Cathy Cash Spellman

My mother could foretell death, my daughter described her own death in heartbreaking detail a month before it happened, we had a family Banshee and my aunts tended to communicate by telepathy.  In short, we were Irish, so none of that was beyond the Pale of plausibility.

You can imagine why, coming from such a family, my being somewhat psychic didn’t seem particularly noteworthy to me in childhood, just interesting. I could frequently see glimpses of things before they happened, and had Far Memory of other lifetimes that were quite specific.  Continue reading “What’s Outside the Box?” »

It occurred to me today, as I found myself standing in the middle of the family plot talking to the people I love who are no longer with me except in spirit and memory, that anyone not Irish might  consider it odd to find comfort in a cemetery.  Yet, I always do.

I’d gone there to to talk to my family about life  and I’d brought coffee because they’d loved it and because I thought it might be a lengthy conversation. A middle-aged woman passing by smiled and waved at me from the road below. “I’m so happy to see I’m not the only one who brings coffee when I come to chat, ” she called out and we both laughed at the loveable absurdity of the scene.

Maybe it’s the fact that we used to visit old graveyards when I was a child – admiring the tumbledown tombstones, scrying the inscriptions, imagining the heartaches both recent and long ago.  So much history captured in moldering memorials – died in childbirth… lost in infancy… gone but not forgotten… we will miss you forever – so much of love and anguish preserved forever in a line or two.  I used to wander from stone to stone reading the messages, imagining lives. Or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve lost so many  of those dearest to my heart that makes this a place of solace for me. Continue reading “The Family Plot” »

5:00 a.m. 

It’s just me and the tree.  The house is quiet.  Nobody else loves the morning as I do, since my father’s gone.  There’s snow on the ground and sleet has turned the trees outside to fairyland, ice palaces crisscrossing my front yard, transforming the winter-blue light into a magical dreamscape.

I throw a log on the fire and warm my hands that have carried the wood in from the porch.  The fragrance of the coffee pot tumbles memories out of their store house in my heart. Continue reading “My Alone Time with the Tree” »

Love manifests in the strangest ways.  Just like courage. And understanding.

Sometimes it sneaks up on you and you don’t realize how great a gift it is or how much self-sacrifice was required of the giver. Until later, much later in the game of life, when you’ve grown old enough to know that nothing is like our perfectly sensible expectations and most of it is so much harder than we’d ever dreamed.

Christmas joy was just such a gift, given to me long ago by my Mother, for whom joy was not a frequent visitor.  Let me explain. Continue reading “A Christmas Story” »

I have a beloved sister, Conny, nearly 13 years younger than I.  We’re quite different in appearance, profession, proclivities, talents and even in sexual orientation, but in our hearts, we’re pretty much cut from the same cloth.  We’ve worked together in one way or another, for a lifetime, certain this is not the first lifetime we’ve spent together – we knew each other too well from the start, for this to be the first time.  Listening, helping, shoring each other up in the dark times, laughing together when given half a chance to… sharing history, joy, memories, anguish… we’ve pretty much been there for each other for a half century or so. Continue reading “My Sister” »

This blog appeared in the New York Times on January 15, 2013. If you’d like to read it, please follow this link for the full text: New York Times, Face to Face With Mom in the Mirror

I confess to feeling slightly foolish blogging about Titanic, but the phenomenon of Dakota and her pals going to see it in Imax 3-D – for their 34^th lifetime viewing – set me to pondering what on earth could have precipitated that kind of devotion to a movie. OK. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit I’ve read all three volumes of Kristin Lavransdatter eight times, sobbing through every one of the readings, so maybe this is just this generation’s great love story, but still…

It made me remember the first time round when she and her friends – then 8 years old – fell under the enchantment of what turned out to be a life event. Let me explain: 

No longer did they play Barbie or American Girl Doll, they sat instead listening rapt to the Titanic CD, or they put on Rose and Jack costumes and went down with the ship in tearful splendor.  Dakota and her friend Sydney went Trick or Treating dressed as the Titanic and the Iceberg, and made the local papers!    Continue reading “You Jump… I Jump…” »

I’ve blogged so much about Dakota you probably already feel you know her, but maybe you don’t know her work yet, so I’d like to introduce you on the cusp of her graduation from Parsons.

Of course, Colleges of Art are not quite like any others… Dakota’s cap and gown were fire engine red and her commencement speaker, Dwayne Michaels, a brilliant 85 year old Fine Arts Photographer, advised the class to kick over the traces, never do anything the way the authority figures say to, and live every single minute of every day being true to their own vision and dreams.  He was an outrageous sage, brimming with  uproarious life force.  I wish I’d recorded every word – I think I’d play it for myself once a month as a reminder of how those of us who toil in the Arts must constantly renew our belief in ourselves and our work, against all odds. Continue reading “Dakota/Class of 2012” »

When I was a child, I thought of my mother’s sister Mary as the Dowager Empress of the World.  She was tall and stately and would sit on her chair like a queen on a throne, her adoring daughters dancing attendance on her as if she thoroughly deserved it.  In truth, she probably did, as I remember her best for her marvelous  laughter.  Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, says the poem, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.*

She had an outsized, robust approach to life  that somehow managed to combine outrageous wit and grace with merriment, and she, unlike my mother, knew about sex and heartily approved of it.  My mother disapproved of Mary altogether, which amused her sister no end and prompted her to say outrageous things she knew would get my mother’s goat.  But there was history between them and an oddball twist of fate that neither of them could alter. Continue reading “What’s in a Name?” »

My childhood was spent in a haze of books and familial propriety.  The small-town-America life, where children safely walked alone to school and dawdled their way home, lulled into daydreams by the sweetness of the neighbors’ gardens, is probably gone now, but the visuals are clear to me still.  A wall of rambling roses at Mrs. Flynn’s… an exaltation of wildflowers behind Dr. Goldstein’s mansion… the New York skyline beyond the great river that separated me from my destiny, or so I believed.  Wait for me New York, I’m coming… I’d breathe to it from Boulevard East, staring out at the glittering, beckoning megaliths of Manhattan. All those childhood images are as close to me now, as the scene outside my office window.

Life was good, except for my mother’s Vesuvian temper, which I’d more or less learned to deal with by going underground to my imagination.  I also went to the library, a magnificent old edifice with all-but crenellated battlements, an ivy covered round tower and several leftover suits of armor, collected by some turn of the century tycoon, who’d created a castle that would become a book depository… and my escape to Paradise. Continue reading “The Moving Finger Writes…” »

I’ve been thinking about my Father a lot this Holiday Season.  Missing him… wishing he were here with me and Dakota to watch It’s a Wonderful Life for the umpteenth time.

Papa was a rare bird.  He laughed a lot and taught me useful things… how to hang storm windows… how to recite poetry with passion… how to love every minute of being alive.

He had a way about him… a kind of gentle poetry of being.  Not a namby-pamby-Ashby-Wilkes gentlemanliness, but the sturdy, stalwart kind that men of “The Greatest Generation” seemed to have.  The “protect the family, save the world for democracy, go to church on Sunday, play pinochle with the men in the family, roll up your sleeves, fix the toaster or your skinned knee” kind of benevolence that makes a person feel safe and loved.  Continue reading “Memories of My Father” »

I can’t think of a better New Year’s Resolution than to try to live up to the gentle truths of my father’s philosophy, so I’d like to offer them to you in this little poem I wrote about him, both as a loving remembrance, and as a tribute to the kind of old fashioned values that could change the world for the better in a heartbeat, if we could only find the courage to believe it would make the difference.  Continue reading “My New Year’s Resolution” »

The ghosts of Christmas past 

Wandered by my tree just now

A cup of tea in hand, I stopped 

To admire the sweetness of the nearly trimmed tree

And there you were

My Mommy and Daddy

Young and shiny, hopeful as when

On Christmas morning I’d open the presents 

You’d saved to buy. Continue reading “Christmas Past” »

I love the holidays with all my heart.  I wait all year, anticipatory as a child, to be able to play Christmas carols without apologies.  Truth is, from November through New Year’s, my life takes on an incandescence undreamed of in the rest of my work-a-day year.  Music, decorations, lights, tinsel, a lifetime’s worth of carefully wrapped treasures – all find their way out of attic or basement, and into a house made magical by the memory of Christmas Past. Continue reading “Holiday Happiness Starts Now…” »

I was blessed with a family of great and stalwart women, who were kind enough to live into their 90s (one to 105!) so I could enjoy their wisdom, laughter and strength for much of my life… and also learn how to make great pies!

I know we can’t recreate the best of our past, but a few very visceral treasures stand the test of time.  

Continue reading “My Aunt’s Perfect Blueberry Pie” »