I was conceived standing up. My father had broken his leg badly, and, on crutches for a very long time, dragged around a plaster cast from hip to toes. My mother, a schoolteacher in the small town of Ambridge, Pennsylvania, was obliged to inform the Principal, Mr Kusma, that, in the meantime, she’d fallen pregnant. “But, Betty, Victor’s leg is in a cast”!, spluttered Kusma. My mother replied, with a shrug and an expressively arched eyebrow: “Yes, but only his leg …”

And so began the eulogy I’d written for my late mother (may her memory be for a blessing), read graveside to the assembled mourners, but intended for an audience of one: my biggest fan, my champion, my mother. Her body lay in a closed casket, a plain pine box, free of metal and completely degradable, as proscribed by Jewish law, to allow the body to return to Earth as quickly as possible. The Talmud (collected writings on Jewish law and traditions) states that the deceased’s soul is present until burial, aware of everything spoken in its presence; though I considered myself a lapsed Jew, I’d taken no chances with my script, building anecdotes from her life into punchlines that paid off with laughs even my deaf-in-later-life mother’s soul would hear.

In the months following, my sister sifted through boxes of paperwork our mother couldn’t bear to part with, including a shoe box labelled Betty’s Cards and one titled My Copies of Susie’s Writing. Debbie texted me with finds from our correspondence: newsy letters on airmail paper, souvenir postcards from decades lived abroad, copies of my columns and printouts of emails, including one in which she wrote “Susie, you always know how to touch my heart”, in response to a quote from Gabriel García Márquez that began “If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you …” My sister, who has lived a comparatively conservative life, messaged me wistfully: “Sigh. She lived vicariously through u. She travelled. She wrote. She came alive. Through u. Your interesting friends. Your shows. Your articles.”

Playing the role of heroine in my mother’s unrealised version of her life story brought with it the responsibility of being extraordinary. I often wondered who I might have been, had she become a journalist instead of a schoolteacher, later a single mother and branch manager of a betting parlour, putting the three of us through university after my handsome/depressive/violent/gone father had left us for good. Might I have lived a life more ordinary?

The late literary critic of The Irish Times, Eileen Battersby discussed Seamus Heaney’s work in a 1996 article “Magician of the Ordinary”, quoting Heaney’s advice to a young poet in “Fosterage” from North to “look for the intimate thing.” It was advice, Battersby noted, “which Heaney heeded throughout beautiful, just and crafted art, ever exploring the magic of the ordinary”. For the guts of a month, during my daily walk, I’d pause at a dead fox decomposing in the scrub below the hedge bordering our cottage and the canal. As it receded into the ditch, its matted fur sinking into the muddy grass, I debated giving up the considerable air miles I’d amassed, staying at home instead, to observe miraculous changes in the most ordinary things, to be “bounded in a nutshell, a king of infinite space”. My mother loved to tell the story of the time I ran away from home one rainy night, eight years old, dragging a small suitcase beyond the driveway, disappearing into the dark, citing it as a precursor to my itinerant life. That Barbie Doll case morphed into one I’d travel the world with, a thrift store find I covered with vintage-style travel stickers. My mother adored my extraordinary life. I honour her ordinary one.

THIS MONTH’S MOODBOARD

I’m reading to my Rotties a bedtime story by Eileen Battersby, from my local library.

I’m switching to The Ordinary Serum Foundation, a steal at under €7!

I’m stopping to smell the roses with a sustainably made (in County Down) sculpted rose cushion in Irish linen. www.katielarmour.com

I’m considering how everyday objects impact our daily lives, through essays and pics by famous ordinary Swiss like Mario Botta and Alain de Botton.

I’m embracing the ordinary, doing the washing up using a cotton tea towel from www.schooloflife.com.

I’m bowling green with live-edge native ash nested bowls turned by Leitrim-based Roy Humphreys. Irish Design Shop, 41 Drury St. D2

I’m playing house in Spiced Cinnamon, Forest Green and Inked Blue from Dublin-based textile designer www.fionawhitedesign.com.

I’m wondering if he loves me or loves me not in a silver and gold Daisy Chain Ring by Fermanagh-based www.fionakerrjewellery.co.uk