Status Updates From What the Wind Knows

^"She just needs time, Harvey. Give her time," Barbara protested.

"Yes," I agreed, nodding. "I just need time." I needed time to take me back, to whisk me away. Time was the one thing I wanted and the one thing no one could give me.^

^Brigid was in her room, and Eoin was playing marbles in the adjoining parlor with Fergus, who showed him no mercy but a good deal of patience.^

Oh I love that

^I didn’t think time offered clarity so much as time stripped away the emotion that colored memories.^

^The O'Tooles would be back for Christmas dinner in the evening, and we would break the news to them then, but I was already counting the hours until I became Anne Smith.^

Why do I have a bad feeling about this…

^Love isn't blind, it's blinding.^

^Garvagh Glebe had been turned into a glittering, glowing wonderland of warm smells and gleaming surfaces, of spice and shine and fragrant trees tied with ribbon and decorated with berries and candles.^

Me: 🥹🥹🎄🎄

cont’d

"They can't forget, they never will, the wind and waves remember Him still."^

cont’d

"I don't like remembering that Jesus died," Eoin insisted, his voice rising. Brigid's shoulders fell, and I patted her hand. She was trying, and Eoin wasn't being especially receptive.

"Remember Him, remember when, remember that He'll come again, when all the hope and love is lost, remember that He paid the cost," Thomas sang softly from the doorway.

cont’d

"I don't like that song, Nana," Eoin said, his voice hitching with the sobs that still shuddered through him.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because it's about Jesus, and Jesus died."

Brigid looked a little shocked, and I felt inappropriate laughter bubbling in my chest.

"It’s not a sad song, though. It's a song about remembering," she protested.

A song…

^"He tamed the waters, tamed the wind, He saved a dying world from sin, they can't forget, they never will, the wind and waves remember Him still," Brigid warbled tentatively.

"He healed the sick, the blind, the lame, the poor in heart cry out His name. We can't forget, we never will, the wind and waves remember Him still," she continued.

^”I'm beginning to think only the wind knows what happened to Anne."

"Aithnionn an gaithe. The wind knows everything," I agreed softly. "That's what Eoin told me when I was small.^

cont’d

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.^

Thomas read a Yeats poem as a birthday blessing for Anne

^When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

^”What kind of stories did you write?"

"Stories about love. Magic. History."

"And now you are living it."

"The love or the magic?" I whispered.

"The history," he murmured, but his eyes were bright and soft on my face, and he leaned in and kissed me lightly before pulling back.^

^She searched my expression for the baptismal glow of the new believer, and I proceeded to bear testimony.^

^Gone was the morose doctor, the doubting Thomas, and as the thunder cracked and the rain started to fall around us, we were transported back to Dublin, to the rain and the rocking chair, and the intimacy I'd shattered with impossible truths.^

Ohh was that a reference to the Bible? Doubting Thomas? 👀

^"I had a teacher who told me fiction is the future.
Nonfiction is the past. One can be shaped and created. One cannot," she said.^

^”It can be very peaceful being surrounded by people you care about and who care about you. That is really what church is for. It’s a chance to just sit still and think about all the wonderful things God has made and count all the blessings we have.”

“I am a good counter,” Eoin said hopefully.^

^The knowledge was sudden, a fleeting thought that settled on me with butterfly wings.^

^If I make the lashes dark,
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity’s displayed;
I’m looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.

—W. B. Yeats^

Irish rashers seem much better than American bacon 😔

December 26th 1921....thats all