Today is my sixteenth wedding anniversary. For our wedding, my husband and I flew back to Ireland from our home here in San Francisco. We were married in Lacken, a tiny village in County Wicklow where my father was born and raised. When I was a girl, Dad would often drive our family of eight down from Dublin to visit Lacken. By that time, Dad’s family had scattered elsewhere and his childhood cottage home had fallen to ruins and was no longer owned by any of his blood. Our Lacken adventures largely skipped over the remaining stones of Dad’s former home and instead we enjoyed the stunning Blessington Lakes, the surrounding scenery, and the tiny (but to us children awe-inspiring) church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
In 1996, the year my husband and I married, Lacken church was no longer in regular use and we required special permission to marry there. (I can write a hell of a letter when needed.) I wanted to marry in Lacken Church because I’m sentimental, because it was the only church I’d ever felt any deep connection to, and because I wanted my father to know that I loved him.
I would like to pretend that it was my mother, or that I can even remember who advised me, but shortly before the wedding, someone suggested I pause at the start of the aisle and take a moment to soak in everything: my family, friends, and guests in the pews, the sunlight spilling through the stained glass windows, the sharp incense, burning wax, and sweet flowers, and my husband standing at the altar waiting for me, his head twitching to turn around.
As I walked into the church that sunny Friday afternoon, my arm linked to my father, I had every intention of stopping as advised at the start of the aisle and taking my moment and committing everything to memory. However, just as I reached the aisle, my long, long veil (there are streams shorter) caught on a nail and tugged my head backwards. As I walked the fog-locked beach this morning in San Francisco, far from that tiny Irish village, I realized that my veil getting caught on that nail is one of my most vivid memories from my wedding day.
So much lately I’ve been asking myself what are the moments that stand out for me. Where are the nails? It seems the nails could be clues to who I truly am and what really matters to me. Last week, I attended The Rumpus party for Cheryl Strayed and the release of Tiny Beautiful Things, a ‘best of’ from her brilliant Dear Sugar column. As Cheryl Strayed radiated from the stage, I knew I was in the presence of someone enlightened and light-giving, someone who really knows who she is and what she stands for and what work she was put here to do. Me, I’m still floundering. Me, I’m still too full of fear. Me, who is me?
The constants in my life have always been reading and writing. That I know. My body, my gut instincts, have always guided me well. That I also know. It’s also true that I’ve grown into the kind of woman who would remain at the ruins of her father’s childhood home much longer than I ever did in childhood, paying homage and realizing how hard it must have been for Dad to see the cottage fallen to rubble, like nails through him. “We didn’t have much,” he once told me, “but we had a happy home.”
I’m at a point in my life where I’m reading and writing more than I ever have before, and yet my gut instincts tell me something’s missing, something’s wrong. Keeping this blog once gave me so much joy, so did social networking (Hail, Twitter, Hiss, Facebook). I love keeping up with online friends and the lit community at large, it feels important, vital, and less lonely and isolating. However, more and more, I bring little if anything to these forums and I’m getting back much the same.
Another vivid moment from my wedding day is right before the ceremony, when my father and I stepped out of the wedding car and through the iron gates into the grounds of Lacken church: Dad looked at me, his head tilted upwards, mouth open and his eyes shining, a look of wonder and pride pouring out of his face, a look I’d never seen from him before or since. His look was a nail of an altogether different sort. It was the kind of joyous, proud, love-filled look I want to be able to give myself in the mirror.
I’m going to take some time out and try to get quiet and still and to listen and see. I’m going to pray for help. Please God, show me how to live a life of meaning. Then I’m going to wait to be snagged by a nail.
ethel, don’t kid yourself, this is a brave piece of writing. i love the metaphor of the nail. my old man used be able to bend a six-inch nail in his bare hands, and i flail when i try to remember him, to connect to him, and your piece really resonates with me. and, yes, cheryl is a bloody miracle writer! but we keep going, writing, reading, plumbing those depths until we find that which we search for. good luck and keep in touch!
James, thank you for this wonderful note and encouragement. I’m going to go plumb those depths
Beautifully written, Ethel. I hope you find many nails! We’ll be here when you get back…. xoxox
Thank you for being here, xTx LION. I hope I find many nails too.
A tiny, exquisite chapel. What a lovely thing you did for your father. Happy anniversary.
Clarity is such a gift, and Sugar has it in spades, light shining through all of her panes. I long for that as well. All of her writing makes me realize I need to stop, be still, reboot.
Blessings on you as you wait for your nail. ♥
“Light shining through all of her panes.” How beautiful. Thank you, Tanita, you are unfailing.
You know I think you’re remarkable. I’ll continue to read your work and shout your praises and feel assured you’re doing good work, on the page and in life. Take care of yourself. Live. Breathe. Take in your moment. Quiet is good. XO.
Alana, I think you are also remarkable. I’m going to breathe big and enjoy the quiet. I’m going to listen hard xoxo
This resonated with me, so I thought I should comment. Very much reminds me of similar periods I have experienced myself. Every time I’ve paused, nay refused to do what I had been doing in my creative work (due to either disenchantment or burn out), eventually, when the was time right I’ve been drawn back to it again and each time with more vigour, purpose and sometimes with a necessary adjustment.
Someone said to me once that being creative is like being a sponge, creative people need time away from endless doing, to simply soak in life, until the sponge is so full that creativity starts to leak out again, seeking an expression of some sort.
I always used to fear these periods of enforced rest – and they come with great regularity for me – I was convinced that ‘the creative muse’ had left forever and my life was now wholly without purpose, that without doing a, b or c I was nothing and all that I had done before was now suddenly worthless.
Now I realise that I work in a repeating pattern of manic activity followed by an unasked for, but necessary pause. I now accept these periods of inactivity for what they are, just a rest, not the end. While I am ‘being a sponge’ and not in manic work-mode, answers to questions I didn’t even think I had always come from unexpected sources and I’m still enough to actually pay attention to them.
Perhaps this is the nail catching on your dress right now, forcing you to pause and take stock before you move forward again.
Elena, thank you for this wonderful note. “Perhaps this is the nail catching on your dress right now …” How lovely. I believe so, Elena. You’ve learned acceptance, well done, and that resonates. I need to stop grasping and trust everything more. I welcome peace.
“I’m at a point in my life where I’m reading and writing more than I ever have before, and yet my gut instincts tell me something’s missing, something’s wrong. Keeping this blog once gave me so much joy, so did social networking (Hail, Twitter, Hiss, Facebook). I love keeping up with online friends and the lit community at large, it feels important, vital, and less lonely and isolating. However, more and more, I bring little if anything to these forums and I’m getting back much the same.”
I feel the same way, Ethel…
Eric, your email flicked at my heart. Make no mistake, you are special. Believe xoxo
Wow that is my memory of your wedding too – well that and the bit in your Dad’s speech about us & my emigration to SF
Hope you find what you are looking for but maybe this is it, this is all there is and you are all you are meant to be, you have achieved so much in both your personal & professional life, you should be able to sit back and pat yourself on the back and say “I done good”. You do & are living a life of meaning. Good luck be well be happy 
xxx
Dear Nettie,
I love that our friendship has lasted all these years, thank you. We’re so different in so many ways and yet you never say WTF, Ethel. You just keep showing up with kindness and for that I am forever grateful xoxo