Browsing Tag

Irish

Binders, Gender & Sexuality, Guest Posts, Holidays

Valentine’s Day: My Preachable, Teachable Holiday.

February 14, 2015

beauty-hunting-jen-logo-black1-300x88By Aine Greaney.

Valentine’s is that holiday I always forget. Then, on an after-work power shop at the drugstore, foraging for emery boards or Pond’s cream, that rack of greeting cards reminds me. Oh! right. Valentine’s Day. Again.

I want to snarl at all that pink and puce, while my inner adult tells me to get over it, that there’s no need for the V-Day attitude

And there isn’t. I’m married to a man, who, for the past 27 V-Days, has propped a card against my morning coffee mug.

So grow the heck up. 

Mind you, I’m not a total Valentine’s Grinch. Here in America, I love how it’s a sort of all-age, intergenerational love fest.  I love how Hallmark retails cards for Mums, Dads, grandparents, children and grandchildren.  Young parents tell me that, from Kindergarten to fifth grade, their kids craft or buy a card for each little boy or girl in the classroom. If I searched long enough through that drugstore display rack, would I find a non-romantic love note for the family pet or the cable-installation girl?

The psychologists would tell me that this isn’t about forgetting, but remembering. Or it’s about memory triggers—those sights, smells, anniversaries or holidays that make us re-feel a past loss or hurt.

Jen Pastiloff is the founder of The Manifest-Station. Join her in Tuscany for her annual Manifestation Retreat. Click the Tuscan hills above. No yoga experience required. Only requirement: Just be a human being. Yoga + Writing + Connection. We go deep. Bring an open heart and a sense of humor- that's it! Summer or Fall 2015.

Jen Pastiloff is the founder of The Manifest-Station. Join her in Tuscany for her annual Manifestation Retreat. Click the Tuscan hills above. No yoga experience required. Only requirement: Just be a human being. Yoga + Writing + Connection. We go deep. Bring an open heart and a sense of humor- that’s it! Summer or Fall 2015.

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Christmas, Guest Posts

Our Christmas Fixer.

December 24, 2014

beauty-hunting-jen-logo-black1-300x88

By Aine Greaney.

My father never told us that he loved us. Instead, Dad fixed the things that we loved. Decapitated dolls.  Wobbly kitchen chairs. Pinching shoes. Give my Dad one hour in his backyard shed, a few whirrs and clanks from his messy toolbox, and … Presto!  Whatever had been fractured was (almost) good as new again.

Dad worked 60-plus hours per week as a lorry driver for Ireland’s state-run freight company. In the busy season, the Guinness Brewery sub-contracted with his company to make extra beer deliveries. In Ireland, believe me when I tell you that there is no busier Guinness season than December and New Year’s.

So by Christmas Eve afternoon, Dad was still working, and our tree always stood, trimmed but unlit, in the window of our front parlor.  It never occurred to my mother or any of us five kids that anyone but Dad should or could engage in the Grand Light Showdown. Only Dad could get those miniature lights working and strung.

Our house sat directly across the street from the village church, so we were under deadline and surveillance. In country villages like ours, tongues really wagged—especially during sold-out Yuletide ceremonies. So before our fellow parishioners arrived for midnight service, whatever it took, he had to get that tree lit.

Now, over four decades later, I can still see him standing there in his lorry-driver’s uniform, testing, twiddling, and then, when he found that one, recalcitrant bulb, he would dead-head and fix it until … We had lights.

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