Monday morning at five o'clock and I am sitting up. The black
birds had been calling to the rising sun since four. Another uneasy night.
I looked across the bed to my wife. Her eyes fluttered open and she heaved
a sigh, and we stared out the window lost in the same thought. "Can't we
go back?," she said at last with a voice edged with regret. I leaned towards
her cheek and kissed it. "Go back?", I mused. Back to the very beginning?
To Ireland? "I hope so," I said. If not to the beginning, then Ireland would
surely do.
The Emerald Isle. To write of it with honesty I must quit the
well-worn image. James Joyce - as stout a Dubliner as one could be - dealt
with this by the whimsical picture of cows at pasture. From far away they
looked quaint, but up close they smelled the same as any other barn yard
beast.
The Irish were always good at putting themselves in the best light possible.
They have turned their lives into legend by branding themselves the Great
Survivors. Their miseries were the deepest, their toils the most extreme,
and their victories the sweetest. They are a people of story.
With story the common becomes significant and the painful becomes noble. At the risk of hyperbole, to be Irish is to distill the frailty and fallibility of mortal experience into an elixir that might heal the world's hurts. That's what this Irishman believes. It is what this world needs. »
Ireland is green ... one of the greenest places on this earth you will
ever see. It rains at least twice a week, so you may be sure that something
will grow. Whether the sun will shine is another matter. When it does
the landscape takes on a ferocious clarity that revives you. Not since our trip to the
Highlands in 2002 have I felt the exhilaration of a bright
sky carved by steep green hills.
Unfortunately, those occurrences were short-lived. Almost every day
started in a cover of clouds so most pictures had a brooding feel. Occasionally the sky would clear and offer some real light to work by. That's what happened for this shot, taken on the Dingle peninsula on our drive back to Dublin.
We started our three day trip by renting a car in Dublin and
drove to Kilkenny - eighty miles south - where we spent the night.
Our B&B hostess Vicky also did Web design, so after breakfast we traded URLs and discussed her family's plan to summer in the south of France. It seemed
complicated, but Vicky assured us it would come together. She had a special
feeling about those things, you see.
Judy and I toured Kilkenny Castle and bought matching silver Claddagh
rings in the shop next door. We then drove south through Waterford (2005 E.U. Culture capitol) and Cork and arrived in Kenmare, a pleasant town that sits at the notch between the Beare and Kerry peninsulas. We spent the evening drinking and singing in one of the pubs, keenly aware of the many loud Americans who surrounded us. »
We were advised to 'avoid the tourists' by seeing the less popular
Ring of Beare, but we ended up avoiding civilization altogether with a wrong
turn that had us crossing some mountains via a sheep track. We eventually
found our bearings again and, after a quick hike, drove a part of the Ring
of Kerry into Killarney which, as our hostess warned, was a real tourist
trap.
Since it was Saturday evening and Sunday would require a day of driving, we decided to attend Mass in Kenmare. For Judy it was a poignant hour that revived memories of her mother and her birthplace in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The priest read the wrong Gospel, his sermon genially rambled, and the congregation prayed at break neck speed, but the feeling of being a temporary part of this community was unique.
Although our hostess thought we were barking mad to try it, we put a visit to Dingle as the first leg of our long drive back to Dublin. Dingle was a hippy-trippy town and a popular stop for all the tour buses, so we kept it brief and then drove a twisting road through the Conner Pass. What I saw was brief but breathtaking as the route was unforgiving to those with a lapse in concentration.
After a very long day on the road we arrived in Dublin's outskirts for a bite and a bed. By noon the next day we were back in the air and taking one last look at the quilted green land below before it vanished into clouds. Our final plane ride was only six weeks away. »
Ireland is a magnet that draws from distant shores the offspring of those who left it in the desperate hope of a better life. For many, America became that hope ... though they would have to wrestle it from the land and from the powerful. America's story began with the pitched struggle
to stay alive. Ingenuity was born of that struggle. The Irish were clever; they fought hard, stuck together, and survived.
Judy can trace her Irish roots back to her mother's family ... to her great-grandmother who crossed the Atlantic in a rickety boat - possibly with her family but possibly alone - to settle in Boston where her line has lived ever since. Her courage eventually brought the hope she'd surrendered all else to find. On a windy hill overlooking oceans of space and time, her great -
granddaughter stood as a witness to that courage.
And what of that chap standing next to her? Surely a Hooper extracted from the West Country could have no Irish claim, yet he does.
Her name was Margaret Stevens. She was born in Newcastle at the turn of the last century, and she also sailed to America hoping for a better life. But her hope was cut short; she died young, yet not before giving birth to a daughter with pale blue eyes. This daughter, now orphaned, was adopted by a kindly couple named Latowsky. They named their little girl Joanne, and she became my mother. That's a true story.
God help us if the day should dawn when we forget we are born of what was, or if we give up our lives without first putting up a fight. Margaret Stevens, if you are listening, you are now known by all who read these lines. Thank you for your life. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for my mother. We will remember you always.
