Words from the Heart

The fields in the Wicklow Mountains, Ireland  Top of the mornin'!  Sure, and the sun is shining bright through me window and the soda bread is bakin' in the oven. 'Tis a good day to be Irish! Well, if I went with my mother's philosophy any day is a good day to be Irish, but March 17 holds a special place in my heart. On the 17th of March, there were traditions and rituals that were part of our lives. Observing those rituals was as important to us as breathing air. When I was young, we kids started the day with Mass...early...7:30 a.m. Then, we ran home, sporting our Irish knit sweaters and green apparel, looking forward to Momma's fresh baked Irish soda bread and a cup of tea. Then, after Momma put the corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots into a huge kettle to cook at the back of the stove, we would bundle up in as much green as possible to be off to the parade.  Having seen pictures of the parade from years past, I don't quite remember ...

(c) 2017 Linda M Rhinehart Neas Today would have been my mother's 88th birthday. I began the day giving thanks for her and all the things that she taught me, knowingly as well as unknowingly. I have said many times that Momma put the "fun" in dysfunctional. The older I get the more I realize what a gift that was.  You see, life was not easy for Momma or our family. There were multiple issues that constantly reared their ugly heads, sucking the joy out of life. However, Momma would do things during these dark times that showed us how to laugh in the face of adversity, grief, and pain.    For instance, I remember having a friend over for lunch when I was young. This had been planned for several days. However, Momma did have much in the house for food because Dad had not gotten paid. (I didn't know this until adulthood.) She never let on that there was an issue. Rather, she created a feast for me and my friend out of tomato soup, crackers with peanut bu...

Photo Credit: (c) 2014 Linda M. Rhinehart Neas With the feast of St. Patrick quickly approaching and my book on Ireland still "in the works," I decided to share some of the inspired poems from my time in the Emerald Isle.  Nestled in the Ocean     Tectonic plates slammed together,  creating a land of mountains and valleys  so rich, so green that once there  the soul is changed forever.  Glaciers gripped the land,  leaving behind treasures that  still boggle the mind of those  who study the comings and goings  of stones and minerals.  Fifty-three and a smidgen degrees North  Six and a speck degrees West,  surrounded by wild blue ocean,  covered in heather and peat,  my ancestors lay silent,  part of a historic fabric sewn  in blood, sweat, tears and rainbows.  LMRN © 2014     O’Riordan –The King’s Poet When I was half-past six years old,  the wo...

"Mizen Head, County Cork, Ireland"  Photo Credit: Licensed under  Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Today begins a new adventure, one that I will no doubt write a great deal about in the future.  Today is the beginning of an inner journey - an epic journey - an odyssey - back to the beginning of "me". Here are the two poems that began me on this quest. GRANDMA Grandma was short  like Mommy with blue-black hair cut pixie style and wild green eyes that you could never forget because they twinkled so! She laughed a lot - told funny stories from old Ireland - Mommy would laugh as she told me  the crazy things they did… Funny, she left this world long before I came -  but, Mommy’s words paint a Grandma to hold deep within my heart.  ©1983 LMRN O’Riordan – The King’s Poet When I was half-past six years old, the world still filled the 5 by 10 space of my room. Momma said the ...

Sacred Geometry / (Photo credit: Sarjana Sky ) For the next few weeks, I will be teaching a class on symbols.  In preparing for the class, I came to realize that our life is deluged with symbols, but we don't even know it! Like jumping head first into a snow pile, symbols surround every part of our life.  For instance, the shape of things are based on symbols found in Sacred Geometry.  Squares, triangles, circles, rectangles, etc. are in everything we touch...the keys of the computer, the computer screen,the speakers, the planter, the bottles of vitamins, the bits and pieces of paper and even the books all on my desk at the moment, are shaped based on these simple geometric symbols or designs. Our alphabet is a series of symbols for the sounds we use to make words.  Those words can be linked together to make sentences, paragraphs and entire texts, which symbolize what we think and why we think it. The other day, as I was preparing to find a poem on women fo...

My Brother, Barry and I at Duxbury Beach 1959 The Beach, Parades and Hoodsies A recent visit to my cousin's home created an avalanche of childhood memories.  We laughed ourselves silly, remembering our antics together and with our other cousins.  As I reminisced, later, I realized that there are recurring themes in my memories.  The beach, parades and Hoodsies all hold a prominent place in the slide show of my formative years. The beach was just three blocks from my home growing up.  I swam before I could hardly walk!  Some of my happiest times were playing in the sand at the L Street Bathhouse in South Boston.   The Bathhouse was built thanks to James Michael Curley , Mayor of Boston, back in the day and was divided into three sections - the boys', men's and women's bathhouses. My mother, one of the first women life guards in Boston on a public beach, took us to the "L", as it was fondly called, almost every day in the summer. ...

Today, we observe Veterans' Day, or what was formally called, Armistice Day, which commemorates the signing of the Peace Treaty in France between the Allies of World War I and the Germans at the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month." After World War II, the name was changed in the United States to Veteran's Day. In addition, it marks what would have been my parents 59 wedding anniversary. Mom and Dad shortly after their marriage During this month long look at gratitude, I want to thank my parents, posthumously, for finding each other.  While theirs was not always the most harmonious of marriages, there was never any doubt of the love they shared for each other, even to the end of their days. Daddy was Momma's "sailor boy" and Momma was Daddy's "sweetheart." I am grateful for the lessons these two people taught me.  Momma opened my eyes to poetry, literature, art, music and dance.  Daddy taught me how to fix things, ho...