Jenny One Two Three

Jenny

One

Two

Three

Sean Walsh

Single Parent,

Two Wee Attachments –

sorry, Assets!

Copyright © 2021 by Sean Walsh

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner or his agent.

The world breaks everyone and after,

many are stronger at the broken places...

Hemingway.

Sometimes good things fall apart

so better things can come together.

Dedication

To Joanna and Siobhan – who else?!!

"Your writing is deep, penned with emotion and love

so comes from your heart to mine…

Have you shared with your girls? I think it would be wonderful if you do.

Your love for them… I read, hear… they need to know it!"

- Anonymous.

First Impressions

‘Once started I could not stop…  It is an amazing piece of work that defies classification. 

It is so many things in so many wonderful ways, in so many creative forms, with so many challenging time-shifts, emotional-shifts, narrative shifts - all explored, developed and drawn together in a sweep of literary magic.

The writing is at times poetic, ever beautiful and sensitive; at other times brilliantly dramatic…

It is, at heart, a warm delicate piece - and your pride in the Jennies, and their love for you, is never ever far away from us, the listeners and the watchers.

It will live on, in other times, in other hands. It will be housed, loved and treasured, way beyond its literary brilliance and its deserved literary applause.

Bernard Farrell.

‘Just finished Jenny One Two Three and am, to use your own word, gobsmacked. It’s a tour de force, deeply personal…

There is poetry in the writing and the interweaving of different stories, letters, photographs make it a compelling piece for the reader…

A unique piece to say the least, full of heartbreak and triumph… You have achieved a cleansing of sorts, which is, when all is said and done, the reason why we write…

John Liddy.

It is certainly the most absorbing reflection by a father on his relationship with his daughters that I have ever read.

I was deeply impressed by the qualities of truth and love which shine through it from beginning to end. All of the human heart seems to be there.

It is so deeply rooted in the soil of your life. Love is the thread that runs through everything, the agony and ecstasy, the heartbreak and the joyous celebration. It bears out Paul’s statement, ‘Love never ends’.

It is often deepened in suffering and struggle. I am sure it would speak to all parents and daughters (and sons).

Your way of expressing all that rich experience is as striking as ever – direct, immediate, finely honed, beautifully crafted.

Thank you for sharing – and yourself...

Martin Hogan.

Jenny. My mother’s name.

I remember her saying to me – I was hoping you’d call one of yours after me. Jolt. Oh, dear. It hadn’t occurred to me…

My weens. Siobhan and Joanna. When they started school it turned out they both had the same name – in Irish! ‘Didn’t even get that right!

Little angels. Charming. As Joan, my late sister-in-law, once put it –You’d beg the earth with them…

Indeed. Lovely while it lasted. And then? Then? The teenage years! Oh-hh!.. ‘Nuff said…

So when I came to write about them, they fused in my memory, imagination, became as one. That one I named Jenny.

And when I set out to chart the stages they passed through – infancy, adolescence, girlhood - the title of the script I was working on came to me: Jenny One, Two, Three…

Broadcast on RTE One, BBC 4 and, in German, on WDR, Cologne, it struck a chord in the heart of many a listener…

Superseded – longer, leaner, richer – as a chapter in my magnum opus: Notes on the Past Imperfect.

And now a further, final morph:

a memoir of sorts, memorabilia...

photos, clippings, comments...

monologue, dialogue...

poetry, prose, reviews... scrapbook.

Siobhhan Joanna.

"You’d beg the earth with them..."

Gone Daughter

I climb the stairway to the attic

- ‘clear day... dim-lit night -

into an empty room full of

Might Have Been...

‘Cross to the slanted ceiling,

lever open the window,

look out across slated roofs,

dull-bricked chimneys,

towards Dublin Bay...

the Migrant Way.

I’m Out a Here!

When she took off I gave her a month,

‘month at the most...

She’ll be back, I’d take bets on it.

Down at the mouth, sure,

but glad to be home for all that:

safe, secure, shelter...

Oh yeah, London will cure her cough..


Oh, Jenny, Jenny!..

What are you at, a tall a tall, daughter mine?

I didn’t give you a hope - how could I?

Sure I knew the time would come

when you’d want to fly the nest. Sure I did.

But I wanted so much you to have

something going for you -

so you wouldn’t be going to nothing...

Learning the hard way...

skimping on this, going without that.

Lunch? An apple and a Mars bar –

on a good day!

Answering one small ad

after another after an -

hoping against hope for an interview:

a chance to talk, bluff, lie your way

unto the first rung of an endless ladder

getting - nowhere...

But the weeks passed. And the seasons.

She hung in there, held out, roughing it.

No way would she give in. Pride?.. But of course.

And a strong resolve to stand and give challenge.

But kept in touch - the occasional letter,

the seldom phone call.

‘Came the day I booked a flight,

packed an overnight,

made a phone call, boarded for Heathrow,

fast track to London