Why don’t we get away?

Talking Dublin

Photo by P J K on Unsplash

Well, let’s see. If you ask me, it feels like a lot of us in this country have been on the bumper car ride for way too long. Something that helps me when I’m feeling a bit down and overwhelmed is to consider the fact that there are other places to be, whether in my imagination or in real life. So how about I offer you a travel piece about being in Ireland? This is something I wrote some time ago. I just found it in my filing cabinet, read it, and felt greenly lifted, if you catch my meaning. I hope it might entertain you and give you a bit o’ peace.

What I remember most about my first, much too brief, weekend trip to Dublin is not what I saw, but what I heard. My daughter and I were walking down the street on an early spring morning when an old man stopped in his tracks, pointed to me, and said to my daughter, “Sure your mother never lost her looks. Hoppy Muther’s Day!” Well! I thought. I think I’m going to like it here!

Later that day, when we took a bus tour of the city and were passing by the Guinness factory, the driver told us a joke. Seemed a worker drowned in one of the holding tanks there. When his wife came weeping to claim his body, she asked if his death was at least quick and merciful. “Ah, no,” said the boss. “He got out to use the toilet four times before he died.” That same night, when Jenny and I sat down in a pub, excited about listening to some lively Irish music, the fiddle player announced the beginning of the first set by saying, “We’re going to open with a little funeral song.”

I wanted to go back to Dublin to hear more of that beguiling language, and I wanted, too, to try to understand what accounted for the seemingly contradictory features of the Irish: a forthright and unbounded friendliness, and a matter-of-fact tendency toward melancholy. I’ve heard it said that the Irish expect the worst and are rarely disappointed. So where does their great joy come from? My grandfather was Irish, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a man more in love with life. About him was said, “He knew no stranger.” It was true. If Frank Loney went into a gas station, he’d be best friends with the attendant before the gas tank was uncapped. I wanted to look more closely at the people he came from, so off to Ireland I went again.