While for some time I have been accepted over here by friends and family, locals who see me less as an interloper and more of just another friendly face, there are a few facets of everyday life which I have previously been unable to take part in. I eat the food, I wear the clothes, I sing the songs and dance a few steps of the dances, and yet in one or two areas I still found myself limited. In an effort to erase that feeling of exclusion, and indeed to keep me sharp as to one classic American institution, I saddled up, strapped in, gritted my teeth and turned the ignition. Yes, hide your pets and children, I started driving on Irish roads.
You probably are aware, at least in a general sense, that motoring takes place on the left hand side of this country. Making the switch to south paw navigation is not that difficult, in my limited driving experience here I’ve only been on the ‘wrong side’ of the road a handful of times, and never for so long as to cause a ‘major’ collision. What requires a more serious adjustment is reacquainting yourself with all of the car’s controls, knobs, buttons, and levers that control the little things on cars, like headlights and turn signals which are by and large juxtaposed as you might or might not expect when the steering wheel is on the other side. Combine that with the ubiquity of the stick shift (luckily I had some experience with manual gearboxes) which are also controlled on the left (which I had no experience with) and all of this can make your first few forays into Irish driving daunting on a good day.
Once you do get accustomed to making the car go in the direction you want it to your next challenge will be navigation. Do you have a fairly comprehensive knowledge of Irish geography especially all of the small towns and villages that lay between you and your desired destination? No? That’s unfortunate, because must directions you’ll receive from helpful guides will be a series of places you will drive through in order to get to where you want to be. For example, the 15 minute drive from ‘the home place’ (family home) in Laragh (which isn’t so much a proper town but rather a general area in the country not marked by any road signs) to Castlerea (a nearby town that actually appears on google maps) one has two options as to how to get there; the Ballymoe way or the Ballintubber way. While these two towns lay in opposite directions from one another, both can be passed through on the way to Castlerea, however once you’re through the town proper both routes seem to wind through similar country sides, once of which contains a prison while the other has a castle.
Going further a field offers further difficulty especially once you get to the coast, I have heard recently that ‘the road’ on Inishmore (one of the famed Aran Islands) has washed away. Imagine, after going to the effort of driving out to the island you find out that the road had fallen into the sea, you’d never complain about construction delays again. Trying to get to Donegal in the far off north of the country is even more harrowing in winter, I am told, because you have a choice of just two roads which will get you there without passing the border into British owned Northern Ireland. These two roads are not the most reliable it would seem, as one was long known as the deadliest road in all of the republic due to its habit of icing over and sending drivers careening to their unfortunate fate, and the other is a costal road prone to high winds and the occasional aforementioned washout issues. It should also be noted that a small amount of snowfall can render either impassable and with that in mind, the good people of Donegal constructed a very nice airport to deal with such issues.
Most everywhere is connected by networks of rural roadways and while there are some proper dual carriageways (highways) which connect major cities, the majority of roads will consist of two lanes-one for each direction- and if you’re lucky there will be some kind of shoulder. You will still be lucky if there’s a ditch on the sides of the road as opposed to the standard brick wall covered in bushes from whence any multitude of small animals, or in some cases large animals, dogs, or pedestrians, may spring unexpectedly. Traffic on such byways is not restricted to small cars, lorries (semi-trucks), tractors, and horse and trap (carriages) are all likely to be found on them, more accurately they will find you as they come head on from around a sharp and blind corner. There may or may not be lane markers, or for that matter well maintained pavement, while all of this is coming at you and people walk bravely along the edges of thick knotted grass which separate the tarmac (road) from the walls and fences which keep livestock in the field, except for Sundays when it’s easiest to move sheep and it’s not surprising to be held up by the wooly cross traffic.
Seemingly all of these factors come together in what I can only say is the pinnacle of Irish driving terror; The Roundabout. Long relegated to the status of legend and butt of jokes American abroad movies, these staples of European traffic systems are inarguably the best solution to the problem posed by five or more roads converging at a single point like spokes on a wheel. This knowledge is of little comfort when approaching your first busy intersection in the midst of a city, the constantly circling flow of cars, trucks, and busses overwhelms the senses and their coordinated flow in and out of the melee baffles the mind. After a few lessons from helpful Irish drivers, it becomes less opaque; around the inner island of concrete there are two (unmarked) lanes, the inside lane is used to access all but the road immediately to your left and as the flow of vehicles proceeds clockwise you are to move from the inner lane to the outer only when exiting the roundabout while keeping aware of cars merging in from every direction. If you miss your turn-off you are instructed to circle around once more and try again this time praying just a little bit harder that you’ll signal correctly while shifting into third with your left hand and not be overtaken by a passenger bus which seems to be the size of a cargo ship.
In short, driving here is not for the weak of spirit and liberal use of classic Gaelic phrases such as ‘feck’, ‘bugger’, and ‘eejit’ is recommended. Believe me when I say there will be plenty of opportunities to use such glowing terms if you ever take a journey across this beautiful land. It seems that no mater which country you hail from we’re all afflicted by drivers who go too slow in the fast lane (the right lane over here), ones who pull out ahead of you, tail-gaters, people who don’t know how to use their turn signals, or don’t turn off their high beams when on-coming on a dark night. No, there is no shortage of thick headed, ignorant, impossibly moronic drivers on the road, and now, thanks to me, Ireland has one more.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Friday, January 24, 2014
Legen.....Derry
When I got off the plane in Dublin airport I was quite excited to see my fiancée Regina, not entirely because there had been a nine month absence which we’d both endured although that was the lion’s share of the excitement. But while on the plane I had learned a new fact, apparently the long held belief that the Irish are descendants of the ancient people known as the Celts is in fact erroneous. Recent, or so I was lead to believe by the in-flight entertainment, developments have used modern science to tie the DNA of the Irish to similar strains found by peoples native to the northern region of Spain; the Basques.
So upon my arrival in Ireland and after a thorough amount of time spent kissing and holding my beloved I shared with her my revelation. Yeah, she replied, of course. She explained to me that it was widely known that the Milesians ventured out from the Iberian peninsula and settled in Ireland after a series of clashes with the indigenous people. It is at this juncture that I would like to point out that the ‘indigenous people’ were not exactly people but rather gods, goddesses, and beings of the spirit world. Reg explains this all to me in the same manner in which one would explain the American revolution or Napoleon’s conquest of Europe.
Over the years Regina has told me many stories in this same manner, The Táin, the Faye, Cuchulian and the salmon of knowledge, all of which may fall into the realm of ‘myth’ when it comes to black and white history books but to the Irish hold as much truth as successions of kings, the English rule under Cromwell, and Michael Collins as the first president. The concept may be a bit foreign to us domesticated yanks but the idea of a shared history including impossible exploits by fantastic actors is not so strange to native Americans, Africans, Australian aborigines, and a myriad of cultures around the globe. Maybe we didn’t have to give up the history of Coyote as the trickster god when we settled for Columbus discovering America.
We have our figures of mixed lineage as well, Davy Crocket was a real person even if his exploits were exaggerated in song, the same goes for Billy the Kid or Buffalo Bill Cody, from there it’s only a small walk to Wyatt Earp and the OK corral shootout, Wild Bill Hickok shot in the back of the head during a saloon poker game holding black aces and eights, forever to be called the dead man’s hand. So why not throw in John Henry, Pecos bill, and Johnny Appleseed? Perhaps in a few more centuries the line distinguishing myth and truth will blur to the point where it cannot be discerned, given millennia of social and cultural upheaval like the Gaelic people have survived those differences are not worth debating.
Perhaps it is because of this, or vise versa, or chicken and egg not withstanding, the Irish seem to have a unique attitude towards their view of legends. Take for example our flat-mate Jack, over the course of several conversations and with the aide of liquid tongue loosener I’ve elicited a tale from his childhood; the Ennis field wars. It seems that when he was growing up the children of his town, Ennis, came into conflict with the adolescents of neighboring towns over possession of the local woods, streams, swamps, and of course fields in which they were want to play. This all sounds innocent enough as young kids are often prone to imagining their exploits as something grandiose, in fact there is a movie which follows a similar plot involving Irish youths called “the War of the Buttons.”
Mention this to Jack and he’ll get a slightly insulted look on his face and explain how it was kind of like that only they didn’t battle with buttons salvoed form slingshots, “we had rocks, and spears, proper spears with metal blades.” He’ll explain how his housing estate held some key advantages, since it was the most recently built there was a rich resource of construction materials which could be repurposed into armaments, their fort was located in the midst of a massive hedge, impenetrable save for one heavily guarded entrance, most importantly they had a navy. He’ll explain, in that same matter of fact tone as Regina employs when explaining how the recruitment test of the Fianna (a fearsome warrior class) included evading a band of hunters through a forest without breaking a twig or disturbing a leaf, that they had a navy because his older brother (a general) helped to develop raft building technology thus enabling them to navigate the swamps and ponds with ease.
They built the rafts with a fatal flaw, however, which could be exploited were the vessels ever captured. Rapt with his oratory I asked what the flaw was, ‘well they would get stuck in shallow water and we could pelt them with rocks.’ he replied. Hardly the sinking of the Bismarck but still, other impressive include the environmental hazard suit, built of polystyrene tubing and bits of metal sheeting, again foraged from a construction site, it was able to protect the wearer from a fall of great height or more accurately, off of a local bridge. That was the second version though, the prototype was apparently not as sturdy. Similarly was their simultaneously best and worst invention, the catapult; literally, a siege weapon in the medieval vein although perhaps scaled down a bit. It worked, by god, although not very well apparently for as Jack put it, you can only use it to hit so many cows before you start trying to improve it. Improve is a loose term since by ‘improving’ it the small soldiers overclocked it to point where the torsion caused the catapult to explode sending boulders hurtling in all directions, no one was hurt by the test run, of course because they had a safety tunnel and the aforementioned environmental hazard suit.
There are more stories of course, such as the lad who wrong in his belief that adults would not have left that bulldozer accessible to children if it could be easily turned on, or the pen-knife accords which had to be implemented after one lad was captured by the enemy and “Stabbed up a bit”, but they are best explained by the veteran who saw it all first hand. If you will, however, imagine my astonishment and awe at hearing these stories of youth presented so flippantly, so naturally as to never have questioned the plausibility of a children’s crusade which lasted longer than hostilities in WWII or for that matter the lack of parental oversight which allowed it all to happen. Again, it must be the Irish sensibility that places such epic events so close to home, so accessible that legends are just a touch beyond commonplace, the word ‘legend’ itself in the form of phrase ’A legend of a…’ is employed to describe interesting individuals, nights out, and even dogs.
Yapper was a legend of a dog, as often I hear when gathered around the kitchen table at the Finan homestead in Laragh. To be fair I met Yapper when he was still alive, a scruffy little Jack-Russell terrier who stood no higher than the laces of a good boot he would seem to the casual eye that he was in all ways ordinary. This was, however, at an advanced age when I interacted with him, and as stories would have it when in his youth Yapper killed everything. He would hunt mice and other small game no bother and this is not of special note, what is exemplary was first his ability to catch wild birds, sparrows and thrushes could not escape his jaws as he snatched them from the air mid flight, if they roosted he would climb a tree and pluck them from the nest, more often than once his ability to climb ladders would place him on the roof of the house or even on a small second story window sill where he was occasionally stuck for the night.
In these ways he was as much cat as dog, but when his prey became more dangerous he proved the adage that it is not the size of the dog in the fight which matters. There were the minks, the stoats and other weasels which he would ferret out and extinguish, he was also seen to drag off and hide the bodies of tom cats three times his size which he’d dispatched handily. Yapper would win fights against the family guard dog, a nimble and determined collie, as well as any other canines who thought the terrier was easy pickings, but his most lauded feat was the fact that he had killed a badger.
Most of you reading this will never have come face to face with a badger before, nor have I, but by tales passed on to me I say that with a decided note of relief. ‘Don’t turn your back on one.’ I’m told, ‘unless it charges you, in which case, run.’ A badger is like a wolverine, if that helps at all, only thicker, more dense, better able to hug the ground, if you face one while holding a shotgun you’d better hope both barrels are loaded, that’s your only chance since their skin is so think, if you’re driving and one’s out in the road it will do more damage to your car than a deer. In my time I’ve faced raccoons, possums, skunks, groundhogs and coyotes just to name a few, but when there’s a rustling in the undergrowth here I just pray that it’s not a badger. Still, Yapper, the wire-haired terrier I knew to beg for food sitting bolt upright on his haunches, killed one in cold blood escaping with all four paws intact to tell the tale, or rather, to have his legend grow and live well beyond his years.
So upon my arrival in Ireland and after a thorough amount of time spent kissing and holding my beloved I shared with her my revelation. Yeah, she replied, of course. She explained to me that it was widely known that the Milesians ventured out from the Iberian peninsula and settled in Ireland after a series of clashes with the indigenous people. It is at this juncture that I would like to point out that the ‘indigenous people’ were not exactly people but rather gods, goddesses, and beings of the spirit world. Reg explains this all to me in the same manner in which one would explain the American revolution or Napoleon’s conquest of Europe.
Over the years Regina has told me many stories in this same manner, The Táin, the Faye, Cuchulian and the salmon of knowledge, all of which may fall into the realm of ‘myth’ when it comes to black and white history books but to the Irish hold as much truth as successions of kings, the English rule under Cromwell, and Michael Collins as the first president. The concept may be a bit foreign to us domesticated yanks but the idea of a shared history including impossible exploits by fantastic actors is not so strange to native Americans, Africans, Australian aborigines, and a myriad of cultures around the globe. Maybe we didn’t have to give up the history of Coyote as the trickster god when we settled for Columbus discovering America.
We have our figures of mixed lineage as well, Davy Crocket was a real person even if his exploits were exaggerated in song, the same goes for Billy the Kid or Buffalo Bill Cody, from there it’s only a small walk to Wyatt Earp and the OK corral shootout, Wild Bill Hickok shot in the back of the head during a saloon poker game holding black aces and eights, forever to be called the dead man’s hand. So why not throw in John Henry, Pecos bill, and Johnny Appleseed? Perhaps in a few more centuries the line distinguishing myth and truth will blur to the point where it cannot be discerned, given millennia of social and cultural upheaval like the Gaelic people have survived those differences are not worth debating.
Perhaps it is because of this, or vise versa, or chicken and egg not withstanding, the Irish seem to have a unique attitude towards their view of legends. Take for example our flat-mate Jack, over the course of several conversations and with the aide of liquid tongue loosener I’ve elicited a tale from his childhood; the Ennis field wars. It seems that when he was growing up the children of his town, Ennis, came into conflict with the adolescents of neighboring towns over possession of the local woods, streams, swamps, and of course fields in which they were want to play. This all sounds innocent enough as young kids are often prone to imagining their exploits as something grandiose, in fact there is a movie which follows a similar plot involving Irish youths called “the War of the Buttons.”
Mention this to Jack and he’ll get a slightly insulted look on his face and explain how it was kind of like that only they didn’t battle with buttons salvoed form slingshots, “we had rocks, and spears, proper spears with metal blades.” He’ll explain how his housing estate held some key advantages, since it was the most recently built there was a rich resource of construction materials which could be repurposed into armaments, their fort was located in the midst of a massive hedge, impenetrable save for one heavily guarded entrance, most importantly they had a navy. He’ll explain, in that same matter of fact tone as Regina employs when explaining how the recruitment test of the Fianna (a fearsome warrior class) included evading a band of hunters through a forest without breaking a twig or disturbing a leaf, that they had a navy because his older brother (a general) helped to develop raft building technology thus enabling them to navigate the swamps and ponds with ease.
They built the rafts with a fatal flaw, however, which could be exploited were the vessels ever captured. Rapt with his oratory I asked what the flaw was, ‘well they would get stuck in shallow water and we could pelt them with rocks.’ he replied. Hardly the sinking of the Bismarck but still, other impressive include the environmental hazard suit, built of polystyrene tubing and bits of metal sheeting, again foraged from a construction site, it was able to protect the wearer from a fall of great height or more accurately, off of a local bridge. That was the second version though, the prototype was apparently not as sturdy. Similarly was their simultaneously best and worst invention, the catapult; literally, a siege weapon in the medieval vein although perhaps scaled down a bit. It worked, by god, although not very well apparently for as Jack put it, you can only use it to hit so many cows before you start trying to improve it. Improve is a loose term since by ‘improving’ it the small soldiers overclocked it to point where the torsion caused the catapult to explode sending boulders hurtling in all directions, no one was hurt by the test run, of course because they had a safety tunnel and the aforementioned environmental hazard suit.
There are more stories of course, such as the lad who wrong in his belief that adults would not have left that bulldozer accessible to children if it could be easily turned on, or the pen-knife accords which had to be implemented after one lad was captured by the enemy and “Stabbed up a bit”, but they are best explained by the veteran who saw it all first hand. If you will, however, imagine my astonishment and awe at hearing these stories of youth presented so flippantly, so naturally as to never have questioned the plausibility of a children’s crusade which lasted longer than hostilities in WWII or for that matter the lack of parental oversight which allowed it all to happen. Again, it must be the Irish sensibility that places such epic events so close to home, so accessible that legends are just a touch beyond commonplace, the word ‘legend’ itself in the form of phrase ’A legend of a…’ is employed to describe interesting individuals, nights out, and even dogs.
Yapper was a legend of a dog, as often I hear when gathered around the kitchen table at the Finan homestead in Laragh. To be fair I met Yapper when he was still alive, a scruffy little Jack-Russell terrier who stood no higher than the laces of a good boot he would seem to the casual eye that he was in all ways ordinary. This was, however, at an advanced age when I interacted with him, and as stories would have it when in his youth Yapper killed everything. He would hunt mice and other small game no bother and this is not of special note, what is exemplary was first his ability to catch wild birds, sparrows and thrushes could not escape his jaws as he snatched them from the air mid flight, if they roosted he would climb a tree and pluck them from the nest, more often than once his ability to climb ladders would place him on the roof of the house or even on a small second story window sill where he was occasionally stuck for the night.
In these ways he was as much cat as dog, but when his prey became more dangerous he proved the adage that it is not the size of the dog in the fight which matters. There were the minks, the stoats and other weasels which he would ferret out and extinguish, he was also seen to drag off and hide the bodies of tom cats three times his size which he’d dispatched handily. Yapper would win fights against the family guard dog, a nimble and determined collie, as well as any other canines who thought the terrier was easy pickings, but his most lauded feat was the fact that he had killed a badger.
Most of you reading this will never have come face to face with a badger before, nor have I, but by tales passed on to me I say that with a decided note of relief. ‘Don’t turn your back on one.’ I’m told, ‘unless it charges you, in which case, run.’ A badger is like a wolverine, if that helps at all, only thicker, more dense, better able to hug the ground, if you face one while holding a shotgun you’d better hope both barrels are loaded, that’s your only chance since their skin is so think, if you’re driving and one’s out in the road it will do more damage to your car than a deer. In my time I’ve faced raccoons, possums, skunks, groundhogs and coyotes just to name a few, but when there’s a rustling in the undergrowth here I just pray that it’s not a badger. Still, Yapper, the wire-haired terrier I knew to beg for food sitting bolt upright on his haunches, killed one in cold blood escaping with all four paws intact to tell the tale, or rather, to have his legend grow and live well beyond his years.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Coming home again
Home is where your Wifi connects automatically.
To me this is an infinitely ironic statement because my home, the one where I was born, raised, taught, etc. never had Wifi. So instead, my Wifi connects automatically when I’m on the road. Places like Pittsburgh where I’ve over-nighted with friends again and again over the years and my laptop is welcome on their network. Coffee shops I used to write at habitually, taking advantage of their bandwidth to abuse Pandora remorselessly. Even out here in good old Ireland my browsing is enabled on a couple of foreign yet familiar hubs. The Finan family plot in the country knows me well, I just have to open up FireFox and away we go. Finally, here in Galway where I write from currently, I am registered perennially.
These are the little things that let me know I am welcome here. In other ways I have to work at it, like the coffee pot. Tea is the national drink here, do not be fooled by Guinness advertisements, and it is ubiquitous in Irish homes. Not that it comes naturally to me but I do acclimate to the leafy brew once a bit of milk makes it way into the equation and on the down low a spoonful of sugar every now and then when I’m feeling feisty. And sure, I get offered a cup of ‘coffee’ every now and then in a home, but I use the parenthesis because in truth freeze dried coffee is like artificial flowers in your apology bouquet, a fine gesture but not winning you any points. So I got myself a little red French press and while it does lack the full bodied roasted perfection of my old counter-top percolation unit it still achieves the effect of filling a boy up and doing a body good in the morning.
Secondly there is the wardrobe, which, I admit, is too big for the room and was kind of a pain in the hole when it came to arranging effectively. But it was a good price on ‘Done Deal’ Erin’s equivalent of Craigslist and everything of mine does fit inside. I don’t think Reg is quite gone on it and I don’t blame her for it was better in concept than it is in practice. But all the same I am fond of it, admiring the veneer and running my hand over the finials with their carved flower petals, when I look upon it I’m reminded of a great sarcophagus, it looms and entombs with its great swinging doors adorned in a grand old style. I’m not particularly looking forward to moving it again when we find a better apartment, an upgrade that has to come after we find work and get me driving, but some day I see it finding a place in our mud room at the house in Laragh, Filled with wellies and overcoats, shelves stacked with mismatched gloves and random scarves, rain hats hanging from the hooks and maybe an old shotgun leaning in the back. Every time I open it there’s the potential for an adventure across the country, some day.
Back to the driving though. I’ve been allowed to drive properly once so far. Not too far but actually interacting with other cars and navigating the tarmac like a real adult. Other than that I’ve moved the car in and out of its parking spot a few times when the weather is too inclement for Reg to venture out and do it herself. Every time she hands me the keys a little giddy smile creeps up from my belly, over our years we’ve never quite copped to driving in each other’s countries becoming permanent passengers on foreign soil. The process of getting me used to driving is equal parts acclimating me to the stick shift being on the left, looking the other direction before pulling out, passing in the right lane, and getting Regina comfortable with letting me pilot her beloved, and sometimes accursed, Ford; Isaac. We’ll get there eventually, I have patience and she has the watchful eye of an older sister telling me when to shift gears and checking my blind spot.
Galway city hasn’t changed all that much, most all of the old pubs are still standing, institutions like Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop seem to be eternal, I don’t have much reason to go to the University anymore but I walked by the other day and it hadn’t fallen over. I know I can get a good haircut at the same salon Regina uses for a fair price, I know which off licenses will have what booze at approximately what price, I know where the Garda station is and soon I’ll be familiar with the social services office when I go in to get my PPS number, the cousin of our SSN. We found a nice local butcher and the kitchen is starting to serve my needs now that we have a few cutting boards enough knives to fill a wood block. I know which busses will bring me in to town and how long it takes to walk from here to the bay. In short I’m starting to function like a normal human being again and it feels good.
I still pine for a few things, some musical instrument to occupy my time, the wall of books, the cabinet of DVDs, just the way my butt fit into the old couch, all of the ephemera of a life lived for a quarter century which gleams in my future like a sunset’s promise to rise again on a new day. Lacking all of that I have the thing that makes me feel most at home, my wife. We spent nine months apart, as you may know, and in all honesty it was a bit frightening to come together after such a long break. As much as you can skype and chat and plan away your days of bliss together through emails it’s a whole different bag of ferrets to go down that road hand in hand in real terms. Added to the calamity of it was a wedding we had to pull off in just one month’s time, there was a great potential for our romance, our personalities, our love to fall through the cracks. But then there was the first day, the first hours, the first minutes, that first kiss. Somehow in the midst of your life being tossed into chaos, of great upheaval and turmoil, sound and the fury, that kiss was coming home.
To me this is an infinitely ironic statement because my home, the one where I was born, raised, taught, etc. never had Wifi. So instead, my Wifi connects automatically when I’m on the road. Places like Pittsburgh where I’ve over-nighted with friends again and again over the years and my laptop is welcome on their network. Coffee shops I used to write at habitually, taking advantage of their bandwidth to abuse Pandora remorselessly. Even out here in good old Ireland my browsing is enabled on a couple of foreign yet familiar hubs. The Finan family plot in the country knows me well, I just have to open up FireFox and away we go. Finally, here in Galway where I write from currently, I am registered perennially.
These are the little things that let me know I am welcome here. In other ways I have to work at it, like the coffee pot. Tea is the national drink here, do not be fooled by Guinness advertisements, and it is ubiquitous in Irish homes. Not that it comes naturally to me but I do acclimate to the leafy brew once a bit of milk makes it way into the equation and on the down low a spoonful of sugar every now and then when I’m feeling feisty. And sure, I get offered a cup of ‘coffee’ every now and then in a home, but I use the parenthesis because in truth freeze dried coffee is like artificial flowers in your apology bouquet, a fine gesture but not winning you any points. So I got myself a little red French press and while it does lack the full bodied roasted perfection of my old counter-top percolation unit it still achieves the effect of filling a boy up and doing a body good in the morning.
Secondly there is the wardrobe, which, I admit, is too big for the room and was kind of a pain in the hole when it came to arranging effectively. But it was a good price on ‘Done Deal’ Erin’s equivalent of Craigslist and everything of mine does fit inside. I don’t think Reg is quite gone on it and I don’t blame her for it was better in concept than it is in practice. But all the same I am fond of it, admiring the veneer and running my hand over the finials with their carved flower petals, when I look upon it I’m reminded of a great sarcophagus, it looms and entombs with its great swinging doors adorned in a grand old style. I’m not particularly looking forward to moving it again when we find a better apartment, an upgrade that has to come after we find work and get me driving, but some day I see it finding a place in our mud room at the house in Laragh, Filled with wellies and overcoats, shelves stacked with mismatched gloves and random scarves, rain hats hanging from the hooks and maybe an old shotgun leaning in the back. Every time I open it there’s the potential for an adventure across the country, some day.
Back to the driving though. I’ve been allowed to drive properly once so far. Not too far but actually interacting with other cars and navigating the tarmac like a real adult. Other than that I’ve moved the car in and out of its parking spot a few times when the weather is too inclement for Reg to venture out and do it herself. Every time she hands me the keys a little giddy smile creeps up from my belly, over our years we’ve never quite copped to driving in each other’s countries becoming permanent passengers on foreign soil. The process of getting me used to driving is equal parts acclimating me to the stick shift being on the left, looking the other direction before pulling out, passing in the right lane, and getting Regina comfortable with letting me pilot her beloved, and sometimes accursed, Ford; Isaac. We’ll get there eventually, I have patience and she has the watchful eye of an older sister telling me when to shift gears and checking my blind spot.
Galway city hasn’t changed all that much, most all of the old pubs are still standing, institutions like Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop seem to be eternal, I don’t have much reason to go to the University anymore but I walked by the other day and it hadn’t fallen over. I know I can get a good haircut at the same salon Regina uses for a fair price, I know which off licenses will have what booze at approximately what price, I know where the Garda station is and soon I’ll be familiar with the social services office when I go in to get my PPS number, the cousin of our SSN. We found a nice local butcher and the kitchen is starting to serve my needs now that we have a few cutting boards enough knives to fill a wood block. I know which busses will bring me in to town and how long it takes to walk from here to the bay. In short I’m starting to function like a normal human being again and it feels good.
I still pine for a few things, some musical instrument to occupy my time, the wall of books, the cabinet of DVDs, just the way my butt fit into the old couch, all of the ephemera of a life lived for a quarter century which gleams in my future like a sunset’s promise to rise again on a new day. Lacking all of that I have the thing that makes me feel most at home, my wife. We spent nine months apart, as you may know, and in all honesty it was a bit frightening to come together after such a long break. As much as you can skype and chat and plan away your days of bliss together through emails it’s a whole different bag of ferrets to go down that road hand in hand in real terms. Added to the calamity of it was a wedding we had to pull off in just one month’s time, there was a great potential for our romance, our personalities, our love to fall through the cracks. But then there was the first day, the first hours, the first minutes, that first kiss. Somehow in the midst of your life being tossed into chaos, of great upheaval and turmoil, sound and the fury, that kiss was coming home.
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