A Room of Her Own

Early morning did not go well. Lately, each dawn wages a new battle. It's the 2-year-old toddler struggle-for-control blues. Mommy has to get to work or to an appointment and clothes that are offered first, then with choices displayed, after which are forced over the head or tugged onto flailing legs, are summarily removed and thrown onto the floor. There is wailing and gnashing of teeth (on both sides). There are hugs, pleadings, bribes. There are visits to the back deck to swear at the trees briefly so it is not directed at a wee one.

"Stop! SssshH! Crash!" The rhythm of our mornings lately.

Yesterday morning in particular begins roughly as I must administer a nasal antibiotic spray up each nostril. As a single mother, this involves straddling him, pinning each arm down with a knee and trying to insert the spray end into the nostrils of a head swerving rapidly from right to left and not hate yourself because your little lad is crying and begging you to stop. I finally get the damn spray "bottle" in and it doesn't SPRAY! Why o WHY do manufacturers feel the need to change something that WORKS? This isn't a  plain old bottle you can squeeze so it sprays the old fashioned way. No. It's got some g-d device you are supposed to easily 'click' to administer the antibiotic. I want to throttle the person who invented this. I manage to spray into the other nostril but one of them begins to bleed a little and he is saying, "I'm sowwy. I'm sowwy." As though he has done something he shouldn't have and he thinks I am punishing him. He just wants me to stop. It tortures me that he thinks this is punishment. I hug and hold him for the better part of a half hour and assure him over and over and over that he has done nothing wrong and we just want his nose to get all better. We move on...

I finally get him fed and dressed and as I pull out of the driveway it is now 9:32am. This morning, aside from it being my first day of vacation, I actually had an appointment. My very first portrait session which was to begin at 9am. I manage to pop off an email that I hope to be there by 9:30. Foiled again. I hit every red light on the way to the daycare. Buses which stop every five metres appear out of nowhere in front of me. I rush him into his room and give him big hugs and run down the hallway. My hair is the way it was when I awoke. I have no makeup on. I hit every red light on the way to the appointment. I had promised to bring a coffee and figure this is the least I can do since I am so behind now.

Jubilant about Juliet

When I finally arrive, my friend Carrie is gracious and forgiving. I almost burst into tears explaining the nasal spray, the morning. She remembers. Her youngest is now three and she has four beautiful kids. She remembers this stage of things. We move on to the Great Event as we down our coffees and chat. Beside me on her kitchen table sits an advanced reading copy of her latest short story collection, The Juliet Stories, due to hit bookstores in March. I remove the lens cover as we chat about the excitement of this collection of stories, now a solid thing in her hands. She is jubilant. Capturing her hands at this moment is like trying to capture my toddler. The blur of motion as she handles her new 'baby' belies a thrilling ecstasy beneath Carrie's generally calm composure.

Writing haven off the kitchen...

Carrie and I got into photography a bit more pronouncedly as a creative outlet close to the same time a couple of years ago. We have recently been discussing a joint (ad)venture involving our mutual facebook friends, of which we have 34. It is inpsired by an etsy post I'd recently come across. A few months back I described to Carrie the idea for a project of my own entitled "ipowr". The anagram stands for Intriguing People of Waterloo Region but also a play on how powerful photography can be and what the "eye" (the one behind the lens, the glass 'eye' of the camera) captures. Ipowr is a portraiture project I hope will encompass images captured and journalistic features on people who live in my area; people who are accomplishing and exploring intriguing things, both on a small scale and a big one. I'm starting big and have asked Carrie to be my first 'victim'.

Aunt Alice's Chair

Recently, Carrie's beautiful, Victorian home has undergone a new facelift. The prospect of a brand new porch meant that, for a stay-at-home-mum of four who is also a writer, a new office space all her own could be factored in. I open the original door of bubbled glass. A small office takes up part of the original front porch in the house. As I step into the space, the first thing which greets me is the heated floor. I am thrilled for Carrie and what this wee haven means for her. The left wall of the office as I enter is a warm redbrick. The ceiling height is majestic and three gorgeous, marbled lamps reach down to hover over Carrie's head as she works at her mac.

'The Carrie Stories' Photo Shoot

The photo I want to take, the photo I have imagined to kick off my new photography project will have to wait. This morning I'm here to capture the author in A Room of Her Own. And she owns the space as she enters it. I ask her a gazillion questions about her writing process, about her upcoming collection of short stories set in Nicaragua, about what inspires her and how the stories came to be. Carrie begins my photo session by grabbing her own camera and shooting some of me. I laugh. As the photographer, this is something I clearly was not expecting. My unkempt hair. Face sans makeup. Clothes thrown on from the floor of my bedroom that morning. But it's an act that puts us both more at ease as the shoot formally begins.

(Not So) Still Life with Redhead

We have a great session and I feel 100 times better than I did two hours before. Plus, I now know new things I didn't know about this friend of mine I've known on and off since we were in our 20s. She inspires me with her energy, her writing, her motherhood and her grace. I feel thankful to know her and that she's helping me to give birth to my own project just as her latest one is arriving in her own arms. Fitting as, outside of being a writer, mother of four and a triathlete, she is also a certified doula. I know this is all the tip of the iceberg called Carrie Snyder. Check out her wonderful blog. She'll hardly remain obscure for long, I warrant. You'll have to change the blog name, Carrie!

Just as lovely in black and white

And I await with bubbling anticipation our next shoot! Today is the first day of Winter and tomorrow's dawn will bring just that little bit more of sunlight into our days. Thanks, Carrie, for making the eve of the Darkest Night of the Year so bright for me!

Slaying the Dragon (Part I)

I recently wrote one of my writer friends that I felt my blog had become this withering, old grandmother of mine in some distant, remote long-term care facility I rarely visited anymore. Of course, both sets of grandparents are long gone for me. But I've been really missing blogging and feeling guilt over its constant neglected state. Life has felt more harried and health issues have been munching up the last few months, dining on each spare moment I might have had without even a belch.

Starting in January, we were allowed occasional visits to my son's new, upcoming daycare as long as I remained with him. I would take him and stand apart to observe how he played and explored his new environment. With each visit he seemed to grow more comfortable with the place and the number of other little people, the concepts of sharing, waiting a turn. Our initial visits were brief: perhaps an hour, no more than two, each time. I could sense that, though he was fine to go off and play without the interaction he was used to from me at home, there was a subtle "checking in" every so often. He would get lost in play but a glance would be thrown my way to ensure I was near and accessible.

Driven crazy by daycare

I thought he was adjusting admirably. My mistake was the February visits became much more frequent such that he became used to my presence there with him. There I was, patting myself on the back like a fool counting her eggs, believing the transition to fulltime was flowing as smoothly as possible. By the first day I returned to work fulltime (March 1), he was in shock that I would not be spending the 8 hours with him.

I began to measure his growing acceptance of this fact by where/when he'd begin to cry during the dropoff stage. At the beginning, he'd wail when I put him in the car on our driveway in the mornings. Slowly, I could get him in the seat tearless, but when we parked outside the daycare, he'd burst. Eventually I could park and he'd wait until he was inside the actual doors. Then a few mornings, we made it as far as down the hallway before the act of removing his coat in front of his cubby brought on Niagara Falls. On other rare occasions, I could get him all the way into the actual room before the waterworks.

What put my heart through the ringer most mornings was the fact that, in the face of his howling sobs and upstretched arms and the cries of "Maaammmmmmmmaaaaaaa", I had read in the literature that you, as the parent, are encouraged to keep a 'happy countenance' as you drop your child off so that she/he doesn't sense any worry on YOUR part about leaving her/him there for the day.

Now, I am a trained actor. In addition to four years of university training and various subsequent workshops and seminars, I've had a good amount of theatre and film experience. I further auditioned for the Royal National Theatre's Summer Programme in London, England, a programme which auditions in five cities in the States and two cities in Canada for a mere 30 spots each summer, and I got in and garnered some incredible training in that programme.

But I can say without hesitation that doing a tapdance with a big smile on my face while choking back my own tears and burying the deeply ingrained desire to grab hold of my reaching Sonshine and run out of that daycare with him every morning in some mad embrace, wild and happy once again, to the freedom and luxury of time we've had for close to two years was the most demanding acting job I've ever had.

My friend, Karl, tried to console me with "in a few weeks, you'll show up and he'll be totally indifferent to your presence and not want to leave what he's doing there and that will hurt even more." Damn you, Karl, for being spot on.

But just as I began to feel all sorry for myself that he was maybe no longer missing me or yearning for me the way every cell in my body was for him while I sat back at my desk, the onslought of germ warfare began. Perhaps this was Mother Nature's cruel joke, "You want more time together again? Okay, bring on The Sick!"

(Continued in Part II...)

The Stronger Sex

Tonight the streets are nearly empty as I stroll him through the shortcut behind the nearby funeral home. We just miss the green light because my feet refuse to do more than shuffle today. This is the time of month I feel so damned sorry for myself, moreso for the little man who wonders why his mama is just not up to par for a few days each month. My cycle began on Friday, the 12th anniversary of the due date of my first pregnancy. I try to imagine having a 12 year old running around me right now. Wow. That would be kinda neato.

The thought inspires a brief smile and peek far above to glimpse twinkling stars and think on my lost babies. Not really lost to me since I hold them close within my heart still. He kicks his legs along with the rhythm of the wheels as they hit the sidewalk cracks. We're on our way to return a late film rental. I was not sure I'd venture out tonight. It's minus 6 celcius and we are completely bundled though Mama cannot walk at her usual fast pace tonight. A pause as I bite my lip against the searing pain of the cramp and accompanying clot which nearly cripple me and we resume the stroll again. Today proved vastly difficult to get out of bed. I think back to before I had him when I would down some tylenol 3s with a glass of water and lie supine in bed with hot water bottle pressed against my insides on these days. Just knock myself out entirely against the pain of it.

No longer can I afford such luxury when it hits. And because I am nursing, no meds either. The entire weekend I move as though under water and he looks at me curiously. What's wrong, Mama? Why aren't you laughing, tickling and giving me spacerocket rides on your feet to swing me above your tummy? Not today, angel. In a few days...

We get home and I bathe him to warm his toes and fingers. He smiles up at me while I read him bedtime stories and cuddle him for his bottlefeed. He does not fight sleep tonight. Perhaps he can sense that I need the break and for this, I am thankful.

Downstairs I begin to tidy. From above my desk, my great-grandmother eyes me, a baby in her lap. She was a teacher who eventually went blind. She had birthed 10 or 11 children, the last 3 during her blindness. My own grandmother, the aforementioned baby, raised a large brood of her own children in Depression-era Ireland. The sink fills as I glance over at the photo of my mother at 17. I consider my own life and how easy I have it. So this line is the core from which I gather my own strength to get through the sorry-ass "hardship" I endure once a month? On the other side of the world, women do almost all the labour while the men sit under trees, drink beer and watch them haul water on their heads, firewood on their backs, children at their hips.

A calendar hangs near the sink and I realize tomorrow is December 6th. Twenty-one years have passed since the massacre at École Polytechnique in Montreal, where a gunman separated the men from the women in an engineering class and shot only the women. Only the women. Because he had applied to the programme himself and was turned down. Because he wondered why women should be allowed to enter a predominantly male programme and he could not? The men in the classroom were asked to leave and they all left. They were young and this man had a gun. A rifle. They had to have heard the shots from outside the classroom, down the hallway as they exited. I wonder how they feel about what happened. I wonder what it is they suffer at having survived the ordeal. Do they suffer? Knowing it was their gender that saved them? I wonder more about the women who were lost. The disbelief, the realization as the first woman is shot that this is it. Their whole lives ahead of them and this bastard is gunning them down.

Tears hit the dishwater and I ask myself just what the fuck do I have to complain about? Cramps? I am alive. I breathe. I have lived through my 30s, am experiencing my 40s. I have known the Joy of loving one Great Love in my life. I have had the pleasure of much laughter and other loves and lovers since. The incomparable ecstasy of carrying a child in my womb. Of giving birth. I have been blessed with motherhood. I work a job I enjoy with good pay and great benefits. I own a beautiful home in which to raise my son. These women had yet to live such wondrous moments in their lives.

I will never forget the day they were killed. That I was the same age as some of them at the time. I recall trying to imagine back then, at 22, having my own life end in such a tragic and hateful way. But I couldn't imagine it. I still cannot at 43.

This guy may have murdered these women, but he was so wrong. We are not the weaker sex. Not only can we do the same work as men do, but no one can destroy our ability to do so even by paying us less, never mind killing us. We can do anything. We are women. We will still defeat any sexist agenda. We will outlive it, even if we are dead. Our names will be read aloud and people will remember us. Young women capable of anything. We are women.

We will not take a rifle and execute others. Such acts are of pure cowardice. We are stronger than that. We can survive even the death rained upon us. We are women.

We can knit and we can do engineering. We can bake pies and calculate Pi algorithms. We can change diapers and policies. We can run classrooms and countries. We can give birth and we can choose not to. We are women. We have the right and the smarts.

I drain the sink. Inside my lower back, two imaginary clenched fists twist its muscles along with my ovaries. But I clean these rooms before I hit the hay. I whisper a small prayer of thanks for having that privilege. For being born a girl. For being the woman I am in the country to which I was born. I am lucky. I am strong. I am woman. Hear me roar, even as I yawn and climb the stairs slowly.

And before I ascend to bath and bed myself, I sit here at this computer and write. And I speak aloud the names of the 14 women whose lives were taken that day in 1989. I light a candle and gather strength from their wisdom, their smiles and all they accomplished in their young lives before they were taken so untimely and tragically from their families, their loves. From us all.

Anne-Marie Edward, 21
Anne-Marie Lemay, 27
Annie St-Arneault, 23
Annie Turcotte, 21
Barbara Daigneault, 22
Barbara Maria Klueznick, 31
Geneviève Bergeron, 21
Hélène Colgan, 23
Maud Haviernick, 29
Maryse Laganière, 25
Maryse Leclair, 23
Nathalie Croteau, 23
Sonia Pelletier, 28
Michele Richard, 21

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Apparently the link I'd included with some bio information is not working properly so I am copying and pasting the bios I found here:

Who They Were

Anne-Marie Edward, 21, was a first year student in chemical engineering. She loved outdoor sports like skiing, diving and riding and was always surrounded with friends.

Anne-Marie Lemay, 27, was a fourth year student in mechanical engineering.

Annie St-Arneault, 23, was a mechanical engineering student from La Tuque, Que., a Laurentian pulp and paper town in the upper St-Maurice river valley. She lived in a small apartment in Montreal. Her friends considered her a fine student. She was killed as she sat listening to a presentation in her last class before graduation. She had a job interview with Alcan Aluminium scheduled for the following day. She had talked about eventually getting married to the man who had been her boyfriend since she was a teenager.

Annie Turcotte, 21, was in her first year student in engineering materials. She lived with her brother in a small apartment near the university. She was described as gentle and athletic - she was a diver and a swimmer. She went into engineering so she could one day help improve the environment.

Barbara Daigneault, 22, was to graduate at the end of the year. She was a teaching assistant for her father Pierre Daigneault, a mechanical engineering professor with the city's other French-language engineering school at the University of Quebec at Montreal.

Barbara Maria Klueznick, 31, was a first-year nursing student. She arrived in Montreal from Poland with her husband in 1987.

Geneviève Bergeron, 21, was a second year scholarship student in civil engineering who could easily have become a musician instead of an engineer. Her friends and family described her as a happy person. On the last day of her life, Genevieve had gone to the school to work on a project with her friends. She played the clarinet and sang in a professional choir. In her spare time she played basketball and swam.

Hélène Colgan, 23, was in her final year of mechanical engineering and planned to take her Master’s degree. She had three job offers and was leaning towards accepting one from a company based near Toronto.

Maud Haviernick, 29, was a second year student in engineering materials, a branch of metallurgy, and a graduate in environmental design from the University of Quebec at Montreal.

Maryse Laganière, 25, was the only non-student killed. She worked in the budget department of the Ecole Polytechnique. She had recently married.

Maryse Leclair, 23, in fourth-year metallurgy, had a year to go before graduation and was one of the top students in the school. She acted in plays in junior college. She was the first victim whose name was known and she was found by her father, Montreal police Lieut. Pierre Leclair.

Nathalie Croteau, 23, was in her final year of mechanical engineering and planned to take a two-week vacation in Cancun, Mexico, with Hélène Colgan at the end of the month.

Sonia Pelletier, 28, was the head of her class and the pride of St-Ulric, Que., her remote birthplace in the Gaspe peninsula. She had five sisters and two brothers. She was to graduate the next day in mechanical engineering and had a job interview lined up for the following week. She was awarded a degree posthumously.

Michele Richard, 21, of Montreal, was in second-year engineering materials. She was presenting a paper with Haviernick when she was killed.
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Music: Annie Lennox, Sisters are Doin' It for Themselves

Prayers of an Irish Mother

I've just placed him in his crib and he didn't even cry once. He just let me lay him down, grabbed his bunny, turned himself over on his side and closed his eyes. I know this is part of his nature, his personality and I can't exactly attribute it to some kind of otherworldly mothering on my part. Especially not today, when I've been feeling not up to snuff, sniffing away with this cold.

But if I have any of the nurturing qualities one would expect of a good mother, any of her natural instincts, any knowledge of how to rock a child to sleep, what rhythm is best, how to listen to my child "speak" using his eyes and hands and facial expressions; if I have a gentle approach, if I know how to coax laughter, nay, relentless giggles (and I do), it's all down to this woman: my mother.

My mother at 17.

This photograph was taken 60 years ago. I've always loved this photo of my mum. She is so dang beautiful in it and I look nothing like her. I inherited my looks from my father's side of the family, but I always wished I had her nose, those lips. I have this photo framed in my house. It sits beside the old wind-up clock my father's father fixed however many moons ago. Each time I catch her image as I walk through my dining room, I wonder what it was she was thinking when the shutter clicked. She gazes out from this frame at me as I secure my son in his high chair these days; watches her baby feed her baby. My brother-in-law is correct in saying there is a Mona Lisa-esque quality to my mother's expression in this photograph. Is she sad? Her eyes appear so to me. I think of that time. She was so young, and World War II had just ended five years before. Ireland, which was 'neutral', would be mistaken continually for England and Dublin was bombed. My mother told me of hiding in bomb shelters, keeping curtains drawn. The curfews.

She had known my father for a year at this stage. One year; their first, together. Both of them worked at a textile mill and how they met was she, quite literally, fell for him. She was coming down the steps at the mill and she tripped and he caught her in his arms. How romantic is that? "She was wearing a green coat," he always adds. Then he got up the nerve to ask her to the company picnic. He says, on this, their first date, he kept asking her if she was enjoying herself and she'd answer, "immensely." People don't use that word anymore. "Immensely". I'm not even sure it was used all that much then. 'Course our family uses it quite a lot, if only to make my poor wee, Irish mother roll her eyes at herself and us.

Me and my mum. High Tea for her 75th, February 2008.

She is the ultimate straight man. We LOVE teasing her to death and she plays along so well, sometimes we truly don't know if she's sincerely being duped or allowing us the belief that she is. I get my acting talent from her. From her, I inherit ingenius comic timing. For instance, she had this habit of hers where she'd go check the mail every day (when the postal service still did home delivery). And she'd "come in on the door" as they say back in Eire, and we'd all turn to her to see if she had any mail to report in the mailbox. And if there was nothing in the box, she'd stare back at us, pause for effect while our eyebrows were all raised in expectation, and report, "Not a sausage!" At which point, we'd almost kill ourselves laughing 'cause we thought this was the most ridiculous phrase to do with mail you could ever choose.

I was about 7 years old when my older brother P. and my second-eldest sister, C., got it into their heads to put a sausage in an envelope and place it into the mailbox one night. The next morning when my mum retrieved the mail, we all turned to see her reaction and she came in, mouth agape, slightly speechless at first and then looked up at all of us and almost whispered, "there's a...there's a. em. a...sausage." We just fell all over the place. We were "in bits", laughing until our sides hurt.

This was the kind of shit we pulled on her all the time growing up.

Definitely not my mother.

Like how she was forever baking and it would maybe be this huge bowl of something which the recipe required to be kept cold overnight and she'd say, "Make room for me in the fridge", and, of course, she meant for the bowl but we'd empty the fridge entirely, even of its shelves, and my brothers would pick up all 5 feet of her and we'd all try to put her in the fridge door, 'cause she sure was tiny enough to fit and she'd swat at us with her spatula. "Stop foolin' around. Put me down this instant!" But she'd be smiling and her eyes would be laughing, flour on her chin.

Definitely me as a child.

When my father emigrated to Canada, my mother was left back in Ireland with two children under five and a third on the way. For an entire year, my father slaved away to save enough money to fly my mother and their three kids over to Canada to join him. He used to call "home" every once in a while, and she'd be teased terribly for putting on her best blouse and some lipstick to answer the phone. Her siblings'd all smirk at her and say, "Did he like your hair like that? What'd he tink o' yer dress?" When she joined him, she would weep inconsolably, missing those siblings and her parents so far from her. It's a running joke in my family that my mother has yet to forgive my father for taking her from the Emerald Isle. But she has learned to love this second home of hers, this country Canada. Despite the cold, snowy winters, she has warmed to this nation in the 52 years she's been here.

I've mentioned before the sacrifice they both made in coming here. I can't imagine leaving, not only your homeland, your birthplace, but your own parents, your brothers and sisters, everyone and everything familiar to you,  believing you might never see them again. And you go off to this unknown place. You're the first of each of your families to set foot on this strange soil so there's no one over here already saying, "C'mon, it's great. You'll love it. Pack an extra cardigan. Buy wellies." or "Jaysus, you'll hate it here. Don't spoil your Sunday dinner by coming over atall, atall. It's colder than a mother-in-law's kiss over here. Truth to God, 'tis."

No one warned them. Yet, she's the reason I love Canada, my homeland, the way that I do. With the passion I do.

She's the reason I love the arts. She is the reason any of her children are artistic. She instilled in me a love of poetry, of Yeats. Of crosswords. Of history. Of libraries. Of reading. Of Ireland. So much so that I shed tears of Joy when the plane lands and I wasn't even born there. I cry buckets when I leave that isle. This, I inherit from my mother.

With 'Nana', his first Christmas, December 2009.

She told me once of a quote: a rich child sits in a poor mother's lap. And how truly rich my life is for all the sacrifices she and my father have made on their parts. They continue to enrich my own son's life in so many ways. My mother's wisdom runs just as deep as her Irish wit.

What used to crack me up: she had this tiny, little prayerbook, Prayers of an Irish Mother. Seriously,  I'm not making that up. I used to think that was just priceless. Prayers of an Irish Mother. Like those kind of prayers just had to be the ones that were especially heard. Of all the prayers reaching God's ears, if they came from an Irish Mother, they were, like, somehow fast-tracked.

God: "Who's on line 4?"
"A mother from Kansas. Something 'bout a tornado."
"Well, who are the other lines?"
"Got a mom from New Jersey on Line 2, an Irish mother on line 3 and a mother from Venice on line 1"
"'Kay, put line 3 through first and keep line 1 on hold. If the New Jersey call is an Italian mom, you can put that one on hold, too. Otherwise, take messages from lines 2 and 4 and I'll call them back or my name isn't...um. I Am Who Am."

(I told you it was real.)

And what, pray tell, is the particular prayer of an Irish mother, you well might ask?

"Please send us more potatoes and make sure they've not the blight on dem, Divine Fadder."
"Jaysus, please let me go at least one year without having another child, I beseech you."
"Would ye ever please make it stop feckin rainin' already, tanks O Holy Mary, Mudder o' Gawd. (Sorry fer swearin'.)"

That's what I imagined was in this book.

Now, she'd kill me for blaspheming in this way. But she'd be laughing inside. That's what she's good at. And she knows I can SEE right through her. She and I have a special bond. I'm her baby, her last. And we have the same highly perceptive quality. We pick up on things not everyone does. Especially as regards each other. She has lost children herself, even with her brood of six and she has held my hands through the loss of my own children, witnessed my long years of trying to become a mom myself. She has cried tears into my hair, her hands clutched round my waist as though she would cup my womb and hold it gently if she could, kiss away my barrenness when I was going through those years of struggle, never giving up hope for me that I would know this joy myself, as she has.

I can, literally, see right through her. ;)

A decade ago, when I first moved to this house, she assured me she saw a child of mine running around the old apple tree on my property. This spring, before I move from this farmhouse, her prophecy will likely come true. I am so happy she has finally witnessed me become a mother, a longed-for dream of hers, as well. I am so blessed to call her my mum.

Like mother, like daughter.

So if I can shout without reservation that I'm an 'amazing mommy', if I can feel that I've a particular knack for nurturing, if I believe I harbour an unusually adept nature, a deeper love and understanding for mothering a child than the average woman, it's down to this woman. To this woman, I owe everything. I love her so.

My mother.

This post and this song (below) is for you...it is of you.
I'm so blessed I was born to you.
I'm so glad you were born...happy birthday!

Music: Mná na hÉireann (Woman of Ireland), Kate Bush