05/05/2024
So, I had an excellent five days in Ireland with middle son Aaron. It rained pretty much full-time (I had forgotten the inevitability of an April soaking), but we did fit-in several long beach walks. We visited Rosslare, Kilmore Quay, Wexford, Enniscorthy, Waterford and Dublin. Took a tour of my childhood cottage home, currently under renovation. Found the graves of my father, grandfather, grandmother, great-grandfather and several great-aunts and uncles. Located the two shops, in Rosslare and Enniscorthy, where my grandfather and his brother were pharmacists their whole working lives, and the former asylum where their two sisters looked after the mentally ill.
We undertook two pilgrimage walks on the trip. The first was to Our Lady’s Island, a beautiful, windswept estuary where prayers have been prayed for well over 1000 years. The second was a more recent holy site. We ended our journey in Dalkey, one of the ‘Dublin Villages’. Here we located the very impressive home of Bono. We grabbed a coffee at his favourite beach cafe and had lunch in Finnegan’s, his local pub. There are many things in life that get passed from father to son - faith; heritage; memories. But there is also music, and in our home the songs of U2 are a bond that goes back thirty-plus years.
This was a journey of memories, discoveries and deep conversation. I haven’t actually lived in Ireland for over half a century, and I’ve visited only three or four times in all those years, but the remembering is in the blood. My Irish childhood years were the stuff of legend: happy beyond imagination and cruelly cut short when my parents’ marriage collapsed like the Twin Towers. Thoughts of “going back” - to the cottage; to the beaches; to the fields and ditches - filled my dreams well into adulthood.
This trip with my son brought an unexpected taste of closure. I encountered the Ireland of 2024, all grown up and prosperous; clean and modern and a million miles from the no-running-water poverty of memory. “You’ve done well for yourself” I wanted to say. Even the old cottage, long since left uncared for by my father, is being re-built, restored to its 18th Century footprint and converted into, of all things, a therapy centre. It will live-on no doubt another half century or more, making new and different memories for the contemporaries of my children and grandchildren. And so it should. “The past is a great place to visit” as they say, “But not a great place to live.”
I’m not sure how often my schedule will allow me to visit Ireland in the coming years, but I’d like to do so. I feel that I have renewed my acquaintance with a childhood friend, and I’d take great pleasure in getting to know the grown-up version.
