Mary Ellen Talley
Mary Ellen Talley’s daughter. Rebecca at fourteen
Our Family’s Fascination with Irish Dancing
By Mary Ellen Talley
Although I never took any dance lessons in my youth, I paid my best friend a quarter for tap dance lessons in the second grade. Years later, when my own daughter Rebecca was in the second grade in 1991, she began taking Irish dance lessons on Sunday afternoons. Like many Irish dance students, our family claims Irish ethnicity. Rebecca took lessons, performed, and competed through high school.
Fast forward to 2013, Rebecca was a young mom with two young children watching the Seattle St. Patrick’s Day parade with me. Low and behold, dancing down the street leading his dance school students came Robert Haley, who had been Rebecca’s dance instructor when she was in high school. Rebecca reconnected with Robert and found his school had a branch in the Kitsap area, where Rebecca’s Navy family now lived. Rebecca signed her son up for dance lessons and he danced for about eight years. Now my daughter is busy with her three other children involved in lessons during the week and on weekends. Since she was an Irish dancer herself, Rebecca can really guide her children. Boys wear simple black slacks and shirts. But girls wear either fancy school dresses, or for older girls, glitzy solo dresses. The older girls now wear curly hair pieces. Sometimes I roll my eyes at that. However, I remember the hours spent curling young Rebecca’s hair; hairpieces save time!!
When performances or competitions are held nearby, my husband and I enjoy attending. Rebecca’s entire family is part of the Irish dance community. I’ve taken just a few Irish dance lessons at Phinney Neighborhood Center, enough to get a feel for the musicality and athleticism. Since I document life in poetry, I’ve mainly written about Irish dance. Robert is no longer with us, but Patti Prendergast continues to lead Haley-Prendergast Irish Dance School. It is amazing to watch my grandchildren and all the other dancers celebrate their Irish heritage.
The Laundress of Dingle
With each summer season, Bridgid adds
to the senior center’s coffers where she works
by doing dropped off tourist laundry.
[The only coin-operated machine in town
is in a parking lot beside a broken dryer.]
Cheery woman with a gift of gab,
Bridgid knows her people’s places, can mix
& match a family name to their way-back Irish county.
I tell my maiden name. She says to look in County Mayo.
Before leaving off the laundry, I exclaim
at all the green we have seen when driving
in the West of Ireland. Tell her our home
Seattle’s nickname is the Emerald City
but it’s doesn’t hold a candle to this Irish landscape.
I proclaim the lush green fields across more
green fields, inside rows of stacked stone-fences.
[I must seem to speak too fondly.]
When we return to pick up folded clothing
and pay our thirty euros, she begins to speak
of ditches, fences hemming in the lazy woolies.
I tell her we have been surprised needing to drive around
lollygagging sheep at rest on roadways.
[She likely rightly figures I have
my head in a bog over Irish farming.]
Brigid says sure these summer dry skies
delight the eyes,
but come March,
the sheep will be wearing maggots
and require several dips in frigid water.
By Mary Ellen Talley
Although I never took any dance lessons in my youth, I paid my best friend a quarter for tap dance lessons in the second grade. Years later, when my own daughter Rebecca was in the second grade in 1991, she began taking Irish dance lessons on Sunday afternoons. Like many Irish dance students, our family claims Irish ethnicity. Rebecca took lessons, performed, and competed through high school.
Fast forward to 2013, Rebecca was a young mom with two young children watching the Seattle St. Patrick’s Day parade with me. Low and behold, dancing down the street leading his dance school students came Robert Haley, who had been Rebecca’s dance instructor when she was in high school. Rebecca reconnected with Robert and found his school had a branch in the Kitsap area, where Rebecca’s Navy family now lived. Rebecca signed her son up for dance lessons and he danced for about eight years. Now my daughter is busy with her three other children involved in lessons during the week and on weekends. Since she was an Irish dancer herself, Rebecca can really guide her children. Boys wear simple black slacks and shirts. But girls wear either fancy school dresses, or for older girls, glitzy solo dresses. The older girls now wear curly hair pieces. Sometimes I roll my eyes at that. However, I remember the hours spent curling young Rebecca’s hair; hairpieces save time!!
When performances or competitions are held nearby, my husband and I enjoy attending. Rebecca’s entire family is part of the Irish dance community. I’ve taken just a few Irish dance lessons at Phinney Neighborhood Center, enough to get a feel for the musicality and athleticism. Since I document life in poetry, I’ve mainly written about Irish dance. Robert is no longer with us, but Patti Prendergast continues to lead Haley-Prendergast Irish Dance School. It is amazing to watch my grandchildren and all the other dancers celebrate their Irish heritage.
The Laundress of Dingle
With each summer season, Bridgid adds
to the senior center’s coffers where she works
by doing dropped off tourist laundry.
[The only coin-operated machine in town
is in a parking lot beside a broken dryer.]
Cheery woman with a gift of gab,
Bridgid knows her people’s places, can mix
& match a family name to their way-back Irish county.
I tell my maiden name. She says to look in County Mayo.
Before leaving off the laundry, I exclaim
at all the green we have seen when driving
in the West of Ireland. Tell her our home
Seattle’s nickname is the Emerald City
but it’s doesn’t hold a candle to this Irish landscape.
I proclaim the lush green fields across more
green fields, inside rows of stacked stone-fences.
[I must seem to speak too fondly.]
When we return to pick up folded clothing
and pay our thirty euros, she begins to speak
of ditches, fences hemming in the lazy woolies.
I tell her we have been surprised needing to drive around
lollygagging sheep at rest on roadways.
[She likely rightly figures I have
my head in a bog over Irish farming.]
Brigid says sure these summer dry skies
delight the eyes,
but come March,
the sheep will be wearing maggots
and require several dips in frigid water.
Mary Ellen’s grandchildren, Waylon, Taylor and Aubrey
after their performances in the Irish Nutcracker
Where Are the Ghillies?
They’re somewhere in the house
or in my daughter’s car
or left behind at Irish dance.
Her family drives three kids for miles
to Irish dance feiseanna.
It’s my fault, well, not just mine,
also their mom’s, our daughter Becca,
who in the first grade wanted lessons
like her friends Sheila and Katie.
I told Becca we’d have to wait
until Grandma leaves this mortal coil
because we’re driving to Spokane
so many weekends and lessons
are on Sundays. Perhaps for her,
my mom’s funeral also meant
a new beginning with Irish dance
long-laced black shoes called ghillies.
It was so cold driving Snoqualmie Pass
when we headed to the funeral; we slid
on black ice and hit a milepost, but arrived
with only a dent and a cracked windshield.
A few days later, our family walked
to Midnight Mass in snow,
my daughter wearing the wool beret
we had once given to my mother.
I wore the fuzzy matching scarf.
Snowflakes glimmered under streetlights
as our feet made white boot prints.
After Christmas, upon returning home
we bought our Becca ghillies, soft shoes
like those her own children now try
to keep track of because they practice
and perform so many places in their drive
to keep the Irish rhythms of their jigs and reels.
Slippery Jig
A few years back, I took up Irish dance lessons,
the youth in me wanting River Dance rub-off
since Michael Flatley was a global thrill,
an Irish Mikhail Baryshnikov, but I quit
when the teacher planned performance venues.
If my dancing granddaughter gets a muscle pull,
she’s back to competing lickety-split,
factors Physical Therapy sessions
into her schedule on top of high school homework.
She rolls her eyes when I sprain my ankle
slip jigging in her living room.
It takes two PT visits and months to heal.
No more kick-butt jumps or feet of flame
for me. For pain, I have myself to blame.
They’re somewhere in the house
or in my daughter’s car
or left behind at Irish dance.
Her family drives three kids for miles
to Irish dance feiseanna.
It’s my fault, well, not just mine,
also their mom’s, our daughter Becca,
who in the first grade wanted lessons
like her friends Sheila and Katie.
I told Becca we’d have to wait
until Grandma leaves this mortal coil
because we’re driving to Spokane
so many weekends and lessons
are on Sundays. Perhaps for her,
my mom’s funeral also meant
a new beginning with Irish dance
long-laced black shoes called ghillies.
It was so cold driving Snoqualmie Pass
when we headed to the funeral; we slid
on black ice and hit a milepost, but arrived
with only a dent and a cracked windshield.
A few days later, our family walked
to Midnight Mass in snow,
my daughter wearing the wool beret
we had once given to my mother.
I wore the fuzzy matching scarf.
Snowflakes glimmered under streetlights
as our feet made white boot prints.
After Christmas, upon returning home
we bought our Becca ghillies, soft shoes
like those her own children now try
to keep track of because they practice
and perform so many places in their drive
to keep the Irish rhythms of their jigs and reels.
Slippery Jig
A few years back, I took up Irish dance lessons,
the youth in me wanting River Dance rub-off
since Michael Flatley was a global thrill,
an Irish Mikhail Baryshnikov, but I quit
when the teacher planned performance venues.
If my dancing granddaughter gets a muscle pull,
she’s back to competing lickety-split,
factors Physical Therapy sessions
into her schedule on top of high school homework.
She rolls her eyes when I sprain my ankle
slip jigging in her living room.
It takes two PT visits and months to heal.
No more kick-butt jumps or feet of flame
for me. For pain, I have myself to blame.
Taylor
and Aubrey in fancy costumes.
Watching an Irish Dancing Feis*
Ghillies, hard shoes,
fake curls, and foam curls,
young dancers in bright school dresses,
older girls in wigs, crowns and sequined dresses—
all quite overwhelming.
Boys in black
girls in silk or velvet iridescence,
and white popcorn stitch anklets,
young women kicking butt,
their feet in flight exhilaration.
Resident fiddler churning out
jigs and reels
with accordion on a bent knee
fingers flying
so dancers’ ankles can weave rhythms.
Dancers stretching, counting,
remembering the dances: hornpipe,
St. Patrick’s Day, slip jig, two-hand,
four-hand, many dancers leaping,
lifting, kicking, bowing for the judges.
Some dancers and their parents
just want to honor Irish heritage,
while some aspire to dance
with Riverdance
or Lord of the Dance extravaganzas.
The dance bug bites,
eating holes in soft and hard shoes
as students listen to a Jim or Robert,
a Maggie or a Patty
in a world of cities.
Straight arms close to torso,
foot flight covering a whole stage
in dizzying speeds,
foot pounding thunder of their Irish clan
celebrating Irish soil.
*feis is pronounces fesh
Ghillies, hard shoes,
fake curls, and foam curls,
young dancers in bright school dresses,
older girls in wigs, crowns and sequined dresses—
all quite overwhelming.
Boys in black
girls in silk or velvet iridescence,
and white popcorn stitch anklets,
young women kicking butt,
their feet in flight exhilaration.
Resident fiddler churning out
jigs and reels
with accordion on a bent knee
fingers flying
so dancers’ ankles can weave rhythms.
Dancers stretching, counting,
remembering the dances: hornpipe,
St. Patrick’s Day, slip jig, two-hand,
four-hand, many dancers leaping,
lifting, kicking, bowing for the judges.
Some dancers and their parents
just want to honor Irish heritage,
while some aspire to dance
with Riverdance
or Lord of the Dance extravaganzas.
The dance bug bites,
eating holes in soft and hard shoes
as students listen to a Jim or Robert,
a Maggie or a Patty
in a world of cities.
Straight arms close to torso,
foot flight covering a whole stage
in dizzying speeds,
foot pounding thunder of their Irish clan
celebrating Irish soil.
*feis is pronounces fesh
Inside a Dingle Church
We sit on benches
with tourists and the locals
as trees flare outward upward,
green limbs disappear
into ebony-limbed shadows
dark of night apparition
through white arched windows
behind the once medieval altar.
Two vases of yellow
Black-Eyed Susans
and an arc of candlelight
brighten as sun recedes.
Bodhran, uilleann pipes,
guitar and voices stir the air.
A singer from the Blasket Islands
stands to hammer a wood floor
with her hard shoe clamor.
All trees disappear inside the dark.
Read more about Mary Ellen:
https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/search?q=Mary+Ellen+Talley
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