SOCIAL BRIDGE ~ Jean Tubridy, PhD

Welcome!

My name is Jean Tubridy and I am delighted to welcome you to Social Bridge.

I am an Irish  Sociologist and Professional Writer and I decided to merge these two elements of my life  under the title ‘Social Bridge.’

Social Bridges are all about connections, reaching out, bringing people and ideas together.

The aim of the blog is to keep you abreast of  my research  and writing.  I would be delighted to receive comments on posts in which you are interested.

I look forward to connecting with you.

Jean.

   

Newtown Wood, Co. Waterford

Maternal Innocence ~ Gatherings from Ireland # 148

When I made the big announcement to my father at Christmas 1994 that I was just over three months pregnant, he made a pronouncement that still rings in my ears: It’s when you have children of your own that your life really changes.  I didn’t think it was possible for a face to hold so many expressions as his did that moment: shocked pleasure, concern, love, smile, the vacancy of remembering …..

Even though I was in my thirties, I hadn’t a clue about babies and had always steered well clear of them until they were at least able to walk and talk. I just couldn’t see what people saw in newborns  and my only hope lay my mother’s words:  I was the very same but it’s different when it’s your own.

At 9.25 am on this day in 1995, I was handed a tiny baby by a mature midwife who had joy in her eyes. I’d have thought she’d be well over that by that stage of her career but I think it was giving me the cue for the joyful look that I should have. Her words, ‘It’s a boy,’ sent me into a flat spin. I hadn’t as much as contemplated the possibility that ‘she’ would be anything but a girl, daughter ….. and had called her Anna, to myself,  from the word go.

This baby seemed to have something very serious wrong with its neck ~ flopping all over the place ~ and he certainly let me know that he wasn’t very happy with his head dangling towards the floor.

At about 5am on Day 2, a nurse bustled into the room saying: Have you topped and tailed, baby?

The only things I’d ever topped and tailed were gooseberries so I lay there with blank, tired eyes. She pointed at a stainless steel bowl; the kind I’d always been presented with as a child when I was in vomiting mode. I thought for a minute that she could see I was feeling rather nauseous and thought how perceptive she was and hoped she’d hand it over to me and rub my back as I heaved into it.

You just give baby a quick wash now and he can have his bath later. 

She put a wadge of cotton wool beside the tiny bowl.

Mercifully, there was no one around to witness the ‘topping and tailing’ that ensued but I know exactly why ‘baby’ never took to swimming or any kind of water sports!

But, let me tell you that the one saving grace that calmed us both was a tape of nursery rhymes that I had, by some miracle, brought to the hospital with me.

Nurse looked in at us before going off duty as  Row, Row, Row Your Boat was  playing and all was sweetness and Johnson’s Baby Powder.

Don’t you think he’s a bit young for that?  she said.

Oh, it’s never to early to introduce the arts, I whispered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7otAJa3jui8

What’s in a Name? ~ Gatherings from Ireland # 147

I have a ‘thing’ about names ~ as they send me into a wonderland about why people chose them.  People’s names don’t intrigue me half as much as those of boats. I could spend forever wandering around harbours, lakes, marinas and old dockyards just thinking,  Why, who, when, for whom ….

Co. Waterford provides me with lots of boaty places and here’s a tiny sample of a few of my favourites:

Even though I doubt very much that I will ever have a boat to christen, I know that I would call it Always but I’m not going to tell you why!

I’d love to hear what boat names appeal to you or what ‘rocks your boat’ when it comes to names ~ people, wine, places, cows, lipstick, books  dogs, roses ….. ?

Eighteen Things I Treasure as our Son Turns 18 ~ Gatherings from Ireland # 146

As I mentioned in the last post, our son will be 18 this week and it feels like a ‘big deal’ that he has reached this important week.  I have been thinking a lot about the things that I treasure most from those 18 years:

1. The fact that he is what I call a ‘peace baby’ ~ one who has  grown up with the peace process in Northern Ireland.

2. The fact that the endless hours we spent playing with any kind of a ball from when he was in his high chair has translated into a passionate love of sport.

3. The envelope of his burnished gold curls that I stowed away ~ especially when he decided to adopt the cool, clean hero look.

4. That year, when he was four, when we devoted so much time to focussing on the changing seasons ~ going off to find newborn lambs in the fields, searching for bird’s nests …..

5. The fact that he had the chance to get to know and spend time with three of his grandparents.

6. The fact that he didn’t inherit my shyness.

7. The fact that being bitten on the face by a dog when he was 11 didn’t turn him off dogs.

8. The way he has always called me ‘Jean.’

9. The time I saw him running towards me in hospital two days after he had been admitted with suspected meningitis

10. The  times he and I spent in our beloved Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare.

11. The fact that I didn’t lose him to ‘another’ that night he went to his first disco in Tenerife when he was five!

12. All those nights that we shared with me reading to him at bedtime and him begging for ‘just one more page’ over and over.

13. The fact that he has finally learned how to use the microwave.

14. The way he phones me about 10 times to update me when he goes to see the Waterford team playing hurling matches.

15. His absolute love of Tramore which means so much to me too.

16. The way he stands up for the underdog.

17. His hearty laugh.

18.  The fact that he doesn’t read this blog!

The Birth Week of Our 18-Year Old ~Gatherings from Ireland # 145

I have no idea how it happened but today, just a few days before our only ’child’s’ 18th birthday, I came upon his first pair of dungarees and a grey sweatshirt with pockets that he seemed to wear endlessly.

It’s so hard to believe that the tiny person who fitted into these clothes now stands at 6ft 3 in.

I find that I can remember aspects of  this week in 1995 in the most vivid detail imaginable. One of my main concerns was to plant petunias that w0uld be blooming when we came home from  hospital.

Petunias

It also seemed fundamentally important to have a video of Dermot Morgan to make me laugh in the nervous hours before I went into hospital to have my elective C-Section on May 24th. I had gone to see Dermot Morgan perform  here in Waterford towards the end of the pregnancy. I don’t think I have ever laughed as much and wondered was it possible that the baby would be born in the middle of the show. Who else would I watch in those strange last hours between heading into hospital? How I wish that Dermot Morgan was still alive as I think that he more than anyone would be able to make us laugh through the stormy times of the recession.

The other memory of that week in 1995 that is so vivid is that I finished a  piece of commissioned work in the early hours of May 22nd.  This week has its similarities as it is dominated by a mad rush to meet a deadline to submit the final assignment of a course that has been all-consuming since last September ~ yes 37 weeks and it looks like it will be to the minute!

The World’s Favourite Love Poems ~ Gatherings from Ireland #144

Love poems are a passion of mine and, if you remember, I sought to identify the greatest love poem of them all a while back  The Greatest Love Poem?

Well, yesterday I came upon a collection in the Book Centre in Waterford The World’s Favourite Love Poems which is edited by Suheil Bushrui.  Needless to say it was a MUST-BUY and I have been languishing in its brilliance since last night.

What a collection! Almost two hundred poems from all around the world and I am savouring every single one of them. Four Irish poets are included, Thomas Moore, W.B. Yeats, John Millington Synge and Diarmad O’Curnain.  I had never heard of  Diarmad O’ Curnain or his love  poem, which is translated from Irish by George Sigerson (1836-1925) , an Irish physician, scientist, writer politician and poet. If his name sounds familiar, the Sigerson Cup in GAA football is played in his honour.

George Sigerson

The  beautiful poem by Diarmad O’ Curnain, who is still intriguing me, reads as follows:

Love’s Despair

I know not night from day,

Nor thrush from cuckoo gray,

Nor cloud from the sun that shines above thee -

Nor freezing cold from heat,

Nor friend, if friend I meet -

I but know -heart’s love! – I love thee.

Love that my Life began,

Love, that will close life’s span,

Love that grows ever by love-giving:

Love, from first to last,

Love, till all life be passed,

Love that loves on after living. 

How I crave to know more about both Diarmad O’Curnain and the ‘love’  about whom he wrote. This poem that sits alongside poems by well-known names like  Ovid, Rumi, Shakespeare, Shelley, Hardy,  Teasdale …..

Can anyone tell me more about this Irish man?

Heaven and Separation? ~ Gatherings from Ireland #143

I’m uneasy with the concept of  ’Heaven’ and have been for a long, long time.  I can’t even begin to imagine what it could possibly be like but, for one who doesn’t like crowds, I feel that I’d be horribly out of place as I imagine that by now Heaven is beginning to brim over as there have undoubtedly been millions and millions of good livers who seem like they would be strong candidates for entry.

But just recently, the question of how ‘Heaven’ could be heavenly, given the issue of separation from loved ones has been playing on my mind.  Think, for example, of the loving couple who can’t bear to be separated for more than a few minutes or hours. What if one partner dies? The emphasis tends to be on the sadness of the person who is left behind but what of the one who has passed on and is now in Heaven?  After years and years of  loving togetherness, how could he/she be happy anywhere, even in Heaven?

We hear about people ‘meeting again’ in Heaven but what about the waiting ….. waiting that could go on for years and years.  Could it be that Heaven has a totally different clock than ours ~ one where the hands fly as you would want?

I put all this to an Irish man last week and his response was:

Ah, I suppose you go off and meet someone else while you’re waiting!

Am I alone in grappling with these matters?

Howth Harbour, Co. Dublin

Co. Waterford in a Shot ~ Gatherings from Ireland # 142

This photograph which was taken by my late father, probably in the 1950s, is one of my very favourite images of Co. Waterford.  I just love the way it shows the way the county combines both mountains and miles of coastline.  And, how could one not be impressed by the craftsmanship that was associated with hay making back then.

I found the photograph in one of the many, many boxes which Dad left with us and I see now, more than ever,  why he loved those drives that we shared  out along the coast road from Tramore to Bonmahon in his final years. He always urged me to go nice and slowly through Annestown!

Annestown, Co. Waterford