Such search for identity–identity being code for how we belong to the world–contravenes the logical matriculations of our conscious days. Virginia Woolf writes of time’s superficial “orderly and military progress” and how deep below resonates “a rushing stream of broken dreams, nursery rhymes, street cries, half-finished sentences and sights.” My leprechaun tree in the backyard, my “half-finished sight,” kept me running between garden and house to announce new life–to proclaim that I was part of something larger than myself, something mysterious and beautiful. These first images of childhood reveal themselves as soulful harbingers within thin spaces. These thin spaces–a Celtic...

That faraway and even dreamier place called Ireland was iconified within the lush surroundings of our local church, St. Hedwigs, in Los Alamitos. The parish lawns were textured like moist linen and lined by endless rows of roses…Sister Mary Ita, my fourth grade teacher, told me about her niece named Mary O’Connor, who lived in County Limavady in Northern Ireland. She arranged for Mary and me to become pen pals. I prized Mary’s letters filled with lovely Irish penmanship that arrived in the blue, tissue-thin envelopes marked aero mail. We were Irish girls living on opposite sides of the world!...

I grew up on the border of Los Angeles and Orange Counties, not far from those celebrated spindles of the collective imagination: Hollywood and Disneyland.  But by the age of six, the center of my imaginal world revolved around another dazzling spectacle–the apricot tree in my backyard and its spring blooms. In April, I’d gaze up to the branches of this beloved tree, waiting for the arrival of the minuscule green buds. Once spotting them, I’d run into our house and yelp: “The leprechauns are coming!” For me, something magical was simmering, a mystical transubstantiation. The budding “leprechauns” were tricksters...

I’ve been keeping a gratitude journal perhaps since my teenage years, but only lately do I call it as such. There is such power in honoring moments with loved ones, watching the morning birds at their feeders, smelling the wild air of the ocean and rubbing the belly of a puppy dog. Regardless of their advancing age, my dogs have always been puppies. Puppy boys, to be specific. Ten years ago, when realizing my husband and I were not going to be parents to humans, we decided the best way to deepen the love in our house was to invite...

Growing up in sunny Southern California, we learned to look to the future, to the next wave. But as a kid I ached for stories from my past. I spent afternoons paging through the Conlon Family Album, studying old photographs. My mother’s handwriting upon black pages. My favorite photos were—the dresses. Dresses that belonged to my Nana, Ana Julia—Dresses adorning my mother, Mary, a bathing beauty, before she married and had children. I loved the craft of those dresses, how they draped upon those womanly bodies, the dancing threads beholding bonds connecting mother and daughter. Few actual stories got handed down from my Motherlines. Although...