"Absolute attention is prayer." Simone Weil

"If one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree...something of a revelation takes place. Something is 'given'..." May Sarton

The excerpts and illustrations for this web page first appeared in the essay, "Something Given: A Child's Sense of Ireland," Ireland of the Welcomes magazine. Expressed or drawn by my children and nieces while visiting their maternal ancestors' homelands, this family history in pictures captured "an essence" of Ireland that we, the adults, often overlooked: "foxglove flowers that sweet," "spongy bogs," and "the skinny worms that wiggled between my fingers when I helped Mr. Maxwell plant the roses."

On this trip my children experienced something more tangible of their ancestral grandmothers than a black and white photograph. They crawled among the stone ruins of Marcella Dillon's home and sat in the classrooms where she had attended school a century ago. They even examined the old roll books--heavy, over-sized and leather bound--which told them how many days their great, great grandmother had skipped school!

The children learned from their grandfather ways to find keys that might unlock their family history, and how a coincidence or a letter from a stranger can open a door to one's past.

The children awoke my sense of wonder and delight in that which is hidden in the simplest of things--the things easily forgotten in the rush of a holiday itinerary. The children's journal art, "The rays of sun on top of Queen Maeve's Cairn--dark, yellow and foggy with green mountains through them," is a metaphor of absolute attention, of their own childlike wisdom. "Everyone is nice in Ireland and so are the dogs. They all smile like the postman in Streamstown."

My children and nieces at Willie and Mary Maxwell's Bed and Breakfast in Streamstown, County Westmeath.

To order this issue of Ireland of the Welcomes please click on this link to their website. Ask for Vol.47, No.4 /July-August, 1998.