At the moment, I am attending a writers’ workshop in Dublin. They are keeping us very busy, so I’m going to send you a wee story I wrote about my last trip to Ireland - 27 years ago. It was published last year in Irish Central, an online magazine.
When I get back, I’ll have new tales to tell.
July 24, 1997
My mother, my aunt Joan and me land at 6am and arrive on the Tarrants’ doorstep by 8:30, feeling as though it's time for cocktails. Anne and Jerry Tarrant are up a long drive in Cahir, County Limerick. We have tea with brown bread that Anne rushed downtown to buy while we weren't looking. We meet Diarmid, their sweet son of 16 who is polite and attentive and I wonder quietly what TV has done to America.
Then Uncle Paddy peeks his head in the door. He came right over as soon as he got the call. It took him a while. He says he had to get the smell of cows off him. Paddy is a shy child of 50, a father of four and a widower. He lives in the big house up the hill, all alone now. He has a smile that stops the world. This is our first of many such visits of tea and bread and more tea and here, some more bread and won't you have some sherry?
The Tarrants run a booming concrete block business in Cahir. No wonder business is good, every house in Ireland is built of concrete blocks.
Next we're off and on the road to Millstreet. Ma navigates us to the house in Coole, a manorly, pale yellow stucco house with a gravel drive, lovely plantings and a towering monkey puzzle tree.
I don't expect the old farmer we meet. If you were to run a contest, looking for a poster child of a charming old Irish farmer, you couldnt’ do any better than Patsy. He's wearing the tweedy gray clothing, the wellies and of course, the cap.
He's working in the garden with Sheilah, his new daughter-in-law. Ma lists the family connections and we all smile and try to follow. Honora Tarrant was Ma's grandmother and she had a bunch of Tarrant babies that had other Tarrant babies and....well yes, Patsy follows to a point and he's smiling shyly now, looking out of the side of his face at us.
Nora is down at the house in town, they say. So, we'll go find Nora and we're sure we'll be back. They say they hope so. Before we go, I take a few pictures, hoping to get a good one of Patsy. He takes his hat off and goes all stiff the minute I put the camera up to my face. I have lots of very stiff photographs of my Irish relatives.
We spend the first night at the Denehy's Bed and Breakfast on the main street, and enjoy our first evening of crackers and cheese, plus the booze Ma packed in her suitcase - gin for Aunt Joan, vodka for me and Ma. Ma had a big suitcase full of several outfits, doodads, travel kits and sundries, plus a flask and a bottle. She wore one outfit the whole time. She could have just carried a backpack with the booze. I'll have to remind her for the next trip.
That’s it for now, but I’ll give you one little taste of a bit of the music at The Cobblestone, in Dublin. Tom Mulligan and his family have been playing there for five generations. I hope to get back there for a few more tunes.
We’ve headed out to the west for a swing around the ring of Kerry for a total different adventure. I’ll report back next week.
I’ll leave you with a lovely saying I learned from a gentleman from Minneapolis. He learned it from great grandmother, Alice Price Homedale.
‘Shared sorrow is half sorrow and shared joy is twice joy.’
See you next week.
interesting instrument...you don't have to blow up the bag!
Ireland! ❤️ And Mama wearing one outfit and a backpack is a Mama I CANNOT picture, I love it!