I Found My Tribe: A Memoir - Hardcover

Fitzmaurice, Ruth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1635571588 ISBN 13: 9781635571585

Verlag: BLOOMSBURY, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

A transformative, euphoric memoir about finding solace in the unexpected for readers of H is for Hawk, It’s Not Yet Dark, and When Breath Becomes Air.

Ruth’s tribe are her lively children and her filmmaker and author husband Simon Fitzmaurice who has ALS and can only communicate with his eyes. Ruth’s other "tribe" are the friends who gather at the cove in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, and regularly throw themselves into the freezing cold water, just for kicks.

The Tragic Wives’ Swimming Club, as they jokingly call themselves, meet to cope with the extreme challenges life puts in their way, not to mention the monster waves rolling over the horizon. Swimming is just one of the daily coping strategies as Ruth fights to preserve the strong but now silent connection with her husband. As she tells the story of their marriage, from diagnosis to their long-standing precarious situation, Ruth also charts her passion for swimming in the wild Irish Sea--culminating in a midnight swim under the full moon on her wedding anniversary.

An invocation to all of us to love as hard as we can, and live even harder, I Found My Tribe is an urgent and uplifting letter to a husband, family, friends, the natural world, and the brightness of life.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

RUTH FITZMAURICE was a radio researcher and producer when she married her husband, Simon, in 2004 and had three children. In 2008, Simon was diagnosed with ALS and given three years to live. Simon went into respiratory failure in 2010 and was accidentally placed on a ventilator during an emergency procedure. He decided, against medical advice, to keep the ventilator; Ruth and Simon went on to have twins in 2012 and Simon lived until 2017. Ruth lives in Ireland with her five children, 2 dogs, and a cat.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

I Found My Tribe

By Ruth Fitzmaurice

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright © 2017 Ruth O'Neill Fitzmaurice
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-63557-158-5

Contents

The Sea, 1, 
My Cove, 5, 
Michelle, 10, 
Friends, 16, 
Daydreams, 20, 
Kisses, 27, 
Happiness, 32, 
Colour, 38, 
Aifric, 46, 
Ergonomics, 52, 
Tragic Wives, 58, 
Superheroes, 65, 
Truth or Dare, 72, 
Dancing, 78, 
Watered, 84, 
Fear, 93, 
Kicking Cars, 98, 
Food, 103, 
Twins, 109, 
Worry, 116, 
Lost Things, 123, 
Wolf or Panda, 130, 
Sea Glass, 138, 
Christmas, 145, 
Bed, 153, 
Murder, 159, 
Holidays, 166, 
War Wounds, 175, 
Moon Swim, 181, 
Waves (And Cheese Puffs), 187, 
Acknowledgements, 195, 

CHAPTER 1

The Sea

Three-year-old Sadie says that Dadda talks with his eyes. An eye gaze computer sounds less romantic. I'll ask his eyes she says when she wants something. He loves me! she exclaims like a surprise present. Love like a present is the gift we share from him. I hold it fiercely. His magnificent heart.

My husband is a wonder to me but he is hard to find. I search for him in our home. He breathes through a pipe in his throat. He feels everything but cannot move a muscle. I lie on his chest counting mechanical breaths. I hold his hand but he doesn't hold back. His darting eyes are the only windows left. I won't stop searching. My soul demands it and so does his. Simon has motor neurone disease, but that's not the dilemma, at least not today. Be brave.

I am sitting in my car in Wicklow town, looking out on the harbour. I'm watching these yacht masts dancing. Their heads are swaying to and fro, warbling along to Joni Mitchell on the radio.

Wicklow harbour is nice. It's vast and full of blue. It has a higher, wider reach than the Greystones view. I feel as though I can't breathe in Greystones right now, so Wicklow is good. Maybe Greystones is like all great loves. You either marvel at every familiar dancing step and soak it into your bones or, like today, the familiar edges trip you up and annoy the shit out of you. Too claustrophobic - a rat in a cage, a lift with no panic button.

Here's the dilemma. My house is full of strangers. I have painted it bright colours and surrounded it with love, but strangers step through it at an alarming rate. Well-meaning Muhammads make tea. So many Helens and Marys and Jackies and Michaels and Deirdres and Claires and Sams and Franks and Graces smile and leave mops in weird places. I sidestep them in the hall and at the dishwasher. Our house is filled with nurses and carers and they are hurting me. It's not their fault.

Some stay a while, but most are passing through. Some stay longer. I grow to love them and then they break my heart and leave anyway. It's nobody's fault. This is agency work. Some wear overbearing perfume. It attacks olfactory emotions I didn't even know I had. I feel irrational hatred towards them because they make my house smell like them. Most of them smoke but I don't mind the smell of that. At least it's a universal smell, like fire or Fairy Liquid or Persil Automatic or petrol. A lot of them try and turn our home into a hospital, and I fight like a tiger against that and bare pointy teeth.

They all leave eventually, except for Marian. Marian believes in angels and blood moons. She lives purely through her emotions, and a good day always starts with this night nurse. We drink tea together on dark mornings. I wish I believed in angels. Marian believes everything happens for a reason and that people have colours and swirling energy around them, positive or negative.

If you hang out with her for long enough, you could be laughing or crying or both and you can almost see a faint outline on the walls of angel wings in the shadows. She is, of course, my angel. 'I'm not going anywhere,' she said to me once. 'I'm here for you.' I look into her eyes and I believe her.

There was a blood moon last night and the sea is agitated. My soul is agitated. The full moon gets a red glow during a lunar eclipse, says Marian, so watch out. Blood moons belong to moongazers, dreamers and to Marian. For them, the night sky is a realm of intense feeling and romance. I'd never heard of such things, so I lean in closer. We are up to eighty per cent water, Marian says, and that is why the moon and the tides affect us. That is why I jump in the sea, I say. I am trying to find a home, make a home, be a home for my five children. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail.

* * *

Some people understand that the small things make a difference. A nice pen to write with that slides perfectly on the page. Hot coffee in a particular cup. These things matter when your soul is on the edge. It fills you full of holes, this life. My search for Simon is a lonely pursuit. I hope he looks for me too. Great love has brought me to the sea and I am trying to be brave. It's important, when your soul just might need saving.

We have lost many things. But sometimes I find my husband: lips on the curve of his temple, a crawl space in the crook of his arm. Some things are lost and found again. I email him words of love, and he emails back. A mad moon tidal wave. Screen to screen, we're holding hands at last. Two souls. It's a marvellous, familiar dance. Great loves are for the brave.

CHAPTER 2

My Cove

I have to tell you a secret. This is my cove. No really, it's actually mine. So says an old lady who rolls up on a flowery purple pushbike one day. We are standing in swimming hats, my friends and I. Three women at Ladies' Cove, the steps that lead into the sea at Greystones, Co. Wicklow. We are standing, turning slightly blue on a sunny April day. The air is warm but those in the secret all-year swim club know that the sun is deceptive. The sea is bloody freezing at this time of year. Colder than Christmas.

We are trying to be brave. It's my cove, says the old lady, as she hitches a foot to the ground, leaning her purple bike into a chat. We don't want to chat, we want to dive, but she isn't going anywhere. She is lonely and wants to talk to us and that's that. I aspire to be this old lady some day. I would feel lucky to grow old like her, on her flowery bike, wind in her hair, stopping to chat when she feels like it and when she needs it. Some old ladies are great like that. I aspire to be her because, obviously, it's not her cove at all. It's mine.

I collect stones on the beach. My favourites are the grey ones full of holes. The sea made these holes; each one is different and beautiful. I rattle them home in my pocket and arrange them on windowsills.

My swimming friend has a cousin who is one of those calm people who are healing to be around. A cup of tea with her in summer garden sunshine reveals to me that I am not a calm person. I yearn for her serenity. We were talking about a first-world problem, maybe a universal problem: the dilemma of where to live.

We have love in the nucleus of our family, but where do you put roots down with that love? An affordable bigger house in the countryside, or a commutable distant town? Or stay where you know people, in a smaller house bursting at the seams? My friend's calm cousin cuts through the bullshit. 'Find your tribe,' she says. Finding your people is more important than what kind of house you live in. Decide whether you've found your tribe and go from there. I believe her.

The cove is my tribe and the cove is mine. My babies stand with soggy shoes on the shore,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: BLOOMSBURY
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1635571588
• ISBN 13: 9781635571585
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar