A Visit Home

As the days shorten and the winter grey settles in, I start thinking of going home. It is a siren song that surfaces and urges action. Check the passports and the calendar. Never arrive on or the day before the twelfth of July. Their blood is up and there could be trouble. Wait until the next day and maybe you'll see the burned out cars still smoking in parts of Newry or wherever we cross the border. Yes, old battles that are completely out of sync with modern Ireland yet more real than the recent history of development, holiday homes, private helicopters and greed. Will it be different this coming year? What about all the new millionaires? Maybe the new road planned to cut through the Hill of Tara has been postponed. Maybe the Irish have been saved from themselves.




For a while it seemed that the whole world descended on Ireland to find the picture postcard world. Huge tour buses weaving along narrow mountainous roads over bogland to find the black lakes or the vistas to the ocean. Parking lots hastily constructed over fields. Paths closed because of erosion. High crosses moved from graveyards and roped off inside tourist centers. What are all these people doing here? There used to be no-one but the sheep trailing their tattered fleece. Or, maybe a small family on a Sunday outing unaware that they were sitting on a neolithic settlement.




So, I need to face my memories again. My aging aunts and mother are still there. But the family farm and homestead belong to my brother now. I have been slowly shadowed out of that landscape. There are few traces left of me at home except for the pictures that form part of my mother's gallery of photos. Maybe a visit to the windswept northern coast to see Dunluce Castle with its smuggler's entrance at the foot of the cliff, past the small village of Bushmills, home of the famous Irish whiskey. It is only a few miles from home and one can see Scotland on a clear day. So, I'm a tourist now, saying hello, saying goodbye.