I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BIG BANG BOOM-“Hippie Mom” (2012).

This song is a loving tribute to crunchy, loving hippie moms (“granola making yoga taking,”  “I love to watch her twirl and sing.  She loves me more than anything.”)  While the song definitely teases some of the clichés of a hippie mom, it is a sweet, happy song.

It’s got a kind of rockabilly sound that makes you want to tap your feet and sing along.  I’d not hear of Big Bang Boom before, but I need to hear more from them.

[READ: January 28, 2013] A Greyhound of a Girl

After reading Doyle’s story in McSweeney’s recently I checked out to see what he had been up to.  I had no idea he had written a series of children’s books.  And this one was the most recent (and the library had it!), so I had to see what Mr Doyle could do for kids.

Well, this is an extremely heartwarming and sad story about four generations of Irish women.  It’s delightfully simple with very few characters.  And for that, it packs a wallop.

Mary is a twelve-year-old girl living in Dublin.  She has two brothers, who don’t really enter the story but I mention them since their names are Killer and Dommo.  Mary’s best friend, Ava, has just moved away and she is devastated.  On the way home from school–the way she usually walks with Ava, an old woman–well, she’s actually young, like a young adult, but she is dressed old and talks like her granny–asks about her gran.  Her gran, Emer, is in the hospital.  She’s very old and is clearly not long for the world.

Mary tells her mother, Scarlett, about the old woman and how the old woman seemed to know her gran.  She’d said her name was Tansey.  Scarlett is taken aback.  She explains that Emer’s mother was named Tansey, and isn’t that a weird coincidence.  Then, we flashback and learn the history of this family.  Tansey died when Emer was but  three years old.  Tansey’s mother helped to raise Emer and her baby brother with their father.  Later, Emer gave birth to Scarlett, and 12 years ago Scarlett had Mary.  We learn about the farm that Emer grew up on and how she hated the greyhounds that her father raised for racing–they were too skinny and pointy.

But the flashbacks are brief because the story is set in the present.  Soon enough the spooky nature of the story solidifies and Tansey is indeed the ghost of Emer’s mother.  She was never settled in her afterlife because she didn’t get to see her daughter grow up.  But she never appeared before because Emer has always been a strong woman.  Bit now Emer needs her.

When Tansey and Emer finally meet, there are no pyrotechnics or anything extraordinary, it’s just a natural thing.  And when all four generations of women are together, they bounce off each other, each talking n that wonderful way of Irish grannies and cheeky daughters.  How will they spend this time together?

This was an incredibly sweet and moving story.  Doyle writes women so well, and all four felt alive.  Even though there’s no a lot to the story, there’s a lot of substance in it.  Sure, you’ll be wantin’ a hankie by the end.