BLATHERINGS FROM THE SOUL Otherwise, why I taught I.B. Theatre for thirty years.

“By Hospital Lane goes the 'Faeries Path.' Every evening, they travel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea end of their path stands a cottage.”

W.B. Yeats.

Here was my childhood home. Soon, after barking, peculiar breath noises, and gravity-extruded nasal rivulets, Pookas, Changelings, and Grogochs discovered both my head and heart. Whooping cough had called. Thus began a fraught relationship with an eight-year-old, where complication begat complication. Quarantined, my mother took leave from her psychiatry work to care for me. When health allowed home lessons began. Apprehensive about the source of these new lessons, she responded they were ‘brought by whisper bubbles from the sea’. As a tradition-bearer with an inexhaustible repertoire, my mother’s unashamed cultural pride etched Irish superstitions and stories into my soul. Logic removed its footwear admitting there was little more to be done. At the crossroads of Coleridge’s ‘Willing suspension of disbelief’, a cathartic place between places, the immature blatherings of a future theatre maker took form.

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Hyperbole was visibly my mother’s native tongue. Her animated dissertations flooded both colour and light into my sensory deficits. Magical stories about mythical beings, along with tall tales about little Irish people, startled my mind into awakening itself. I was in love. An early favourite was the story about the giant Finn McCool. Not for his heroism in building the Giants Causeway. Nor because he burned his thumb cooking the Salmon of Knowledge. But when Finn wanted to know what was going to happen, he placed a thumb in his mouth. I too, had a similar superpower. My thumb sucking could temporarily stifle whoops I knew agitated the voice behind the newspaper. My father.

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Complications extended my isolation. Despite being a self-sufficient repository for Irish folk law, Mother’s postcards, full of doodles pertinent to each of her eight sisters brought bounty. The usually silent brass knocker worked overtime to announce arrival of yet more brown, paper-wrapped books.?Irish Fairy Folk Tales interspersed with poems?by W. B. Yeats, were quickly followed by?Oscar Wilde's Stories for Children. Much to the displeasure of its regular occupant, outsize books liberated from the local library challenged his claim to the fireside window seat. Mother's readings were a distillation of Cirque du Soleil for the senses. Revelling in her Irish oral tradition, with a Ring Master’s charisma, she created imagery that danced behind my eyes. Some sceptics believe fairy folk belong to a fictitious world. My mother's declarations said not.

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Till whooping cough determined isolation, school was a cold, convent castle perched over the sea. I assumed all teachers were nuns without legs, able to float down corridors, sing beautifully, and evoke terror if answers were wrong. Conversely, with pauses for paroxysms of coughing and inspiratory ‘whoops’, Mother’s methodology was a collaborative feast for the senses. Her story-based diet of allegory, metaphor, and symbolism elbowed my imagination away from what to think and towards how. More meaningfully, for the first time, learning brought immeasurable joy. Multiple means to peer beyond the iconography taught me to value sensory experiences and emotional impact. Curiosity became a cumulative antidote for coughs. Somewhere between James Joyce’s?The Cat and the Devil?and Jonathan Swift’s immortal ‘Struldbruggs’, quizzical interjections arrived prompted by, ‘Now what do you think?’ A lifetime of opportunities later, I still cannot curb these compulsive, wanting-to-know behaviours.

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The high mortality rates in?Aesop’s Fables alarmed me. Asked why, I faltered, anxious not to give the wrong answers. Fear of imperfection, to be viewed as flawed resurrected humiliation from convent days. Aware inner critics entrenched from former teachings had materialised, Mother borrowed from Oscar Wilde and reminded me with hugs, ‘Be yourself; everyone else is already taken’.?Aesop's Fables?were her ‘double stories’. Whoops permitting, my inquiry mission was to actively self-reflect and enquire into rationales for ‘the other voices’. Rudimentary deconstruction began. Teased to question,?disseminate?truths and consider contradictions I found Derrida. Alone, curiosity dared me to open one of my father's ‘for show only’ encyclopaedias. Unknowingly I replaced it in the wrong alphabetical order. Criminal behaviour discovered, the voice behind the paper instantly assigned the area around the bookshelf as a ‘no go’ area. Horrified, Mother pointed to the floor. Here her untidy, graffitied, colour-coded, corner-turned psychology books convalesced after each of her exams. 'Read,’ she declared. I did.

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Summer faded as seasons of coal fires and conkers continued my isolation. Concerned about my mental state, Mother repurposed her professional skills, and curious teaching strategies percolated into the impervious. Empathetic ambushes along sensory paths arrived. No clocks or schedules. Learning happened when it could. Because coughing spasms only allowed short attention spans, Mother adopted a heuristic approach to maximise my time. Poetry, fables, and Fairies, alongside stories of Greek myths and legends, came to help me listen through my senses, and examine experiences as a compassionate witness to the unsaid. I still ponder what new paths logic could reveal if discarded footwear was ever found. For that, I still wait.

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I cherished this new ownership. Being encouraged to hypothesise and imaginatively consider fresh perspectives granted me keys to the freedom of self. Later my mother apologised. She disclosed her despair at discovering the depth of my solitude. The convent by the whispering sea was infinitely closer to the cottage than the boy’s school. We moved often. Intending to ease anxiety over yet another school, she asked the nuns to accept my sister and I together. Despite it being a girl’s school, they agreed. Swiftly, I amassed A stars in shame and fear of failure, as well as my father’s wrath. Discovering mental and physical needs, I became both my mother’s patient and student. Unobtrusively, Constructive therapy was applied to confront negative perceptions. To illustrate ways I could become less self-tormenting, a meticulous selection of tales and characters was introduced as part of a process for me to meet myself. Ultimately, I realised ownership of learning was mine, and found a voice to create my life path. Discovering I had the right to be a meaning maker, someone able to construct my own external experiences through collaborative action, stimulated hope. The negative thoughts I looped inside were not absolute. Slowly, small ideas dared to bloom in the garden of abstract thought. Somewhere, I once felt like a trespasser. Unaware, then here was my early introduction to I.B.

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In a place of magic and mists, the Silent Valley of the Mourne Mountains, my mother grew up with her eight sisters and three brothers. She identified zero points of my little world, teaching me how stories can heal and come alive through the breath of a storyteller. I, too yearned to become a custodian of this oral tradition. These same mountains inspired C.S. Lewis’s mythical land of Narnia. Nonsense poems by Edward Lear and, later, the backdrop for Game of Thrones and Vikings. This brief, breathless episode was my private dreamtime with an incomparable teacher. Only at her deathbed did I truly discover what she endured to shape my existence.?

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Bizarrely, once my behaviours identified a need for therapeutic interventions?to restore self-esteem, whooping cough’s extended stay brought transformative learning strategies. Mother silenced my inner critics. Supported by a bevvy of Irish myths and storytellers, inquiry-based projects demystified, and then instilled cathartic learning patterns that made new thinking accessible. To someone who thinks in pictures, ownership of ideas once thought impossible continue to bring a sense of wonder. Serendipity's discoveries during quarantine instigated innovative experiences, healing voices, and gluttony for lifelong learning.

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Now the apologies. Unmodified, the thoughts above spilled as they arrived. Crowded and contentious, cravings for rewrites were rejected. Instead, I digitally journaled. So I could reframe feelings, my mother a lifetime ago gave me a blue spiral booklet to note thoughts and locate triggers. Misplacing the book, and struggling to exorcise ages cognitive distortions as anniversaries loom, I post here. Hopefully, as someone often caricatured as a mature selfie seeker, my disclosures may help the well-being of others with invisible uncertainties. Objective complete, I pray for more metaphorical hugs than hecklings in response to these outpourings of balderdash and fiddle dee dee. Here I intended closure, but I cannot. My stream brought a connection that needs a PostScript.

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Decades later the Banshee summoned me from Sri Lanka. I returned to say goodbye to the lady whose tales about people of the mounds restored hope. With determined snatches for air, she rasped her final story. A tale about the ‘ever young’. A stillborn, denied consecrated ground and, with her sister’s help, buried on a hillside in the Silent Valley accompanied by a Keener’s wail. Truth? Fantasy? Or perhaps a tale for another time. As Mother often said, ‘Now, what do you think?’

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“Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.” W. B. Yeats.