Soda Bread

I’ve been part of a writers’ critique group for a dozen years or more. There are half-dozen of us, give or take one or two, depending on our schedules. We meet once a month, always at someone’s home, and read and critique some of our recent work.

Sometimes it’s not a lot of fun to be part of a group like this. Egos can clash. Feelings can be hurt. If, as sometimes happens, you’re forced to sit and listen to really terrible writing at every meeting, violence may ensue.

I’m lucky. The group I’m in is comprised of writers who’ve already published or who deserve publication. We’re good for each other.

I haven’t been able to attend every meeting over the last year or so. Sometimes chemo has gotten in the way and sometimes I just haven’t been up to it. But these friends have steadily let me know of their love, with phone calls and e-mails.

I went to a critique group meeting yesterday. There were only a few of us there: Sylvia and Linda and Donna and Peter and me. I was asked to read first. So I did. A couple of sections of the memoir I’m working on. And then we talked. Sylvia told me how much she’d learned about me by reading this blog and by hearing parts of my story. Donna and Linda and Peter agreed. They told me they were happy I was finally opening myself up a bit.

I know I’ve spent most of my life not disclosing anything real about myself. Some of that is cultural. Irish men aren’t known for sober displays of emotionalism. It’s easier to hide behind a façade of toughness or to tell a joke or sing a song or just act as if it – whatever it is – doesn’t really matter.

Some of it is because there’s some stuff that’s always been too painful or embarrasing.

But I realized as we talked yesterday that I was glad I’d found a way to open up. This is new for me, but it’s okay. It’s not so bad having people know how I feel, that I’m afraid or sad or happy or whatever. As important as these people – Sylvia and Peter and Donna and Linda – have been to me they’re more important now.

We snack at these meetings. Yesterday, there was cheese and fruit and crackers. Since it was Linda’s birthday, there was a cake. And before I left, Sylvia gave me three small loaves of Irish soda bread.

I’d never eaten soda bread until I met Sylvia, who’s from Ireland. My mother didn’t bake much. Only an infrequent pie or one of her noteworthy cakes that always seemed to be listing slightly to port or starboard after they were iced. She didn’t bake bread because that wasn’t something one did with one’s rare leisure time. When she was a girl, baking bread was a time-consuming and necessary chore. Buying bread already sliced from a bakery was, for her, the beginning of women’s liberation.

Anyway, I’m not used to soda bread, but I love it. Served with what the Irish call a thick "lashing" of butter it’s good enough to make me close my eyes. I had some this morning for breakfast. And as I ate it, I thought of the group and of how lucky I am to have these friends and of how it’s really okay with me that they know more about me than they used to.