My son Jacob is leaving for Ireland today. He'll be tooling around the countryside there for the next nine days! I can't wait to swap tales with him. He'll be travelling to many of the same places that I visited on my first trip there. Ireland is just one of those places that gets into the blood of some of us and never leaves......... I've a feeling it'll do the same to Jacob. The following is a short piece I wrote during my first trip to Ireland. In the Song Lyrics of the Day section is a song that I wrote after my second trip. I'm posting these in honor of Jacob's trip. And him, too! Peace.
3 July 2001 - Ring of Kerry - Ireland
There is a sense of belonging for me here - like coming home, like I have been here before and have been gone away for a long time. As if I have memories from another childhood of running along the edges of the hills here, watching the sea, chasing the breeze.
The color of Ireland will always be for me - green. Green and stone. Green that lends a brightness to the air and a soft, cool place to rest my eyes. My eyes have learned a hundred new shades of green in just a few short days. But I will close my eyes back home and see those greens again - and I will open my eyes and see them new in my own hills. The colors of stone cross the green, bringing a sense of order across the wild. Like the stone fences of Ireland and Wales, the greys and the greens touch one another but they do not blend.
The taste of Ireland will, of course, be the taste of Guiness Stout in a pint glass. Guiness and potatoes. Potatoes in every form. Potatoes cooked in a thick hot soup with leeks and parsley; potatotes fried crisp with just a lingering hint of fish; potatoes boiled with white skins peeling or red skins split; potatoes with gravy seasoned with savory. I will taste the wind of Ireland whenever I put a potato on my tongue and remember the damp, cool air and the rocking Irish sea as I crossed over from Wales to Dublin.
The smell of Ireland will be the smell of my grandmother's kitchen from my childhood memory - the smell that greeted me each time I opened the door to my room in Killarney. How that smell crossed an ocean and thirty-five years is nothing less than a miracle. The sweet sticky smell of beer splashed against old wood and the smell of burning peat in a small, shady low-built house. Ireland will be the smell of the woods after a rain, the smell of leaves washed clean, the smell of water on grass and trees - the smell of green. How can green smell? In Ireland, it does! You walk down the street in the countryside and you can smell the green on all sides of yourself.
And what about the feel of Ireland? What does my skin tell me to remember of this place? Ireland will be the feel of a cool night's breeze blowing across my shoulder as it comes through the curtain and across to my bed. Ireland will be the scratchy feel of wool against my neck, wool that is warm against a chill. Ireland will be the feel of my hair blown in all directions by wind off the sea; the soft kiss of a rain that is not quite falling. Ireland will be the feel of a song rising from my belly up through my throat - the song I can't hold back. How can I keep from singing? And Ireland will be the feel of fingers against damp stone worn smooth by time. If I hold a stone in my hand and let my fingers feel its smooth underside, I will be back in Ireland again. Over and over I could rub until I rubbed it away before I would lose the memory of touching stone and trees and wood and water in Ireland.
And, lastly, what will be the sound of Ireland in the place where I store my memories? The sound of Ireland will be the sound of feet tapping on wooden floors and fingers rapping on tabletops; the sound of voices all talking and laughing at once, rising together in a chorus that carries the lilt of contentment; the sound of voices joining together in song and reverent ceremony at closing time in a little neighborhood pub in Dublin. The sound of the fiddle and pipes or the mournful call of the low whistle; the sound of a breath drawn in quickly at the sight of something so lovely that I know I'll not ever be able to express that loveliness to another; and the sound of a quiet, peaceful sigh that says, "I am happy to be alive." Any time now that I hear that sound - the sound of a contented sigh carrying a smile with it - I will remember walking the streets of Killarney or driving the highways above the sea, and I will remember how it was to be in the hills of Ireland with a song in my throat, a smile on my face, and happiness in the doorway of my heart.
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