Author Archives: findingdonnatrh

I remember once watching my grandfather in his old age reading a piece of music.  He’d been asked to critique it and at this point in his life he was almost entirely deaf.  When a curious young me asked what he was doing he explained that he was reading the music and in that doingContinue reading “4. Band: Part I”

Of the school friends of my mother who I’ve met, some recall St Mary’s School as being a fine school with strict, although kind Sisters.  Others definitely do not feel this way.  Mum spent all of her primary school years during the 1960’s at St Mary’s Catholic School.  She had her Confirmation and First CommunionContinue reading “3. St. Mary’s”

My whole life I knew my mother was a Catholic.  I knew so because my father and grandma had told me.  Grandma isn’t- she’s Presbyterian.  The stoic woman she is, she refused to take grandads Catholic faith when they married, and so in those days, the apparent agreement in such stand-offs for stubborn wives wasContinue reading “2. A Revelation”

In Middlemarch, late 1959, a heavily pregnant woman reaches for a box of Christmas chocolates gifted to her by her husband’s boss.  She feels a sharp pain.  Something isn’t right.  Things escalate.  Bleeding, scared and without a vehicle, a mechanic from down the street races the woman and her husband to Queen Mary Hospital inContinue reading “1. The Boy and the Girl”

Hi, My name is Jen and when I was four-years-old my mother died. For the twenty-something years following her death, no one talked to me about her. In July 2019 I embarked on a journey to find out who she was and got far more than I bargained for. My journey, including a road tripContinue reading “About”