Celebrating the enduring bond between mothers and daughters
Decades ago, a wise Irish cousin summed up motherhood with an adage: “Enjoy them, they’re only on loan to you.” I have come to see the wisdom and the universality of that.
My younger daughter, Megan, recently sent me a text which said “thanks for being my Mom.” I quickly and instinctively texted back, “It’s the greatest privilege of my life.”
A privilege, but not an easy one. Being a mother is the hardest thing I’ve ever done; there’s a lifetime constancy required of it that I never understood — not, that is until it was staring me down. It sounds trite but there really is no script, no roadmap.
For me, learning to be a mother was more akin to crawling around in the dark looking for something… than what I had been led to expect from the reassuring words in the parenting books.
It’s as a mother that I have been challenged the most; challenged to learn, to stretch, to grow, to forgive, to be patient.
And perhaps the most difficult part: to accept, accept that I no longer have control, that my children have to make their own decisions — and their own mistakes, as obvious as they may appear to me. (If I am honest with myself, my own mistakes haven’t always been obvious to me, either.)
As I responded to Megan, my thoughts turned to my own mother, Mary Raftery, an Irish immigrant, who passed away several years ago. While our lives were profoundly different — as different as my daughters’ are from mine — I was struck by how similar were the tugs and pulls, the inherited life lessons, across three generations of women.
In 1947, my mother boarded a plane at Shannon, at the time an airstrip nestled in hayfields, to fly to New York City, where, as so many Irish girls had done before and since, she became a nanny. While it may seem simple today, even a cliché, hers was an act of tremendous courage.
Despite a few years working in England, my mother was a simple farm girl, with at best an eighth-grade education, and only distant cousins in NYC to welcome her. (She would not go home again for 25 years — by which time her father had died, her siblings were adults, and much of the Ireland she’d known had changed beyond recognition.)
My mother’s life was defined not by warmth or nostalgia, but rather by grit, raw intellect, and her own brand of determination. Her philosophy was simple: if you had enough to eat, a warm bed, and clothes to wear — some of which she’d lacked in her early life — you had it made. Her motto was simple: “No one died, how bad could it be? Keep going.”
There was little tolerance for complaining. One of her more memorable lines erupted while admonishing the publicist for Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes — “What was he complaining about, he had shoes!”
It’s fair to say that my mother’s unsentimental, instinctive nature profoundly influenced my ambitions, career, and life choices. Now I see how they have in turn shaped my millennial children’s lives, ambitions, and decisions — filtered by my own reactions, and amplified by my own actions — in that eternal generational play of mothers and daughters.
Looking back now, my memories of motherhood are many and mixed. There are the very sweet memories that I cherish: falling head over heels in love with each of them for the first time, taking them to Paris, Sunday-evening picnics in front of the TV, and so many others.
But I was often exhausted, confused, anxious as well as disorganized, with the ever-present feeling of flying by the seat of my pants. Being a mostly single mother, with complete financial responsibility, did not make it any easier.
My mother was present in their lives, holidays, school events, birthdays, and occasional babysitting. Age mellowed her somewhat, and she enjoyed being a grandmother. But what shaped her was never far, and there was little tolerance for any sense of entitlement.
My girls give me much to be proud of and grateful for: they are healthy, with good careers and great relationships. They have life-long friendships (something which speaks volumes) and are passionate about their work and families. They are busy building their lives.
Perhaps best of all, I am a newly minted grandmother. And I want to see and know my granddaughter. I want her to know me, in the way that my girls knew my mother — and beyond. Despite the 3,000 miles that separate us physically, I am determined to be a constant presence in her (and in her future siblings’) life.
Decades ago, a wise Irish cousin summed up motherhood with an adage: “Enjoy them — they’re only on loan to you”! I have come to see the wisdom and the universality of that. Life is fleeting, we are all only on loan to one another.
This is a lesson that I am sure my daughters, and their own present and future sons and daughters, will come to learn — more easily, hopefully, than it was for a simple Irish farm girl who arrived on these shores so long ago.
The First Minister has defended her decision to attend the unveiling of a statue that marked the 44th anniversary of the death of IRA hunger striker and MP Bobby Sands.
Michelle O’Neill and other Sinn Féin members were among those who visited the memorial garden in west Belfast over the weekend, a move that has been criticised by the DUP.
In response, Ms O’Neill has said that the matter is an issue for those who erected the statue.
She said: “Firstly, I was very content and very happy actually to attend the unveiling and to be there and to see the statue.
“Bobby Sands is a huge figure, a huge iconic figure in terms of republicans here in Ireland, but also in terms of the whole historical political journey that we have been on.
“The hunger strikes marked a pivotal time in our history, so I was very honored to be there and to be part of the ceremony on Sunday.
“A First Minister for all looks like exactly what Sunday looked like for me.
“I attended the Bobby Sands unveiling. And then I went on to attend the service at Saint Anne’s Cathedral to mark the end of WW2.
“That’s a First Minister for all and actually demonstrating in actions that I would fulfill that promise.”
Sands died on May 5 during the 1981 hunger strike, aged 27.
The father-of-one had been elected an MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone less than a month before his death.
“There was suspicion among some of the volunteers I spoke to,” Jonathan Trigg said
Martin McGuinness
Today at 07:40
Martin McGuinness never worked as an agent for the British state – that’s the view of a former British soldier who has written a book on the Sinn Féin chief.
In his latest book Death In Derry, author and historian Jonathan Trigg said there is “not a shred of evidence” that the former Deputy First Minister was a state agent.
Rumour and suspicion have swirled round McGuinness for decades amid speculation that the British had a “superspy’’ at the top of the republican movement.
Martin McGuinness takes aim – he was the driving force behind the IRA campaign in Derry
For Trigg, McGuinness was the ultimate urban guerilla commander, utterly dedicated to the cause, a diehard member of the IRA who eventually recognised that armed insurrection would not achieve their goals.
Trigg interviewed former IRA members and members of the security forces who fought in the streets of Derry – a campaign where McGuinness was in complete control.
Old rivals McGuinness and Ian Paisley struck up a real friendship and were christened the Chuckle Brothers
“There was suspicion among some of the volunteers I spoke to,” he said last week. “Why was his house not being searched like mine, where are all the Libyan weapons we’ve been promised and so on, but in all my research I did not discover a single shred of evidence that would suggest he was anything other than a dedicated republican.
“I would describe him as flinty, tough, a hard man, ruthless even, together with (Gerry) Adams he was a formidable driving force in republicanism – one the politician, the other the army man.”
McGuiness and Gerry Adams were always aligned on strategy
The book traces Derry IRA’s war against the British through the experiences of McGuinness who became head of the Provisional’s Northern Command.
From a teenage assistant working in Doherty’s Butchers and throwing stones at the army, he rose to the top of the terror organisation and ultimately to the corridors of power at Stormont.
As OC of the IRA’s Derry Brigade he was one of the key figures in the conflict. Front and centre, he never shied away from the spotlight, proudly declaring his membership of the organisation in an Irish court when others were strenuously denying their own involvement.
His domination of the Derry Brigade was unique, with every other IRA unit of any significance led by men who came and went as death, prison or retirement took them off the stage. But not so in Derry.
Martin McGuinness passing the SF baton to Michelle O’Neill
Trigg believes suspicion that he was an agent lay in the channels of communication between the IRA and the British which stretch back to the early seventies.
“1972 was a key year, we had Bloody Sunday and it was the worst year in terms of loss of life during the Troubles, back then the IRA called it the Year of Victory.
The famous handshake with Queen Elizabeth
“They thought they would drive the British into the sea, but when it didn’t happen and it was clear the British weren’t going to leave, McGuinness and others, notably Adams, realised there had to be a plan B. It was the start of what we would know as the peace process.
“Sadly it was to take decades. When you’re fighting an insurgency such as the British did with the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya and the US in Vietnam, it takes a very long time. The British came here thinking they could quell everything quickly.”
Jonathan Trigg
Bloody Sunday, when British paratroopers murdered 14 unarmed civilians, was to prove the watershed moment.
“It changed everything – up to then the situation was relatively contained. The battalion I served with had been the resident battalion in Derry. I only discovered this recently because no one talks about it.
“The soldiers had been there for some time, they knew the city and they knew the players. There was a lot of what they called ‘friendly rioting’ – throwing stones and bottles – but after coming off duty, the boys would go for a pint in the Bogside Inn!”
McGuinness at an IRA press conference in 1972
He said it all changed when his old battalion were ordered out of the city and the Paras were brought in.
“The command thought they were being too soft on the locals and sent in the Paras,” Trigg said.
Had the original unit been allowed to remain, he believes Bloody Sunday would not have happened.
“It rejuvenated the IRA campaign and McGuinness was in the thick of it.”
McGuinness’ strategy included a bombing campaign against commercial targets that reduced the city centre to rubble.
The aftermath of the car bombing in Claudy
McGuinness tried to avoid casualties – it didn’t always go to plan. In July 1972 nine people were killed when two IRA car bombs exploded in the south Derry village of Claudy. No organisation claimed responsibility but it was widely accepted to have been the work of the IRA.
Trigg says South Derry IRA had been instructed by McGuinness to mount an operation that would “take the heat off’’ the Derry Brigade.
He said even as McGuinness realised armed struggle would not win the day they had to keep the campaign going as it was the IRA’s best “bargaining chip”.
Having published a book on the IRA’s notorious East Tyrone Brigade, he said former IRA members agreed to speak to him. Some are still living with what they went through and what they did.
Jonathan Trigg today
“They had a relevance when the war was on, all of a sudden it stopped, they live in communities that don’t have a clue what they did or went through. In many ways I have sympathy for them,” Trigg said.
He admitted his view of the man he was writing about changed throughout the process of the book.
“Here was someone who personified everything about the IRA campaign – hard, dedicated, yet went on to compromise so many things such as dropping abstentionism which was so important to republicans.
“I think he and Adams deserve a huge amount of respect and credit, their longevity to see out an armed conflict and politics is just phenomenal.”
Jonathan Trigg’s book about Martin McGuinness and Derry IRA’s war against the British
Death In Derry: Martin McGuinness And The Derry IRA’s War Against The British is published by Merrion Press priced £17.99/€18.99.
Gerry Adams back in court as BBC libel case continues
Shane Phelan
Today at 09:38
Former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has denied under oath that he was the senior officer of the Provisional IRA released from internment as a precondition for talks with British officials about a ceasefire in the 1970s.
Mr Adams also told the High Court he had “no wish to speculate about who was or who wasn’t in charge of the IRA at any time”.
He made the comments during at times testy exchanges between him and former attorney general Paul Gallagher SC, who is representing the BBC.
Much of the questioning centred around Mr Adams’ alleged involvement in the IRA, something he has always denied.
Mr Adams accused Mr Gallagher of asking him to go on a fishing expedition as he was being cross examined on the fifth day of his defamation action against the BBC over a 2016 Spotlight programme.
The former Sinn Féin president claims he was defamed by the programme and a follow-up article on the BBC’s website.
Gerry Adams was continuing to give evidence in his defamation case against the BBC on Tuesday (Liam McBurney/PA)
Both contained claims by a man purported to have been former British spy within Sinn Féin and the IRA that Mr Adams sanctioned the murder of former party official Denis Donaldson.
Mr Donaldson, a former IRA man who went on to work as a Sinn Féin administrator in Stormont, was shot dead at a remote cottage in Glenties, Co Donegal in April 2006, four months after it was revealed he had been spying for police and MI5 since the 1980s.
Mr Adams has denied any knowledge or role in the killing.
The BBC denies defaming him and says the programme was put out in good faith and during the course of discussion on a subject of public and vital interest. It argues the broadcast and the subsequent online article were fair, reasonable and in the public interest.
During the second day of his cross-examination, Mr Adams was asked about talks with British officials in 1972, attended by him and senior IRA figure Daithí Ó Conaill.
Mr Gallagher put it to him that Philip Woodfield, the deputy under-secretary at the Northern Ireland Office, had believed he was dealing with representatives of the IRA at the meeting.
“That is a matter for him. I have made my position clear,” said Mr Adams.
“He was told myself and Daithí Ó Conaill were there in our capacity as Sinn Féin personnel.”
Mr Gallagher referred to a book, The Freedom Struggle, published by the IRA in the 1970s.
The book said that among the IRA’s preconditions for the 1972 meeting taking place was the immediate release of a senior officer of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade from internment.
“I suggest to you Mr Adams that is a reference to your release from internment for the purposes of the talks,” Mr Gallagher said.
Mr Adams replied: “Well it doesn’t say that. There may well have been a senior officer of the Belfast Brigade released at that time. It wasn’t me.”
Asked by Mr Gallagher who else the book might have been referring to if it wasn’t him, Mr Adams said: “I am not prepared to speculate about the status of IRA volunteers, senior or otherwise, released or otherwise.”
Mr Gallagher asked the question again.
“I am not asking you to speculate. I will ask you one final time. Do you know of any senior officer released from internment at that time for the purposes of those talks?” the barrister said.
“I have given you my answer,” Mr Adams responded.
“And is the answer ‘no’?” asked Mr Gallagher.
“Take me at my word. I am not prepared to speculate about membership of the IRA.”
