Niall John Kavanagh

While all our days are linked, I’ve always thought of each new day having a life of its own. Each one with an exciting virgin beginning, pregnant with its own unique potential, and gifting us with memories – treasures that enrich all our nows and our dreams of as yet unfulfilled tomorrows.

I was born in Dublin Ireland on 27 July 1942. My life has been crammed with surprises; next July I'll be seventy-five, and that I'm still alive and writing this memoir is perhaps the biggest surprise of all. I was fourteen when my Da died, 1 April 1956 - and he was only forty-nine. I never expected to see fifty, yet here I am.

The distinctive character and rich history of Ireland is a huge part of my making. Laughter, Tears & Wonders is a collection of reminiscences that captures my childhood and growing up in Dublin in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s. Post-WWII Dublin may have been bleak, but for me, then and for the first thirty-three years of my life, it was utopian.

Sadly, however, I was forced to leave Utopia. In 1975, I immigrated to the United States (illegally I might add), in search of work. My first wife Teresa, our three children Elisa, Susan and Graeme, our dog Mandy, and my mother-in-law Rita, emigrated with me; Elisa was five, Susan was three, and Graeme was one.

Teresa died, 21 February 2003 following a two-year battle with lymphoma, and after twenty-eight years of making a new life together in another country. God works in mysterious ways; however, and just between you and me, I think He made a big mistake taking Teresa up to heaven so soon - she was fifty-nine.

In July 2005 I was blessed to find a new love and a new life in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. That's where I live today, along with my wife, Darlene and our two dogs, Hannah Banana and Max Loco.

I hope you enjoy these yarns as much as I delight in sharing them with you.There are lots more where they've come from; being the Dublin-born Irishman I am, sure haven't I only just begun?