The Kaleidoscopic Moment of Arriving “Home”

There's an anticipation to being "home" again, that bubbles from seeing a parent for the first time in a while. I’ll get this medley of memories kaleidoscoping around in my head in an instant. Thinking back to teenage days….walking in the front door at Polesden View in Bookham, Surrey (where we mostly grew up) after a term at Edinburgh University or Mum or Dad meeting me at a train station arriving home for an overnight stay from days working in London - with the gentle scents of Surrey in the air. Being reunited at LHR after 18 months in Australia in 2002-3. In the last decade, the sliding doors at Dublin airport opening face-on to a crowd of people (and…

Mum, Where Are You Now?

A poem flowed out of me in ten minutes on the morning of Mother’s Day 2020, first published on Instagram on 5 May 2020. — Mum, where are you now? So often, I’ll feel your essence In some little way. And wonder. When I’m handwriting. Or, see your letters poking out on the mantelpiece. Or, when I turn the pot

On Learning of Mum Having Cancer

For thirty two days now, I have been waking up with one vision in my head. One word. “Mum”. A dawn dawning that life is starkly altered, everything is different. And then I’ll forget, flowing into the chores of the day. And then I’ll remember. And it starts all over again. “Is this really true…?” On Tuesday 11th

Reflection on Family Time in an Art Gallery

Art. And a family. An excursion in my city. Just one of us missing, on a last day of traveling and celebrating together. “Geograph-ied” apart and last hours together. As rich as first hours, but with a different weight in the air. Enough time but never enough, in a tapestry of feelings and inspiration and

I Love My Sister Keara. And Here She is Turning Around Canada’s Olympic Games…

First posted on Facebook. Had to tap this out, to explain Pete’s share…such a great moment!! I landed in Vancouver early March 2010 to ski with Pete Brennan and Keara Brennan and enjoy being at the 2010 Vancouver winter games. We drove up to Whistler the next day, saw some cross-country skiing, and

On Our Family, and Roaming.

5 August 2016 It was not an easy week, early August 2016, for tight-knit famille Brennan. I say tight-knit, though it might not so seem. Us being of four countries and three continents. We were gathered this time for the wedding of my sister Keara to a fine Englishman, Tom. And that meant a fine one hell of a