Category Archives: Wendy Welch

An Irish Observation

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Jack hits the ground running and gets his blog post out on time – –

On St Patrick’s Day I’m taking the liberty of copying a quote from a message I received this morning from a friend.

Music is what language would be if it could. It returns us, in sometimes fleeting but sustaining moments to our true and highest selves. Ireland has a significant store of traditional music and there is a great diversity of style and nuance. Each region has a distinctive tradition. One can hear the contours of the landscape shape the tonality and spirit of the music. The memory of the people is echoed in the refrains. Traditional Irish music can be joyous and lively. The reels, jigs, hornpipes, polkas and slides have tremendous energy and passion. In the slow airs and ballads the wistfulness of loss and sorrow is piercing. When one considers the history of suffering the Irish have endured through colonization, famine and emigration, it is fascinating that our music has such heart. Indeed some of the greatest and most distinctive Irish music developed among Irish emigrants, especially in America, and must have been one of their few shelters in exile.  Arriving in a strange land and having to work hard, far away from their family, friends and home landscapes, their music must have opened secret doors in  memory and allowed the heart to come home again. There was a sense that music is a homecoming. When they felt lost and forsaken, they rejoiced in this universal language that crosses all frontiers and barriers.

 The music of the people offers a unique entry into their unconscious life. The tenor of what haunts and delights becomes audible there. The cry of the people is in their music. The mystery of the music is its uncanny ability to coax harmony out of contradiction and chaos. And always there is an abiding kind of vitality and sustaining integrity to the music. I know of friends of mine who when they play, they are unreachable. You cannot find them. They are serving the music. They are in another place.

 So music does not touch merely the mind and senses; it engages that ancient and primal presence we call soul. The soul is never fully at home in the social world we inhabit. It is too large for our contained, managed lives. It reminds us that we are children of the eternal and that our time on earth is meant to be a pilgrimage of growth, creativity and finding beauty. This is what music inspires. It evokes a world where that ancient beauty can resonate within us again. The eternal echoing of music reclaims us for a while for our true longing.

  • John O’Donohue, 1956 – 2008

Talking to my Aunt

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Post-vaccination, I made a recent trip to my parents’ house, the first since October 2020. I did the usual daughterly things: climbed a ladder to clean the gutters, sewed a quilt with my mom, got take-out for dinner, dusted the china.

Mom and Dad and I know what to talk about and what not to talk about. We have learned to avoid serving baited hooks to one another. The fact that Dad is hard of hearing and doesn’t like wearing his hearing aids makes this easy. I can always mumble my snarky reply to his latest FOX-inspired query, and when mom brings up Seuss, I make the sewing machine whir faster. We want to stay a family. I want to honor my friends who are deprived of inalienable rights by some of the policies the party not currently in power spews: LGBTQ friends, friends of color, friends of libertarian leanings, friends who want to shove that MyPillow guy into one of his own zippered cases, and friends who want to put a pillow over their ears and la-la-la into Spring.

I’m done trying to be all things to all people. I answer to Jesus, I want my family as a family, and I love my friends. I have begun ignoring those who scream I’m doing it wrong because I must choose truth and justice over family, or family over truth and justice. It’s come down to a case by case decision-making basis. No wonder we’re all exhausted.

Anyway, my aunt called while I was there. This is the aunt who bought us Christmas presents every year without fail. Snow White necklaces, fuzzy stuffed animals, our first watches. She and her husband ran a chain of stores similar to a Big Lots thing; they always had good stuff like Godiva Chocolates around, so of course she was our favorite. She was also the most fun. We did cool things we never told Mom and Dad about at her house. Mom’s still annoyed Auntie took me for an unauthorized haircut, but Auntie and I both knew the adhesive was never going to come out.

Auntie had mentioned to my parents a couple of times that she would love to hear from me, but did I get around to calling her? I did manage to drop a spontaneous card over the summer, which made me feel virtuous. So when Dad unexpectedly had her on the phone this recent trip, I asked to say hi.

We exchange how are yous and love yous and whacha been up tos, and then my aunt says, “I was rereading your book Little Bookstore the other day, and thinking about all Jack went through to be an American citizen, and got so mad. These days all anyone has to do is walk up to the border and they get right in. It’s awful, they’re rapists and murders, the lot of them.”

When I could speak again, I asked, “How is the food at your nursing home?”

She spit out more racism 101. In that gorgeous Midwestern accent so familiar to my childhood ears. The voice that said “wanna go to McDonald’s” when grandma made the hateful tuna casserole, and we snuck out of the house. The voice that asked, “Did you hurt yourself” followed by the laugh that let me know the broken lamp was of no consequence, after my sister and I faffed around indoors despite being told not to. It was an expensive lamp.

I stammered out again that I loved her, wished her well in recovering from the latest nursing home infection (not COVID) and gave the phone back to my dad.

Every day. Every day, we negotiate the edges. She’s in her ’90s. She was my childhood, she can’t be our future. I still love her. Dammit.