tickets                          $8.00

Baby sitter                                    $3.00 

Seems almost prehistoric, doesn't it?

Daughter is exploring her inner artist and I am the beneficiary of some of her work.

This is an exquisite rendition of a whale. She lives where the whales roll in every year much to the delight of so many tourists who come in from around the world to see the spectacle. The whales ride in very close to the shore as the sea drops dramatically there, affording an up close and personal look at the breeching and spouting.

Mum with my daughters not too long before she died.

My mother will be dead 50 years next year. I've had difficulty in re-reading letters she sent me. For context to so many letters, I was an emigrant to Canada in 1967. Which I've written about many times on this blog. Without fail, Mum's weekly letter would arrive with all the news, even though on the date of this letter, February 18th, 1971, she had less than two months to live. And knew it.

"My dear M----
I am late in replying to your last letter, I got caught up in lots of chores trying to get things done around the house as it's only three weeks from today is J==='s (brother) wedding. D--- (my 13 yo sister) got a lovely cream trouser suit,it's really nice on her,it will look pretty on her at the wedding.

I must get a hat yet, I may go into town some Saturday morning with Dad, it will be very quiet then, and the shops will be slack.

M--(her pet name for me)the green blouse will be nice (I had bought her her wedding outfit when I went back with my kids a few months before this) as I will try and get a light brown hat to match the suit you bought me, don't you think that will be nice?

The wedding will be formal, so no new suits to be bought (she means for the men and boys of the family who'd rent morning wear). I hope this letter is readable as I am rushing for post.

A--- is having only two bridesmaids, A----(another brother) is best man and KR (friend of J--'s) is groomsman.

M-- they will love the sheets (my proposed gift for bro and bride), get them a good big size and do send them before the wedding as you said yourself before, presents that arrive late are not half as exciting, do your best anyway M--.

L & S (cousins) sent a lovely dinner service, real good ones and such lovely soups with little handles, that's their third dinner service. I have not seen the other ones as they are over at A--'s aunt's place. I told you I think that D----(her sister, my aunt) gave them Waterford Crystal, a 1/2 doz tall stem glasses and K----(another sister) gave them blankets. From this on, I expect the presents will come in.

G.O'C, (a neighbour) gave a lovely carving set, pearl handles. He is coming to the wedding too. I was glad that J---(my brother) asked him. (G was a troubled young man, a good friend to J--- who suicided a few years later.)

P & C (my parents' best friends)are coming and she rang to ask me what presents were they after getting as she would get a set of china or cutlery. So I said to please herself, M--, I'm sorry if I keep talking about the wedding, we are so caught up here.

I was down at the doctor's yesterday and when the wedding is over, I will have to get these nodules off much as I hate the thought.

Give my love to T (former husband)and O & J (daughters) all my love M--xxxx you are never far from my thoughts. Mum

PS P(her best friend) was asking for you today, she really cares for your O. Mum."

I was feeling particularly sorry for myself today, the pandemic, worsening mobility, just general woe-is-me and I thought of my mother and all she suffered with a horrible form of cancer. Multiple amputations and thought to re-read some of the immense correspondence i have from her. She wrote as she spoke and I hear her words and feel her love in every line. I can't imagine what she was going through leaving behind her young children and still writing so lovingly to me in Canada.

As a woman and girl, having navigated patriarchal capitalism and its handmaiden religion for nearly all of my life I found this nugget today:

"Your anger is the part of you that knows your mistreatment and abuse are unacceptable. Your anger knows you deserve to be treated well, and with kindness. Your anger is a part of you that loves YOU."

In later life I was told that anger was toxic and could really damage me. That my life would be so much better if I could just forgive.And boy did I work hard on that. Owning my part in the RESPONSE to my own abuse and mistreatment. Imagine.

But does forgiveness mean forgetting? How does one forget? I've asked many times is there a magic bullet? Because depression is the polar opposite of anger. If you repress anger, black depression ensues. And you know what? Most people I know are on sedatives, tranquilizers, call them what you will, to treat a "chemical imbalance" in their brains. And if they open up at all about their lives behind them there's a trickling seam of rage underneath, which is quickly shut down. So is chemical treatment of anger an optimum solution? Isn't part of the spirit then quenched?

So anger can be a powerful positive force. And maybe that's why I'm an activist in a world of so very few when you compare total populations. I've channeled my unapologetic anger into advocating for those less fortunate and I speak up when I'm treated badly and I set firm boundaries. I do not use it to hurt or destroy but I will not colour my past with rainbows and unicorns.

As I write my new book (31,000 words and counting) I'm once again the twenty-three-year-old I was, feeling that helpless rage that saw me banished from my native land when I needed it the most and navigating a baffling new country. I feel for her, fifty years ago, forced to bury her short former life, the one that formed and shaped her, and invent a new one. She was so desperately lonely and didn't know how to be angry, carrying it deep inside for decades - an old septic wound waiting to be lanced.

And PS. I am so happy when writing this book, I need to add that. I look forward to it every day. I ignore social media and almost resent phone calls for interrupting me. I am enjoying revisiting the Toronto of long past as it flows past the words on my screen.

A word that popped into my head today. A word which expressed exactly how I was feeling. A state of Neverness (tm).

I was triggered by a discussion in a support group I attend. The topic was emotions. How feeling them was so important rather than shoving them all under a rug or ignoring them or biting the lip and bravely soldiering on as they will continue to pop up and wave at us for attention. A very interesting hour indeed.

And after leaving, I was in my car and playing some John O'Conor as I like to do now and again, he is a magnificent pianist. I was playing the Meeting of the Waters - one of my favourite pieces of all time and one I have attempted so many times on the piano myself. I couldn't find his interpretation on YouTube but I did find Phil Coulter's which isn't as emotional to my ear but you'll get the gist of what a lovely piece it is.


And this flood of emotion just completely took me over. Right out of the blue. I had to pull the car over. Whoa Nelly, said I, internally, what the hell?

And it struck me, like that, suddenly and without mercy, I will never see the land of my birth again. The long journey is basically insurmountable with my health challenges. And I will miss re-tracing the scenes of my childhood, my parents' graves, my beloved West Cork. And it's funny that, we never realize when it's happening that it could be the last time we are someplace or with someone we love. The very last time.

And that's what I was feeling in my emigrant heart - an overwhelming grief and a kind of longing. Even though the country had no time for me when I needed it the most over fifty years ago. I had to leave. Or I (and my natal family) would have been disgraced by an early pregnancy. Times have changed I know and that was then and so few people, even in my own family, get how it was. And I have no regrets, I hasten to add, it's not about that. My life in Canada has been rich in far too many ways to count. I would never be the me I love today without Canada having my back.

But I bawled my eyes out for quite a while anyway. And then carried on. In my state of Neverness.

Neverness.

It should be a word.

Emotional experiences mingled with sadness, memory, fear of change, uncertain future (political, global, environmental) is stressful for many of us, not just elders.

I'll be interested to hear Grandgirl's take on it when she arrives to spend nearly 2 weeks with me tomorrow.

I know many are talking of the 'Good Ol' Days' and going back to them. I call BS on that. I turn a cold hard eye on my own past and would not revisit it for anything. Well maybe a quick revisit to the occasional short sweet times with my mother. But the rest of it? I was a religious refugee from the land of my birth, a victim of the judgement and condemnation of an unplanned pregnancy that would have shamed both my former husband and I along with my family in the eyes of the vicious Catholicism then. I've written about it many times. Escape to a welcoming Canada was our only option, far from the counting fingers of all around us. If we hadn't married, I would have been sentenced to a Magdalene Laundry in Killarney where my cousin was the nun in charge of it and have my child sold out from under me. Friends were caught in this horrific situation. They still bear the scars to this day.

More Good Ol'Days had endless repercussions in my new life in Canada. Isolation from family was a constant gnawing anxiety. Post partum depression after Daughter was born was something unrecognized then. I knew I was depressed. I had made only one friend who was supportive and loving. Father of Child couldn't understand what was going on and busied himself out at night partying and making new friends. I struggled on very much alone with Daughter and thought often of suicide, I was so utterly despondent and frightened by how my life had turned out. As my people say: "I'd lost the run of myself."

I had a supportive doctor for my baby and he recognized what was going on and told me it would pass. It was all hormonal, try and get out in the sunshine, make more of an effort, go swimming (our apartment building had a pool) or walking. I did. But I've never forgotten the awful gloom of that first year in a strange land, how I felt robbed of my family, my homeland, a supportive community, the familial joy that should have surrounded Daughter, a first great grand-child and grandchild to both our families.

So what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. Stronger in the broken places.

I am grateful beyond measure to Canada, who accepted two young emigrants back in the day and helped us establish a life in this great country where I was able to blossom and grow and become my authentic self. This would not have happened in Ireland in that era where women were subservient to the church, surrounded by rattling rosary beads and the gossip of neighbours and who lost their careers upon marriage or unplanned pregnancies. Memories of any "transgressions" lived long and hard in the minds of neighbours and co-congregants ("Ah, she had to get married back in 1957, no wonder he runs around on her, who's to blame him?"). There was no moving on then. If your father was a communist, you were unemployable and judged so harshly one of my classmates joined an order of cloistered nuns to escape community condemnation, her brothers emigrated. I could write more. A very dark place it was then, finally coming into more sunlight now with abortion rights and gay marriage but still a long way to go.

Not that Canada is perfect, but it is a country, still, where health care is excellent and universal, where the social safety network is in place to help the least advantaged of our citizens and women are equal in the constitution and dying with dignity and legalized
marijuana make us the adult in a house where in the basement a screaming orange toddler with a lit match holds us all in terrified thrall to his tantrums.

In light of the horrific recent events unfolding in Holy Ireland, with babies starved, tossed into septic tanks and sold to the highest bidders by demonic clergy, please read here and here for further clarification. Bessborough is where I would have been interred like a few of my friends who were abandoned by their boyfriends or raped by relatives or priests.

If you need further enlightenment on these horrific crimes against humanity I thought to bring to light my own narrow escape story that I still grapple with emotionally. I'm trying to set my story all down and come to terms with it, but it still festers in my heart, it is still so difficult to speak of. And I don't. Because I cry. Writing is what I do best.

And in case you're wondering, everyone knew about these institutions. We girls lived in fear of them and pitied the poor creatures within them when we would visit - as privileged private school girls - to entertain them. But never speak to them. Contamination, you see. and looking back, us girls must have been obliviously rubbing further salt into their scalded souls.

And yes I've had the therapy and tried to establish an understanding of my past with the male members of my birth family, to no avail.

For seriously, how can any Irish man, no matter the age, understand the Ireland of 1966 when a frightened, pregnant young woman, not more than a girl, together with her young husband, made life changing decisions to protect themselves and their families from the cult that was the RC church in Ireland? And make no mistake, it was (and still is) a patriarchal, hypocritical cult, steeped in misogyny, condemning so-called "unmarried mothers" to a life time of slavery, their babies stolen and sold, or killed or starved. Or horrifically raped by the parish priests who had unlimited access to these vulnerable girls and children.


I was secretly five months pregnant at my wedding. A very tight girdle.

Away

A wedding ring away from a workhouse, a lifetime of indentured slavery.

A wedding ring away from a child kidnapped and sold.

A papal blessing away from tribal condemnation on a secret side altar of the parish church.

An emigration away from family disgrace and pursed lip judgement

A lonely birthing away from family joy and support, among strangers in a strange land

A frightened young couple away from all they knew dear, alone and terrified.

A baby born away, questioning the whys and wheres and hows of the banishment of her parents.

A lifetime away in a country which beckoned when Ireland closed its doors.

They're better when you don't expect them, aren't they?


I had this email from an ex today that brought soft tears to my eyes. He's not a writer by any means. And I do think he struggled with his words. My birthday is this Tuesday and he remembered it obviously but forgot the much clichéd "Happy Birthday" and just brought up some random memories about how long we've known each other (since high school). Nearly 60 years. What a privilege, that, to know someone nearly 60 years. And share children and miscarriages, a failed adoption and a beloved grandchild.

He wrote of our emigration, our expectations then and what an adventure it was.

And he closed with a beautiful, heartfelt phrase which I'll keep private.

And I thought of our voyage and wrote back to him of this, of all our dearies on that small tender pulling away from that vast ocean liner that held our incredibly young hopeful selves leaving all we had ever known behind. Forever.

And the Irish coastline fading away in the distance as we turned and faced the new land of Canada.

Good tears.

Good love.

Annie Moore (January 1, 1877 - 1923) was the first immigrant to the United States to pass through the Ellis Island facility in New York Harbor. She departed from Cobh, County Cork, accompanied by her brothers Phillip and Anthony, aboard the steamship Nevada on January 1, 1892, her fifteenth birthday.

I decided to enter another competition. One of the promises to myself this year was to keep 'er at it. I find competitions sharpen the writing, making the reading and editing eyes more focussed and the ears more attentive (I always read my own work out loud).

This is a new genre for me. Creative non-fiction. I'm at the age where mulling is a skill I've resurrected to an art form. Now that I've lived long enough to have the time to think and savour and relive some memories. So this piece of my life's memoir is about my emigration from Ireland, the reality of all of that, the multiple layers to the story as I boarded one of the last emigrant liners out of Ireland way back in the late sixties, a time of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and folk music. I travelled with my guitar and entertained on board, informally. My hit piece was "The Butcher Boy" I'd have everyone join with me in the last chorus:

Oh, make my grave large, wide and deep
Put a marble stone at my head and feet
And in the middle, a turtle dove
That the world may know, that I died of love.

A jolly young folksinger was I.

One of the best versions of this song I've ever heard. Hanky time.

Behave yourselves while I play on the other side of the pond.

Boy, I cleaned up at cards tonight. I won the boobie prize - 3 rather nice dishtowels - and also the door prize - a bottle of rum.  As to the boobie, it is a prize awarded to the loser player of the evening. I was stuck at a table for 11 rounds with useless cards. I so want to be lucky in love to compensate for this. 

I've written all about my weekly 45 card game here, if you care to know more about it.

There was much talk of Ireland as one of my cast members was there as well as myself. In addition, there were others who had gone to Ireland over the summer on different expeditions, one had gone with her son, a priest, and they had visited everywhere that St. Patrick had been to convert the heathens and pagans back in the day. Even to the spot where he had banished the snakes.

"Oh, you must miss Ireland so much!" said one of my partners. You'd be amazed at the amount of envy I get for being so fortunate as to be born in the sacred homeland.

"Well, I miss my family of course, " said  I, "But I don't miss Ireland. Though I do like to visit."

He was appalled.

"But it's so perfect! Everyone loves Ireland!"

"Well," said I, never one to hold anything back and it's too late to learn now isn't it, "Back in the day Ireland wasn't very good to me."

Gobsmacked doesn't begin to describe the expression on his face.

"As a matter of fact," said I, continuing to never let well enough alone,  "Canada has been so extraordinarily good to me I can't even begin to count the ways. "

Hire me if you ever need to silence a room.

And if you're up for it, we'll have more on all that another time.

Thanks for the topic suggestion MarciaMay!

 

Familial isolation I talk about. Of a long term emigrant with family back in the old country or scattered in other global faraways.

I had a long chat with my sister who lives in Cork, Ireland, the other day. Very long. Catching up. Pondering travel to a nephew's marriage in April. In Argentina. Updates on family and politics but nothing too deep or serious and a few good laughs.

These familial threads are very slender indeed. Unless I put a lot of effort into them. i.e. be the emailer all the time, be the caller all the time instead of taking turns at these roles of emailee and callee. And I find as I age that the health and spark deplete a little until I don't have that kind of energy to throw into the black holes of no response anymore. I conserve it for those who do. For instance my daily emails to my lifelong friend in Dublin and hers to me. She knows more about me than any of my family does and I feel the love all those thousands of miles away. As I hope she does from me (Hi, H----!).

My friends in Toronto still call/email regularly and those ropes are very strong. I've thought for years that family is an illusion. We create our own families of love, trust and mutual support and admiration. And my family of choice is large.

I observe the blood families around me, see the emigrants from Newfoundland return regularly to land in their tribe of origin and dig right in. And weep when they leave.

And feel the loss of mine. And wonder if it was ever there to begin with.

And no, I'm not sad about this. At all. Just reflecting on what human connections sustain us. And mine are very rich indeed.

But there's always the what ifs of the fragile ties to loved siblings.

TODAY IS CANADA DAY!!

I love my country of choice. I am so proud to be a Canadian.

Over the years I’ve taken the time to prowl around her, into all her provinces that make her what she is.

I’ve been from Cape Breton to Vancouver Island. From Thunder Bay to Bonavista.

I am awed by her beauty, dumbfounded by the sheer magnitude of the cathedrals in the villages of the Gaspé Peninsula. Enchanted with the Britishness of Victoria, the Scottishness of Cape Breton, the Irishness of Newfoundland, the Frenchness of Québec, the Polishness of Northern Ontario, the Ukraineness of Manitoba. It strikes me I would never have to leave here in order to experience the world.

I came here on one of the last ocean liners to leave Cobh in Co. Cork. We left on January 8th, 1967, my husband, our unborn baby and me, with trunks of our settler’s effects, my folk guitar and $210.00. All our worldly goods rocking, along with us, across the turbulent Atlantic winter ocean.

Our fare was paid by the Canadian government along with our first month’s rent for an apartment. Looking back, we were so young, frighteningly young. But full of hope, full of dreams, full of a life that could not happen in the Ireland that was then, pre-Celtic tiger.

And it all happened for us, for me, that emigrant dream.

A career, a home, advantages for my children, a long series of pets, travel, access to a rich cultural life, ongoing dreams that could be sustained and nurtured and realized. I’ve met and made friends with people born in all corners of the globe: Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Palestinians, Australians, New Zealanders, Iraqis, Afghanis, Jamaicans, Somalis and Ismailis and we all share one passion that seems to be missing from the native-borns here. To wit: we absolutely adore Canada:

Its freedom from bias, from prejudice, from religiosity and from misogyny. Its Charter of Rights, its universal health care, its access to education for all, its absence of guns, its honouring of ethnic diversity and gender diversity, its writers, musicians and artists. The overall unbroadcasted happiness and satisfaction of its citizens, its caring for the poorest and most downtrodden of us, and its unfailing generosity and innate courtesy and politeness.

We do not sing large and loud here of what we have. No propaganda is necessary. It is a private committed love, held safe in our hearts:

Oh Canada, our true north strong and free,
Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee!

You shoulda known me then me boy
With hair so long and a voice so grand
And the bluest eyes and the greatest legs
And wearing the skirts up the to the skies.

And a laugh that would fill your belly
And a hold on the world like a graprefruit
Squeezing every last drop out of it.
And not wasting time with sleeping.

And I’d talk you awake and I’d talk you asleep.
Round the clock. And then again too.
And with a few whiskeys I’d stand on the bar.
And show off my legs and my voice too.

And I was ready for just about anything.
A misfit in a small world of priests and nuns.
I knew there was much more to life
Beyond the stolid walls around Ireland.

And I took my chances and my luggage
And jumped over them with my long legs.
And bit off more than I could chew.
But oh the taste that was in them bites.

It was the freedom of my own rebellion.
There was no stopping me then.
I crowned myself the queen of everything.
Until the whiskey caught in my gullet.

And I choked for years on the vomit
Of the world I’d left behind me
And the bitter bile I’d found on the other side.
Life looks like that from the bottom of a bottle.