An ode to the single most relevant type of human being on the planet - the mother

This is a poem by Seamus Heaney called "While all the others were away at Mass". My 17 year old daughter Emma voted for it recently in the Poem for Ireland initiative. It's a breathtakingly beautiful poem. Have a read of it. It's very appropriate as we get near to Mother's Day. When you have read it, please have a read of the reflection on it written by my daughter - it too is breath taking and full of courage. 

WHILE ALL THE OTHERS WERE AWAY AT MASS

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Emma's thoughts on the poem 

I had to wrench tears from my eyes as I read Heaney's bereaved stanzas, ironed out in unrepressed wistful sadness. It is a very real fear, losing one's mother and it prevails even before we have grasped what death is, in the clutch of that desperate desire for intimacy that Heaney so artfully elicits. I recall grasping at the fogginess of youth for those crystallised memories, incidents, anecdotes, monumental moments to cradle for comfort if she lost that hospital bed-bound battle and left me with a two year old to convince of her existence, once upon a time.

For as much as we might quarrel with them, cast disgruntled glances, warning shots at them across a room (in the naval battle of making tea); a mother is something precious.

For me, Heaney’s poem captured that often unstated tenderness amid the tumult of growing; the moment of mutual affection that manifests in trading a tube of Pringles, munching over dialogue, being taught the inner workings of an avocado, debating the prudence of bananas in a smoothie.

This poem spoke to me because I carry that fear of losing my mother constantly - every blip on her health radar, every hospital stay, every infection……. There’s an intimate familiarity that accompanies the word cancer, and to all the furious tears I have streaked into hoodies.

I love baking with my mother, even though she’s an utter, unabashed dictator when it comes to the precise operation of an electric whisk, because I think that I will remember those burned cookies, that delicious chocolate fudge, the joy she’d take in smashing pistachios with a rolling pin forever.

Mothers are mythical creatures, with the wisdom of Athena, the beauty of Apollo, holding the endless ire of Zeus in reserve for matters as varied as:

·         other people who dare to use the road in a less than pristine fashion,

·         lightbulbs,

·         the grubby inside of the oven,

·         carol singers,

·         bananas,

·         invading hoards of eight-legged hell hounds (also known as spiders),

·         and, most vehemently, anyone who attempts to harm the insolent beings she expended hours ushering from her womb.

For me, “While the others were away at Mass” is a worthy champion of Irish poetry, and an ode to the single most relevant type of human being on the planet – the mother!

End of Emma's thoughts

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful Mum's out there, especially those who are battling serious illness. I hope that if you have a daughter, that you are as lucky as I am .........

Brenda xxxx

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sins of the Children by Emma Tobin

The mute, mothball shrieks of children dying under mother’s hands
And the fractal bursts of fractured light that hit
As the world tumbles over itself, leaving vague moments...
Like fingernails between the stones

While we, like disapproving books on dusty shelves
Clasp coffee cups against the precious beating of our hearts
Toss cynicism between one another, each drop of sweat a privilege
Each breath a human right

Stuffed straw mouths and shining hair
Religious freedom weighs more than dead children
Leaving corpses littered like cigarettes
Colours in a twisted dream of heaven

Matchstick ribs jutting, but we stood on the moon
How fragile have we made our one,
short and common life? How easily
our complacency is bought.

And in the dull light of big- mooned skies
Ragged lines of blood stutter down, rough
touches underneath a fluorescent fire. Severed
heads belching, toddlers left for flies.

In empty houses seashells wait for pudgy fingers
now bludgeoned shades of navy blue. And
our tots writhe on the warehouse floor, unable
to comprehend a world without Lego.

These shells will not creak in a gruff wind
Stretched lopsided over an imagined territory
An imagined safety, an imagined,
tender world.


Copyright: Emma Tobin (age 17)
September 2014

Guest post - POEM by 17 year old Emma Tobin

This is my daughter Emma's poem that she wrote for Hopkins Summer School and which no doubt contributed to her winning the overall award. 

One Giant Fuck-Up is Mankind

I.
It was midnight and I lay reeling
Painting myself red.
Wondering why the world felt, suddenly
Like a cage and not a castle.

I have practiced dying all my life
Like a dancer, the poetic pirouette.
I’ll cut so you can’t stitch me up
Horizontal – like the line I crossed

Were puppets meant to cut their own strings?

These razor-bites are questions
I’ve sewn my shaking lips shut
This is my mustered eloquence
Wet stains on toilet paper

Humankind: A Question, posed out of rhyme

II.

When did the light behind our eyes
Morph, meticulously into black and white?
Our morals like soldiers, lined
Neatly, streets stacked with
-Corpses, like hedgegrows

When did it become polite to look away?
When did warzones come back into fashion?
Diplomacy the excuse you cite, credentials
Who said it was neat to build towers on corpses?
Because those are some shaky foundations

When did happiness become a privilege?
When did constellations become stars?
When did it become all we could do
not to slit our life open – little fish?

A kiss would push your breath back in you
But today it is a crime to love
A sin to steal a kiss
Today who we love is a label.

We are the martyrs
We are the clowns
These are our screams
This is our blood
Can you feel it?
Sticky on your hands.

III.

It was midnight
It was morning
I was mourning

For the children with severed hands
For the lovers with electrodes and shaved heads
For the girls with blood on their thighs
For Jesus, who thought we might learn to love

For the ghosts of Mai Lai
For the starved with numbers on their arms
For the healers burned in fear
For the mothers tied to beds

For the victims of justice
For whiskey’s favourite punching bag
For the people who were owned
For those who fell off the buck
When it stopped here

These cuts are questions
This blood, the reply.

Copyright: Emma Tobin 2014

Cancer Demons

Most days I just get on with life - school lunches and school run in the morning, feed the cats, head to work, plan my evenings, prepare for my radio shows, attend meetings, try and get a walk in, collect the kids, make the dinner, do laundry, supervise homework and all the rest of the day to day chores that mums/parents do.

Most days I am so busy that I don't have time to think about having cancer. I don't have time to be thinking about the what ifs or the possibility that I have a shortened life.

Then there are the days when having cancer is all I can think about. Having cancer is the thing that permeates every waking thought and every deep dream while I am sleeping. But it's not so much the having cancer that bothers me or that keeps me awake - it's the thought of living with dying, the thoughts of having to say goodbye to a world that I really had planned to grown old in.

These thoughts are my cancer demons and most days I manage to keep them at bay but sometimes I let them win. I don't mean to...... there are just days when I am feeling low physically or feeling tired and they get the upper hand.

These cancer demons days are spent on the verge of tears. These are the days when I need extra hugs. These are the days when if anyone is particularly nice to me, I might just cry.........These are the days when I start to visualise the end and what it might be like. These are the days when I try to comprehend how my husband and kids are going to manage without me. These are the days when I wonder have I told them and shown them how much they mean to me. These are the days when I wonder have I given enough and done enough to be remembered by them. These are the days when I wonder should I write to them so as they have a card for each of their forthcoming birthdays (just in case). These are the days when I just want to stop and be and savour smells, sounds and sights all around me.

My cancer demons make me fearful about more pain and suffering. I've been there, done that and have the T-shirt! I have courage and faith but treatments are so harsh and have put me into freezeframe in the past. I am strong, but I am not sure I am strong enough to do it again and again and again.....

My cancer demons make me worry about my faith - I do have faith but I worry sometimes that it won't be strong enough to sustain me ........

I have confidence in the medicine and in the fact that there will one day be a cure for myeloma and all forms of cancer.

On these days when the cancer demons are at large, it can be difficult to visualise a future. I feel smothered by the all consuming need and wish to be around for my kids and husband and for myself. I find myself getting jealous of older people and the years that they have had..........The cancer demons make me feel pressure to do all I want to do and to fit in all the things I have not yet achieved.

The cancer demons make me draw a blank sometimes when I try to look at my future.........

Having cancer is a bitch
Having cancer demons is a total bitch

I have waved the cancer demons away for the moment thanks to feeling stronger today. I hope they will stay away for a while and allow me to get busy living rather than focusing on the fact that I might die sooner than I had planned.

Brenda xxxxxx

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow [Excerpt from Diary of a Stem Cell Harvest and Transplant]

Monday 4 June 2007
It's just three days since they harvested my stem cells and just over two weeks since my first liquid chemo - cyclophosphamide - and my hair is really starting to come out. It's so thin now that I really can't go out without something on my head. I don't mind so much. I am undecided about whether to get a wig or not. A wig is just not me! It's not like I present the news or am on TV elsewhere ... I don't need it for cosmetic purposes. I don't think it will make any difference to the kids - well I hope not.

Emma has a photo of me on her bedside locker. She said she wants to remember me with hair! I suppose it is her way of dealing with it. She has been so good with all that we have had to throw at her.

Cathal still won't let me out of his sight after being without me for two weeks. He keeps saying "you are my Mammy. I'm keeping you home.". That's tough to have to hear. I underestimated how all of this would effect him even though he is only 2 and a half.

I love my kids so much and I have great determination to be around for them as long as I can.

Tuesday 5 June 2007
Everyone went off to school and minders this morning. When I was making my bed I could not believe the amount of hair that was on my pillow. It's surreal. I thought I would cry once this process began but I haven't. That doesn't mean that I won't. It's a real in your face symptom of my illness but it is also a positive sign that my treatment is progressing. Bryan doesn't seem to mind whether or not I get a wig. I am lucky that he loves me just the way I am - and just the way I am at any particular time.

I remain undecided about the wig:

"To wig or not to wig
that is the question"

I got out of bed this morning
my hair decided to stay
as I pulled on my top and trousers
it spread itself out in the sun
It was strange leaving the room without it
We're usually inseparable! 

 [apparently I wrote this 'poem' in my journal]

Wednesday 6 June 2007
I was coming to terms nicely with having less and less hair. Then I swear a girl with hir the length and thickness mine used to be was standing outside the house talking to a neighbour. Just at the moment it hit me hard that it's going, going and almost gone. I miss the weight of my hair, the feeling of it as it dries off after I wash it. I miss the smell of the shampoo in my freshly washed hair as it billows around me. I do miss it.

Cathal came over to me this evening and handed me two large clumps of hair, told me to put them on my head and said 'there you go now' before walking away.

Thursday 7 June 2007

Today was a hospital day. Dropped the kids to school and minder and got to Tallaght Hospital early. My line and stitches are really itchy. They cleaned the line (this is the central line in my chest that they used for the stem cell harvest and will use again for the transplant). They removed the stitches too and the relief was wonderful. I have been dying to give them a good old scratch but I somehow resisted.

Blood results were good and they say that I am looking well.
I needed a wrist Xray to use as a marker !!!!!

My hair is still coming out in clumps and I am wearing one of those horrible bandanas that I bought from the wig woman when she came to see me. They have phoned me again asking if I want a wig but I have no answer for them as I am still undecided.

I am getting very close to just cutting what's left of my hair off. I have three comb overs and it's just not a good look!

Friday 8 June 2007
My hair is a disaster. I put my hand to the back of my head today to sort out a tangle and it felt like the whole back of my head came away. It didn't! It was just a huge clump of hair - one of the comb overs! I had a shower and more of my hair came away. I decided it was time. I went into the downstairs bathroom where there is a small mirror and no window. I cut off the comb overs and the last few bits of long hair. Then I used Bryan's head shaver and did a complete once over on my head with my eyes closed. I just couldn't look! Then for good measure I got the dyson hoover and gave my head a once over to get rid of all the last bits. Bet that's not on the instructions and uses for a Dyson!

After it was done I was too scared to look in the mirror. I put my glasses back on and looked up and it was shocking. I almost did myself a neck injury trying to look all the way round to the back. I am an egg head, a baldie.

I left the bathroom after what felt like ages. I was even afraid to let the cats see me in case I scared them. They didn't move a whisker. I walked around the house for a while - BALD. It felt strangely liberating to be free of the clumps and the comb overs.

Not sure how the gang will react but I will cross that bridge later.

[This is transcribed from my diary as I wrote it in June 2007 when I was dealing with all the fall out from being diagnosed with Myeloma - a cancer of the plasma cells of the bone marrow. I have not edited this or changed anything.]

 A few year's after my treatment I was inspired to write a short story based on my hair loss experience called 'Well if Sinead O'Connor can live with it'. You can hear me read the story on my Audioboo account at the link below:

https://audioboo.fm/boos/369931-well-if-sinead-o-connor-can-live-with-it-by-brenda-drum

PS My hair grew back really quickly and is as long and thick as it ever was!

Excerpt from Diary of a Stem Cell Harvest - No Editing, No Filter!

This time seven year's ago I was in the middle of a two-week process of harvesting my own stem cells. I was reminded of this yesterday at a talk I was giving on Lough Derg about living with cancer.

I thought I would share two actual diary entries that I wrote as I was going through the stem cell harvest process on 23 and 24 May 2007. This is exactly as I wrote them in my journal - no editing and no filter:

Wednesday 23 May 2007 DAY 3

1.30am, the early hours of this morning the awful nausea turned into actual vomiting - gut wrenching vomiting. I was attached to the IV fluids so by the time I realised what was happening I only had time to unplug it and make it to the sink in the room and not the bathroom. Eugh
It brought back memories of the awfulness of the sickness I had last December. I was dripping with sweat and my new surgically inserted line started to ooze - so painful. What a horrible feeling.
I did manage to get back to sleep but I had a lot of pain and was generally very miserable.
When I saw the doc early this morning he said he would write me up for some strong anti-sickness meds. Liz came down and she was unhappy that I was allowed to be so sick so she got onto it too.
I threw up again at 3pm - really bad, really painful - it was my own fault. I should not have drank a can of LILT - but I was so raw and thirsty.
I decided to walk down to the shop and was asked by one of the nurses to get a paper for the man in the room across from me - JOB done, after a tentative walk......
I had a visit from a medical student who had to assess me. He asked me at the end if I was a doctor or worked in medicine - Ha ha! Doctor's coat anyone?
PS Cyclizine drug is my new best friend - no more sickness today.

Thursday 24 May 2007 DAY 4

EVERYBODY HURTS SOMETIMES
NEW SERIES OF GREY'S ANATOMY TONIGHT  (for some reason I have that written on the top of the page - no idea why)

I woke up with this morning with a great sense of relief. I slept well apart from couple of trips in the night - false alarms. I wasn't sick so the new anti sickness drug is working. Cyclizine is working - what a relief. I have to remember to get scripted for this in advance of the next set of chemo. NOTE TO SELF WRITTEN

I had jelly and ice cream for lunch. I couldn't eat anything else. I did the scene from Jurassic Park with the jelly shuddering and shivering on the spoon in the girl's hand. Screen test anyone?

The nurses and doctors are lovely. They are so caring especially when they see how miserable you are. They just can't do enough for me. I have nothing but respect and admiration for them.

Saw Dr Enright - she is happy with me and my response.

Emma came up (that's my daughter who was 9 at the time) and I know she misses me. She is full of questions about my line in my chest and the meds I am on and constant fluids. She is such a gorgeous girl. Bryan said I appear to me much better, more relaxed about my time in hospital this time round. I guess I am more relaxed as I had notice that I was going to be admitted and had read up on all that was going to happen so I was able to plan.

Friday 25 May 2007 DAY 5
ELECTION

Another good night last night. I think I was up twice for two more false sickness alarms. Very vivid dreams. Bryan was telling me that Cathal has learned how to climb up and into his cot so I guess that now means he can climb out too! Oh O!

I am in good form today. I asked the doctors about getting out for day release and he has to check with the consultant. I doubt she will say yes. I am still on the anti sickness drugs and am scared what will happen if I come off them. I am now on the other injections into my stomach for helping to mobilise my stem cells.

My Mum told me that Emma sat Cathal down and was explaining to him that I now have a line sticking out of my chest and telling him he can't touch it and needs to be careful and gentle. He said I will be careful and I won't pull it. I am aching to see him.

I had a great chat with Emma tonight. She is just adorable and I hope that I am and can always be the mother she deserves.

I am so excited - just found out I am allowed out for a few hours tomorrow.

Cathal phoned with the help of Bryan at about 9.30 tonight and said: "Where are you Mammy? I miss you." I thought my heart would break. Then he said "Love you Mammy".

Are there any nicer words to hear from your child?

Signing off for the night.

Ends

I kept a journal faithfully during my year of sickness and I am hoping to publish it soon as a book called LIFE FINDS A WAY.

Follow me on Twitter @BrendaDrumm

Being a Teenager

This is a guest post by my 17 year old daughter Emma 

"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."

– J.D Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

When I stepped over the precipice of innocence into adolescence, into the supposedly terrific and terrifying teenage years, during which (if one believes ‘Little MissSunshine’) I was to acquire all the suffering that would shape whoever I turned out to be, I had certain preconceptions that have proven mostly, wildly inaccurate.

Firstly, I believed that I would become cool. If anything, I have become less cool, enmeshed in the claws of Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek and Doctor Who. Secondly, I believed that I would become corrosive and irrational. Instead, I maintain fluid diplomatic relations with my family. Thirdly, I believed that by the end of it I would know precisely who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. Of all my widely inaccurate expectations, that was pretty high on the delusional scale.

At some point in the past two years, I reached the terrifying conclusion that I have one life; one chance to do everything right, and it was absolutely terrifying. My teenage years haven’t given me one iota of wisdom about myself. I could tell you about the Cold War and The Beats Generation of artists and writers in New York City, but when I’m asked to say two things about myself I am rendered uncharacteristically speechless. I think that most people my age feel more or less the same way, and while it’s comforting not to be utterly alone, it doesn’t exactly help.

I believe that there’s a myth about adolescence as being uncoordinated and illiterate when it is anything but that. It’s during these years that we must make the choices that determine the rest of our lives, and that’s a lot of pressure to put on sixteen-year old shoulders. It’s a swirly whirly vortex of different ideas. We struggle with religion, with consensus, with sexuality, with the very foundations of our moral system, and yet at the same time we’re expected to learn things about maths and geography.

I’ve catapulted between cynicism and idealism and then challenged the basis of these categorisations; I’ve changed my mind about what I believe in dozens of times. I’ve wondered about God and been more than a little horrified by the crimesof those who came before me. I’ve read a thousand books; I’ve thought a thousand different and contradictory things. Honestly, I feel like an old woman already.

I’ve also memorised Pythagoras’s Theorem, learned how to motivate imaginary employees, and sat bewildered by the difference between diverging and converging plate boundaries. I am a person constantly in flux, but while I’m at it why shouldn’t I decide what to do with the rest of my one single precious life?

Being a teenager is hard. It’s one of the most difficult thingyou’ll ever go through. It’s so hard that some people don’t make it to the other side. All the same, it’s a brilliant time. It’s like when you’re on a rollercoaster and you’re slowly edging up to this massive height and your stomach is sick, you feel like you’re going to fall out and smash into a million pieces as people look on while eating peanuts and candyfloss. But, once you get to the top there’s a relieved, exhilarated sort of excitement slamming your heart against your chest. In the end, the triumph of reaching that giddy height is worth the slow and painful ascent.

I suppose that being young is simultaneously the worst and best fate imaginable. You’ll look back with nostalgia to your legging-wearing, Adidas-sporting days, but there isn’t enough money in the Western economy to persuade you to do it over. You’ll be terrified that, no matter how badly you did it the first time around, you might mess everything up even more spectacularly if given a second chance.

Even if I don’t reckon I’ll ever settle definitively on the one thing I want to spend my life doing, by the end of my teenage years I think I’ll have an idea, a murky inkling I can somehow grope my way to. It isn’t anything as concrete as a career name, but a dim sense of something indescribable. I think that one day I’ll take a blind step down the road of my life and it’ll feel like I’m finally headed in the right direction. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.

 

Copyright:  Emma Tobin 

April 2014 

Please Choose Life

I am a big fan of the radio and it's always on in the car tuned to local, regional or national stations. The choice of show depends on who is in the car with me, my mood and whether or not there is a breaking news story that I need to follow for my work as a Communications Officer.

This morning I was in the car by myself travelling to work in Maynooth so I happened to switch channel at 9am to see who was on and who is away on holidays - it can be hard to keep up, especially on the National stations.

I heard Miriam on the John Murray Show and heard her mention Donal Walsh so I stayed tuned in. I had just pulled into the car park in work when her interview with Donal Walsh's parents began.

Now if you don't know who Donal Walsh is, then you missed an opportunity to listen to and to learn from an amazing young man who sadly passed away recently. Donal Walsh, while living with terminal cancer, went on National TV to talk about his desire to simply live and to plead with young people who so often and so readily choose suicide - to STOP and to choose to live instead of choosing to die.

You would have wanted to have a heart of stone to be unmoved by this young man and his parents who so clearly loved the very ground he walked on.

Anyway back to Miriam this morning and her interview with Donal's parents. Miriam took them back through DOnal's life and what he was like as a baby and then up to the point where he was diagnosed with a tumour in his knee when he was just entering his teenage years and when all he wanted to do was to play sport.

The interview was sensitive and you got a real sense again of the boy who had just made the transition from boyhood to being a man. I felt at times like I was sitting at their kitchen table as they got bad news, followed by good news and then more bad news. I was almost there with them the day they got the awful news that there were no more treatment options for Donal.

I cried as I listened to a father who back then was trying to be strong and for whom it still took every ounce of his strength not to cry today on national radio. I found it particularly hard to listen to Elma, Donal's mother as she spoke of her son. I know what sons are to their mothers, especially Irish sons as I am Mum to a little boy of 8.

The last think Donal's mother said today as Miriam signed off the interview was that Donal will be waiting for her ....... Those words will stay with me forever.

Her faith is so strong. Her joy in the short life of her son was palpable today.

Donal's parents said that he has left them with a lot of work to do - he started something while he was in his final few months on earth that I hope will in some way help and encourage young people to choose life. In fact I hope it will encourage people of all ages to always choose life.

I am living with an incurable form of bone marrow cancer and I know it is hard for those who love me. As I listened to Donal's parents today I thought about how I am on the other side of where they are - they are parents mourning their son. I am scared every day that I will be the parent of children who are mourning me.

It's very hard - impossibly hard and overwhelming at times.  I get angry when I hear of another person who has died by suicide. I can't help it and you will have to forgive my anger at people who I know are sick and suffering too - people who are in despair and who can't see a way out. I do my best to understand and I know that there is a black hole and people often can't help but fall into it but I have fought every day since my diagnosis on 10 January 2007 to live, to survive and to squeeze every last drop I can from this life. It's hard for me to understand a senseless loss of someone by suicide.

I hope that Donal's life and the witness he gave in the short time he had on earth can make people sit up and actively choose life especially in a world which so often seems to be weighed on the side of the culture of death.

I hope that I can grow old surrounded by the people who love me and whom I love.

For Donal, for me, for all those fighting cancer and other life-threatening illnesses - please choose life! It's always worth it.

 Ends

PS Never underestimate the power of radio!

Happy Stem Cells Birthday to Me

This day six year's ago I was spending the first of two days in Saint James's Hospital in Dublin having my stem cells harvested as part of my treatment for Multiple Myeloma - a cancer of the blood/bone marrow. 

It was cutting edge to watch all the machines and the stem cells literally being sucked out of my blood as it was taken out and put back into my body through my central line. The care I received was fantastic and we had great fun despite me being sick with nerves and still a little sick from the chemo I had received the previous week. 

I was one of the lucky ones whose stem cells mobilised and were harvested. After two days on the machine they had harvested enough for not just one, but two stem cell transplants. 

The first of the stem cells in their little bag of life 

It was an extraordinary challenging and yet miraculous time for me and for my family. Each part of the treatment had its own side effects and problems but it was all well and truly worth it. 

I spend two weeks in hospital for the process of harvesting my stem cells and the second day of harvesting was on the Friday of the June bank holiday weekend. Even though I had been on the machines and had a very intensive day I persuaded them to send me home on the Friday evening - day two of the harvest - so as I could be around family for the long weekend.

On the trip from Saint James's Hospital back to Tallaght I was very woozy from the drugs and the effects of having my blood taken out and put back in so I said to the ambulance driver 'I would be a cheap date tonight - one drink and I would be singing' and he very quickly retorted 'what time will I pick you up at?'. It's funny what you remember from a day like that. 

Me and My Collected Stem Cells May 2007 

Here's to my wonderful stem cells which worked and which kicked cancer in the butt and here's to my stem cells waiting patiently for me in Saint James's should I need another transplant.

Onwards and upwards [well once I have today's hospital visit over]. LOL

Happy Bank Holiday Weekend and here's to health, the only wealth you ever need. 

Being Young

Guest post by Emma Tobin

Being young today isn’t easy, because it means being massively stereotyped, it means being prejudiced against. We’re viewed with scorn because of what we do, because we spend time on Facebook and Twitter and because we don’t give our elders respect they haven’t earned. We’re seen as a bunch of atheists who live in a world where evil is glorified, where violence reigns supreme. We can’t shop in large groups, because we’re seen as a threat.

That’s the brush we’re tarred with, and that’s what’s expected of us. We have opinions, we’re smarter than people give us credit for, yet still it’s presumed that we are slaves to fashion and the constant victims of peer pressure. We’re viewed as invertebrates - bowing under social pressure, unable to stand on our own two feet, more likely than not to drink and take drugs.

That’s not who we are. We are the people who will have to search for peace, because we know that war is no longer the answer to every little problem, we know that bombing each other is not the only way to settle an argument. We’ve grown up in a world plagued with nuclear threat on all sides. Everyone is packing now, because for a long time that’s been the only way to be safe; the promise of mutual annihilation. We’re the people who will have to find a cure for cancer, who will continue to save and preserve human life.

We are not the people who will waste away in virtual worlds; we are the people who will take virtual reality further than anyone has gone before. We will make the future masterpieces in film, we will write the classics of the future; we will be the pop stars, the rock stars, the singer/songwriters of the future. We are not the dirt under your shoe, we are the ground that will hold you up when you grow old, we are the people who will actually give you your pensions. We will be the honest bankers; we will speak the words that will change the world.
We are the young, and the stupid, but we are not delinquents, and we do not deserve your condescension, your mistrust. We will learn from your mistakes and build a better world for ourselves. Right now, we’re the people you think you can look down on, but in a few years we’ll be you, and you have a choice to teach us to appreciate the young people who will take our place, or to be just like you. You are the people with the choice to make. You have the power to empower us, and to empower future generations.

Being young has never been easy, but it doesn’t have to be impossible and it doesn’t have to be so hard that we do everything in our power to escape it. You can give us the power to be noticed, to be heard, make us responsible people who don’t need to turn to alcohol to feel grown-up, who don’t need to turn to drugs to escape the world you’ve made for us. You were young once. I mean, you’re the people that The Breakfast Club is based on, so you know how we feel. We’re not criminals, we’re the start of a new age, and you have to accept that even though we seem alien, we’re going through the same things that you did.

We strike out against the world because it seems to close in on us, drowning us in rules and quashing our every attempt to express who we are, who we’re turning into. We don’t walk around shops wondering what to steal; we wonder what will look good on us. We don’t look at you and see victims; we look at you and see people who were just like us once, just as scared and confused, turning to music to make us feel alive because we don’t quite know how to live yet.

We’ve had it proven to us one hundred times over that children can’t rule the world, and we’re not asking you to hand over the reins to us. We just want the right to grow up in a world that appreciates us, that really listens to us and that isn’t so afraid of us that we have to be ruled with an iron fist. This is your world right now, but one day it will be ours, and you need to consider just what you want the future rulers of the world to be like.

Do you want them to be criminals, or do you want them to be smart, confident people who aren’t afraid of becoming like you?

Ends

May 2013

Emma Tobin is my daughter and she is 16.

A guest post by Emma Tobin

This is a poem written by my daughter Emma. Emma is 15 and she is the most talented writer, as yet undiscovered but something tells me that 2013 is her year. This is a poem she wrote following our failed attempts at sending Chinese lanterns skywards on New Year's Eve 2012: