Well I have returned home. For the second time in 9 months (yes, the gestation period of a new human being) and I am writing to you all while looking out over the darkness of the Royal Canal and noting the dawn’s increase that first outlines the Dublin mountains (these are merely hills by my standards) in the distance, then the old spires of churches in the North Wall, and the silent train tracks, soon to clatter to life with the first trains grunting their way westward to Sligo or south to Dun Laoghaire (pronounced “Dun Leary”).
Home after 2 weeks in California. Which, to the Irish, is a dreamland of their own imagining that involves sun kissed beaches, the dramatic oceanic cliff views of Monterey, the surf in Santa Monica that lets laid back surfers ride small insistent waves with laid back ease. The kind of place, in the Irish imagination, where if they had the opportunity to go there, maybe they would never return. Perhaps San Francisco, with its European-like cityscape would be the place to land. What with all that musical history, how hard would it be to show up with a guitar in hand and let that free spirit fly?
They are always taken aback when I emphasize to them how foggy it is in San Francisco. That the weather between Dooblin and SF is more similar than they realize. Well, with the exception of the rain. And the fires. And the smoke from the fires hovering over most of this sun kissed dream. These are the things they don’t consider. Though, they are aware of the droughts. We all have our dreamlands. Ireland, I tell them (in pubs, taxis, or writing retreats), is mine. Though, I ended up here as it was the first place a company agreed to file a work visa for me after I was hired. So here, Ireland, is where I came and where I am glad to be. “Aye,” the taxi driver said on the ride home yesterday, “you stay one more year then and yer Irish as far as we are concerned.”
I’m writing this with my hard cover book, “In Search of The Irish Dreamtime” next to me. I was up this morning at 5:30 and I love being up early in the morning even though my natural inclination is towards insomnia and this hour is elusive. But when I returned from the US last time, I got a full two weeks of early mornings out of it and I was really happy with the writing time this brought. My Croatian roommate won’t be up for another 2 hours or so, so I am enjoying the peace and quiet. The only thing in the background being a live stream of WWOZ from New Orleans.
Anyway, the whole visit was exhausting. Oh, there were incredibly fun moments built into it (are writers allowed to use the word “fun” or do we need to denote life’s enjoyable moments with more complexity?) and it was good seeing my close friends again, seeing music, playing cards (we love Euchre and Cribbage and other card games) and seeing some friends who came from Seattle for a music festival (Hardly Strictly Bluegrass…and as the name implies, it’s not all about trad music) and we had moments.
I saw an old friend who I was incredibly close to for years (until he got married) and we revisited each other at the music festival while listening to two original members of the Talking Head revisit the album Remain in Light in front of thousands of fans (mostly my age and above) in Golden Gate park. We had a meaningful, but brief, visit. We all know we are getting older. We know time is limited and we don’t know how long the earth will last and then Russian aggression hangs in the air. It’s hard growing older and, for lack of a better way to put it, away from old friends.
Some had children, bought homes, and went on a fairly traditional path in life. I did not and I think the takeaway is, no one knows what is the right way to do this life. How to get the most love or richness of experience or enjoyment from it. As we grow older, the stress bears down, no matter who you are. Your path is your path. I myself know I could never have managed children. I have nothing but respect for the friends of mine who are grappling with the high seas of their own kids growing up. But I made the choice to navigate alone in the life and so I continue, but with good friendships to help with the undercurrents of mystery, loss, and love.
But I was mostly exhausted, and just like the last time, short on time to get meaningful errands done. Had to figure out porting my American phone number to a free system (kept it as long as I did as it was tied to old accounts and to make sure everyone had new ways of contacting me) and to get my old books and CDs and sell them. Sold 200 books, in fact, many which were old first editions. Nice poetry collections. Deeply meaningful books…all sold. Some given to friends. Being a bibliophile makes moving hard. But you all know this.
Mostly, America is filled with a pretty constant low key stress for me. I realized when I was there, I was living with this stress in my gut for so long, I didn’t think about it as an issue previously. I thought it was normal. But, lord, when I got off my plane in Dooblin and went to get my taxi, I felt awash in a palpable relief. I was home again. And yes, I have been through the expat depression for about 2 months (https://www.dailysabah.com/life/health/the-hushed-up-dark-side-of-living-abroad-expat-depression) and in a way, this trip to America came on the other side of it. It was a good opportunity to compare one life to another.
Once on Irish land again, I collected my luggage at the carousel and went to fetch a taxi. When it came to my turn, the cab driver, a gent around my age, emerged all smiles and built like a tank with a bit of the Guinness beer belly. Old Celtic and sports tattoos traced their way around his arms. He got all my bags in the boot and off we went. “Where ya goin’ to now?” I told him and he said, “my god that is I where I used to work when I was younger. T’was a lifetime ago. But yer apartment complex used to be a scrap yard fer cars, aye, and also it used to be one of the worst places in Dublin for the crime I’ll have ya know.”
He then proceeded to tell me how he and his wife divorced almost 20 years ago. And then for the first few years after that, he drifted in and out of “the depression” but made a friend with an unusual American. This American worked in tech, of course, back in the early days when those companies were coming to Ireland. “This guy was odd…he had to bring bits of his home with him, but not in ways you’d think,” the driver said, “no, he had wood to build a house shipped in from America. He had to have this wood so he could build a cabin and he wanted it to remind him of home I suppose, I dunno.” I found myself imagining a cabin from the Adirondacks, but who knows, perhaps it was redwood.
I guess the American had been there a good long while and then decided to go back to America, for whatever reason. But he was heartbroken about leaving this home he’d built with his own hands somewhere north of Dublin overlooking a beach with a grand view of the Irish Sea. So one night, Thomas (that’s our man’s name here..the driver) was in the pub and made friends with the American. They got to know one another over some period of time and then one night the American invited Thomas to the house for a jar.
Here Thomas the driver smiled and made a gesture with his hand, “I loved it at once. Something spoke to me about the place. And the wood, well we don’t build cabins over here with wood like that so much ya know. We like our stone cottages and the like. But the place was warm and he had fitted a wood stove to wrap around from the kitchen and heat everything. Upstairs got the heat, it heats the water in the place for water, and then you cook on the top of it. Aye it’s nice in there with the stove goin’.”
The night he went to visit the American, they drank half a bottle of whiskey and several pints of Guiness. Then the American said to Thomas, “do you want to buy it from me?” And Thomas drunkenly agreed. The next day he said, “I felt mad…truly crazy, ya know…going to the bank and getting a loan sorted like that, who buys a house when they are drunk?”
But the deal was done and Thomas got the place for a good price, the American left, and Thomas still lives there to this day. He says to me, “I’ll never have another home, I love it so much. I’ve made it me own place. It’s a good piece of property and I’ve lifted the cabin up on stilts should the tide rise too much and I’ve built the stone walls around it myself. It’s gorgeous. When I want to relax, I go fishing there for the sea bass.” I guess he kept in touch with the American until he passed away. The American simply wanted someone who would love it too. So it goes.
When Thomas dropped me, he wordlessly took my bags to the top of the stairs leading into my complex and we shook hands. “aye, yer a good fit for here. You’re already becoming Irish.” I echoed his sentiment and then off he went. I went into my place, started my laundry, got a cup of tea and then went out onto my balcony. Birds swung in the cold air, rain had started to spit down. Clouds roiled and moved. The stress of America was gone. And I felt relieved. Time to shower, drink tea and wait for an early sleep.
