Mother of Nations
This story came to me on Mother’s Day from the mouth of a daughter of a daughter of a daughter.
The building Sarah’s grandmother and namesake was born, lived, left, had never spoken of, in grief, and had never returned.
This story came to me on Mother’s Day from the mouth of a daughter of a daughter of a daughter.
At the time of writing this, I was on an airplane, on my way back home to my family on Mothers’ Day, after having spent a powerful week in the company of poets, musicians and stewards of lore in Ireland.
One of our travelling companions on a recent walking tour of Galway and Connemara, ran into me at Shannon airport, a day after our group has said their good byes.
Sarah was her name, and she had taken a taxi ride with a kindly Irish gentlemen to the town of Tuam, where her grandmother and namesake had come from, left in grief, and never returned. Sarah had only that name, and a surname and the name of the town of Tuam in Galway, an hour from the village in North Clare we had been staying at.
By sheer serendipity, the taxi driver, Gabriel by name, (which means the strength of G_d), drove her straight to a small graveyard by a church, and there alongside a freshly turned grave, she discovered the resting place of her great grandmother. Sarah and Gabriel cried together and prayed together in the tiny church, of which he had the keys, and then on a hunch, drove her straight on, to the home of her second cousin, who she had never met and who knew nothing of one another’s existence in this world. And was led to the stone shed now used for lawnmowers, the place where her grandmother was born, lived, left, and had never spoken of, in grief, and had never returned.
THE MOTHER OF NATIONS
Sarah,
that mother of nations
whose name meant Princess
in the ancient language of the people;
scatterlings of the faithful,
troubled in their faith,
fled in sorrow,
so far from the land
of promise,
when the promise fled
from the land.
Daughter of a daughter of a daughter,
collected at last
from the arms of monks
at the end of her own wandering
over moor, and meadow,
over stony walls of broken men
over bay and ocean,
And carried,
by the strength of god
through the gate,
latched and closed to all, but her,
to the place of rest
where her own distant beginning
had found an end.
Kneeling, in the shadow of her mother’s mother’s mother
prayers, spoken in weeping
- that private song of women,
tears given to the freshly turned earth
of another daughter taken home.
And brought through that place
of sacred song and ending,
Gabriel himself at the wheel,
to the green place
where the stone walls
are all lined with winding roads.
To be welcomed in,
by long lost family
to the cradle of that humble beginning
that cried its first
on stone floor
amidst the green and frozen fields
of home.
Where she had never found her own way back,
until the daughter in her
returned.
Rocco Jarman
May 2023
My friend Sarah, united with her second cousin, after a day of pure serendipity.
Special thanks to Sarah Beston (family name Higgins) for inviting me into this story and letting me share it with all of you.
Until next time,
Rocco
p.s. To add a further dimple to the flushed cheek of the moment, the Freshly turned grave, it turned out, was of a family member who had been put to rest a month prior.
This brought tears to my eyes. Such a sacred and mysterious thing, life. Thanks for penning this one story of returning. We never know just how it will happen. We can only listen to the small signal - impulse - inside and let life do the rest!