Just like that I’m back on my Emerald Isle. It seems fitting on my fifth trip to return to the heart of my first. The place, the one that told me I could. Ireland is not just a place, for me it is a beating heart beat, a shoulder when tears fall, a mountain back when threatened and an escape on its blue waters when needed.
Bringing her was the only way back. I had fallen in love not just with travel but with the quaint homes, vast feels and loving people that hid in the green and yellow of the hills. I think she feels it too. It’s an ease and a comfort that has no name our American tongue knows. There was a part of me that wasn’t sure how I would feel when I returned. I would I still be a foreigner or would I be coming home. As the plane hovered above the green fields, the tarmac lurking somewhere beneath us I felt the familiar pull into myself.
There is this thing that happens when your phone crosses borders, in airplane mode it stays in the time and place where it last connected. That whole plane ride you are still back there, it is in it’s own way a limbo. You are nowhere and yet every mile passed is a piece of land or ocean that you cross. However when the plane lands and you eagerly remove your airplane restriction soon you find the familiar name in the top corner has changed and with it the hours you once counted on. This is how I felt as the plane landed in Dublin. My soul connected to the network and the memory of who I was here last time, the heart that bursted forth, soon she was beating once again within my chest.
Ok enough of my pensive hieroglyphs….Last time I was here in Ireland I traveled the first day from Dublin down to County Cork, more specifically to where I truly left a piece of me…Gallan Mor. I drove the west coast of Ireland heading north. When it was decided that my darling mother would join me on this adventure I knew I wanted part of this to be new to us both. Yesterday when we landed in Dublin and picked up our car we headed in the absolute opposite direction. North to Belfast ending in Portrush and a little road called “Berne Ave”. Pronounced the way my mother pronounces her name “Berni”. It had been sitting here waiting for us. Crunching on the gravel road and taking our seat in the lot behind the house. Exhausted and quite hungry we trudged up the drive and rang the doorbell. It was a tense couple of days before our arrival to our first B&B, miscommunications had attempted to taint my relationship with my host but when that door open and her voice spoke with that accent I love so much, everything faded and I was safe and cared for. The cynicism I had thought of her with had stayed behind. After a little chat in the foyer we were shown our bedroom and rest was no longer a distant possibility it was barely 5 feet from my grasp. Soon my tummy reminded me of its patience and how it would soon end.
“Drive down to the T Junction and make a right and just drive straight down to the beach. You’ll see Harry’s on the right….go ahead and park right on the beach” she said as she called down to see if Connor could squeeze a place for us. As we drove onto the beach and the oncoming water I couldn’t help but think of the song “Pave paradise and put up a parking lot”. Anyone who has been on here for any length of time and read my Ireland and Scotland adventures knows that one of my favorite parts of these countries is their respect for their land. They somehow innately know they are the guests, they are the caretakers of the land, not its master. Their reverence etched into every bush fence and wildflowers growing unchecked thru the asphalt. Those flowers represent so much of IReland to me, this resolve to not be weighed down by the advancements of the world around them but instead to find the cracks in its system and burst thru, if for no other reason than to maintain the heritage of steadfastness. Has anyone else noticed these long tangents I can go on…somehow never getting to the original purpose. Let’s find our way back. We parked on the beach just below Harry’s and with boots on our feet we climbed the cold wet sand up till it met the wooden stairs that led to our supper. A cold lager was all I really needed to fill my tummy as the warm sun still high in the sky shined on me…really just me. We finished our dinner and headed back to the beach to the car, promising a return to the restaurant in the days we have here.
Soon we pulled into the gravel drive of our temporary home and finally found the rest that had eluded us for 20 hours. The bed cold and soft and filled with the smell of cleanliness cuddled us as the quiet of the down descended upon us and soon sweet sleep was all that we had.
I write these words right after breakfast on Thursday the 29th. I’ve needed this vacation, here, this way for awhile and I don’t want to rush. I want to sit here at the picture window looking out at the cars parked along the sidewalk, the old man with their umbrellas and the ladies with their pups of the human and canine variety strolling past. Tomorrow is for exploring out, today is for taking care of what is within.
MeliGoesRogue 