Twenty-One Years

A story of one man’s journey to reach his twenty-first birthday, alive at least. Barry Clifford was born in England but abandoned in Ireland along with his brother, Michael, by both parents when he was six-months-old. Raised by loving grandparents, he would see his parents briefly one more time, before they abandoned him again to a reformatory prison for children, while he was only five-years-old. This time it was for good. With a love for life, he would go on to make the best of it. By the time he had reached his twenty-first birthday, he had already suffered a stroke, escaped from the prison, become homeless, traced his parents who did not want to be found, lost all his nine lives, and got married. Even now, he would not have changed a thing- if only because of the characters he met, the adventures that went with it, and the happiness that was found at the end of it all.