Dunluce Castle, Giant's Causeway, Dark Hedges, Dublin

   

    

 

Final Day at School, Derry/L'derry

               On the last day of February, we rushed to Oakgrove’s Tuesday morning assembly in our five taxis—well, six, because the first driver wouldn’t clear his newspaper for a fourth passenger, so we had to wait an extra forty minutes for another cab—most of us arriving just in time to see John honored before the gathered body with a congratulatory cake and speech for becoming the permanent principal.

              Over and over again, our students were awed by his care and laughter and enormous kindness, and wondered what it would be like to have such a principal. We would see this in full force over the course of the day, especially in the evening, when John would juggle between playing the generous host to our students, confronting a student, his parents, and the police in his office for a full hour, guiding staff through various other emergencies that had occurred through the day, and welcoming Oakgrove Hands for a Bridge alumni for the evening’s potluck, interspersed with his ridiculously disarming whale sound that he called out in equal parts to focus attention and to enjoy himself.

              This would also be our day of farewell at the school.

              Roosevelt students recited three poems before all the students seated on the floor of the hall, two by Seamus Heaney and one by Gwendolyn Brooks. They got through it in the morning, but when called upon to do it again before the HFB alumni that evening, some had to laugh their way through their contributions. That’s okay—John had said his students had been intimidated by the confidence of the American students, and a stumble would reassure Oakgrove, show it all possible.

              But how our students did lead, with marvelous poise and such joy later that morning, as we met Fountain Primary School across the fence and just the other side of the city’s 17^th century walls, in the Protestant neighborhood and its Tory red, white, and blue kerbs. For decades, they’d been joined by Long Tower Primary, the elementary school on the nationalist side. This morning, the children were in the gymnasium together when we arrived, watching a video about dirt and butterflies. When they turned around and their teachers cleared the tables, Roosevelt students led raucous games in a big circle before splitting into smaller groups, which is when I cried a few times, more than the night before: watching Taylor lean back on the wall and laugh as he took such full-bodied delight in the little ones (wee ‘uns), watching Karen pat-pat the floor in gentle, lovely encouragement, and above all, watching face after face—ours, Oakgrove’s, Long Tower’s, Fountain’s—share unadulterated delight in one another, an entire room enchanted by the moment.

              At the Hands for a Bridge alumni potluck and final evening with Oakgrove friends later that night, students pulled each other into a single tight hug on the stage. Two alumni from the very first class summoned them to the front of the stage to acknowledge their sorrow but to show, their laughter and physical closeness the signal of it, that enduring friendship is here.

Theater of Witness

               Yesterday ended in the upstairs sitting room of St. Columb’s House, everyone crying, one after the other launching into more. It’s that time in the trip, feeling close, getting moved, missing home but also not wanting to leave.

              And today was the day we met with Ann and Kathleen, an event we knew in advance would greatly affect us all. Students had seen a ten minute Ann and Kathleen's Theater of Witness video, knew how they had collaborated with an American to create a narrative of their experiences to be staged, knew that Ann was with the IRA the same time the IRA had killed Kathleen’s husband, and that night after night they nevertheless shared the stage to tell of it.

              But it was one thing to see segments of their performance on Youtube (here's the full 1:22 show, I Once Knew a Girl), and quite another to be in the room with their stories and be enfolded in their laughter and enduring friendship. They left us open-hearted and exposed, and, later that night, reach out to each other in a precious vulnerability.

              Before Ann and Kathleen arrived, Theater of Witness sent us Kieran and Fionnbar to warm us up with theater and drumming workshops. The energy of the twelve years with ours half again as old is something very sweet, the younger ones squirrely and energetic, looking up to the doting older ones and their willingness to try something new and goofy. This collaboration and play is part of the politics; the reaching the ears and hearts of audiences in a darkened theater is another.

              Ann, Kathleen, and one longer to Theater of Witness, James, joined us in an English classroom for that part of it. Ann told us to be part of our journey; it might be a bit challenging for yous, but you’ll be all right in the end.

              James was a former UVF terrorist, he said in his video segment—with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, it’s death or glory. He looks back on thirty friends murdered. But Teya Sepinuck of Theater of Witness chased a story out of him that even his family hadn’t known, and then, it was a tremendous weight gone.

              As Ann’s video played, she herself sat directly below the screen, one ear towards us and eyes cast down, explaining that she had been a twelve year old dating an eighteen one—how he’d showed her a gun and she’d thought it exciting, joining the IRA herself at eighteen. The night she was supposed to engage in a violent action, she’d had a brain hemorrhage instead. Soon she’d replaced the IRA with drugs, then an abusive marriage, existing within the damage of a culture that doesn’t get talked about here, she said, and back then, I didn’t know better. The narrative she told, and retold, again and again on stage, and that now replays before her as she attends the workshops where she listens again and again to her narrative on video, was multiplied by her stoic sitting presence before us, eye contact withheld.

              Kathleen Gillespie told us how she’d met her husband at sixteen, married at twenty. Her story is a love story and a grief love story, where adoring kept on, and now Patsy still looks on—her parking angel, she told us, always there to help her find a place for her car. Mr. Gillespie had been a civilian worker in the kitchens at Fort George, just trying to support his family. In 1986, he was kidnapped for it, and made to drive a van of explosives into camp. That time, he got free. And he’d be forgiven for thinking lighting wouldn’t strike twice. But one day two armed men came into their home and said, If everyone does what we say, then no one will get hurt, and, Kathleen said, I was stupid enough to believe them. Patsy was chained to a van with a thousand pounds of explosives and it blew up, tearing Mr. Gillespie to pieces as well as five British soldiers. He’d yelled out to the soldiers, Kathleen told us: Run! The van’s fucking loaded! For years, Kathleen said, she wouldn’t go out of the house without makeup, because she knew those IRA men were still out there, and she had to be strong. But for the sake of her own physical health, I had to let go of my hatred and anger, deciding to give it to God. She joined peace and reconciliation efforts, sitting in the same room, at times, as the provos. But, she thought, if I can’t even sit and listen to their stories, how can I expect others to do this work?

              With their videos through, Ann, Kathleen, and James laughed together. Taylor had found that unnerving and somehow misplaced. But I didn’t feel that way at all, I’d told him: this is some hard earned laughter, and as much as their pain tells a story, so does their friendship and their joy, the victim of IRA, IRA, UVA together.

              Ann said that in order to sit in the same room with someone like Kathleen, she had to be nudged, because she felt Ann would hate her, and she also didn’t know she had a story worth anything. But now, she told us, I know my worth. She became brave enough to know she wanted a change.

Thank-you note to Ann

              Their work with Theater of Witness is about giving value to their pain, and it’s about making their stories heard. But as I saw Kathleen hold Ann’s hand, or watched the two of them quietly pat each other in support, I saw much more to what they’ve done, and continue to do, on stages and in workshops and in each other’s kitchens. This is true heart work, and storytelling, in a darkened theater or under the fluorescents of a church meeting room or class, does something different than a written word or panel. It hit us for that reason.

              One of us asked, How do you find it in yourself to continue to live?

              Oh, our hearts, to hear that.

              But they responded, each of them, without judgment and tremendous wisdom and grace, and each of us on the trip responded too, and did all day and night. I am who I am because of the trauma in my life, Ann said. What does it take to see the humanity in another person? It’s when you see yourself in your own pain: that's when you can start treating yourself better. Understanding what happened, James said, is a way of accepting others, and of accepting yourself.

              This is why we tell stories. And this is why we witness them.

              Later that night, we returned again and again to the moment we all opened, and we continued to let ourselves spill out, crying until we laughed.