This is my first new blog post in this space on a Saturday night, February 29, 2020 - Leap Year.
I’ve posted an Irish cottage from Malin Head, Donegal where my great grandmother, Kate McLaughlin is from and where I took my husband, Kiffen, in 2016, to visit my dear cousin, Sally Tolland and her daughter Bex. Kiffen was far braver than I navigating the skinny roads and challenging round-abouts from Dublin to Donegal. (I couldn’t look.) He did get a “wee knick” on the bumper, which he fixed with red nail polish (varnish in Ireland) and “Scratch-off” from a mechanic in Donegal.
Anyway, Kate’s mother, Katherine, saved the egg money from the egg man and bought a ticket to America to visit her adult children who had left Ireland. When was this? Tricia Kelly, family historian, would know approximately the year. (And Tricia is the reason I found beautiful Cousin Maureen “Mo” O’Sullivan, sister of my heart, and Sally is another sister of my heart too.)
Naturally, Katherine McLaughlin couldn’t tell her husband, Joseph, who would have forbid such an epic journey. She must saved the egg money for years to buy a ticket to sail to America. He only saw her sailing out of the harbor of Malin Head as he was fishing. The day she sailed away, she left her two youngest daughters, Kate and Sarah, behind and her husband - “himself” shouting at the departing boat, “Katherine, come back! Katherine, come back!”
Katherine eventually came back but not until after she had visited her children in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. How did she navigate it all?
It was many years later her daughter, Kate McLaughlin, immigrated and became Kate Madden or “Mama Dear” - a woman who hated to have her picture taken and was always dashing out of photos - a blur. My father said Mama Dear was a terrible cook - the worst - and tried to make linguini and clam sauce after being inspired by the Italian family up the street, only she used sardines and the wrong noodles.
Her husband, Daddy Dear, shouted, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” and would have none of it.
***
My first blog, Live Journal, was many moons ago, and I picked the name “Mountain Mist,” which sounds like a soft drink. I made some wonderful friends on Live Journal and used it a lot to share pictures of the Smoky Mountains when I was writing the Maggie Valley novels.
Norah was chasing fairies in those years, Lucy was throwing shot-put (and painting and taking pictures like she still does today) and Flannery was in a band called The Flypaper Cartel.
Later I wound up with two blogs on Wordpress, the most recent at this link: https://kerrymaddensabbatical.wordpress.com/author/kerrylucynorah/, and there are a slew of stories and pictures, but Wordpress has gotten so fussy, and I really wanted a blog attached to my website.
So here we go…from now on I’ll be blogging once a week in this space, created by my magical daughter, Lucy.
I also have a magical daughter, Norah, and when I was telling the visiting writer, Chris Abani, about the girls and then about my son, he smiled and said, “But your son is surely no less magical than your daughters,” and naturally, I burst into tears.
For it is true, Flannery is no less magical than Lucy and Norah.
But that’s another story.
As the director of a creative writing program, one is expected to drive visiting authors around, and it can be so embarrassing to burst into tears in front of them, which has only happened with Chris Abani, a magical poet himself - though there have been other adventures.
Natashia Deon and I got rear-ended while I was driving to her hotel, and the culprit who hit us sped away, and Natashia said, “Look at him go. Wow. Who does that?” (He did, apparently.)
I took Maude Schuyler Clay and her husband, Langdon, to The Glass Menagerie, unexpectedly and very recently, but how I could turn down the chance to see Tennessee Williams with a fifth generation Mississippian? UAB’s Theatre Department did an amazing job and revamped the play with an all-black cast set in the Harlem Renaissance, capturing this Mississippi playwright’s story of his sister, Rose. I fell in love with Tennessee Williams in college and played Blanche in my roommate’s white filmy graduation dress and filled a Jack Daniels’ bottle with tea to swig in the Humanities Building.
My mother’s own memories of Mississippi are as dramatic as ever - she wept as a young mother in the 1960s when my Dad accepted a graduate assistant coaching job at Mississippi State and took her out of Florida. After my Mississippi babysitter, Loisteen, quit, Mom took me to school with her in Brooksville, where a saint named, Bessie Kay, worked in the lunch room, drove the school bus, and babysat me while Mom taught.
Can you imagine? I cannot imagine.
The other night, I read Ann Fisher-Wirth’s poems to my husband on Face-Time to California, and he loved them. Ann and Maude just left on Thursday after a week of visiting five universities around Birmingham - Montevallo, Samford, Birmingham Southern, Miles, and UAB. They got to sit in the Bear Bryant booth at the Bright Star after their visit to Miles College. The students loved them.
If Lauren Slaughter (Editor of Nelle and a dear friend) hadn’t suggested we go to the CD Wright Conference in Arkansas in 2018, I never would have met Ann or Maude and learned about their beautiful book, Mississippi, of photography and poetry.
https://poetry.arizona.edu/blog/mississippi-ann-fisher-wirth-maude-schuyler-clay
In the earlier years of visiting writers, Norah and I took the poet, Kim Addonizio, to a place called OVEN BIRD in Birmingham with faculty and students, and Norah wanted to try the “meat candle,” which naturally grossed out Kim, a vegetarian.
A few days later, the master of all office managers, Karen, asked me if I had bought myself a candle at dinner on the reimbursement tab from dinner.
Last year, Jean Guerrero, also a vegetarian, wanted fish, so I cooked salmon for her at my house and wrapped it in foil before driving to pick her up, since that party was at Shelly Cato’s house, and Taco Mama was on the menu.
It’s all the details one has to keep straight, and it’s not my strength.
Allen Gee, of all the visiting writers, was one of the most generous (they have all been incredibly generous) and he insisted on meeting with five graduate students, reading their work in advance and then having coffee with them individually to talk to them about their stories. He set me on a serious path of asking the visiting authors to connect with students on a deeper level.
Which is why Ann and Maude did a Master Class with poets and photographers and there will be an installation in March, and the students will be mirroring a little of what Ann and Maude accomplished in their collaboration.
But enough. So many stories. I can’t even remember all of them. The students adored Derrick Harriell, and he told hilarious stories of finding himself in Mississippi from Detroit. His wife, like my mother, wept, too, on the move to the Deep South.
The students have loved all the visiting writers, and I have too. I miss them when they go, and I wish they could hang around a while.
Anyway, it’s Leap Year and it’s time to start a new blog.
I’ve lived for a decade away from my husband, and it’s becoming untenable.
But that’s another story.
Here is Kate McLaughlin of Malin Head, who became Kate Madden, in the years before she didn’t mind having her picture taken.
