My daughter travels a lot, mostly internationally. Her job demands it. My son travels too. His travels were originally on business, although there’s a qualifier for that. He was in the U.S. military, a sailor in the Sixth Fleet. I once asked him if he was ever in harm’s way. He said he was pretty sure the U.S. Navy was trying to kill him. Now he travels strictly for pleasure and has hit more international destinations beyond those he saw while in the Navy.
At my daughter’s initiative, I found myself, my daughter and my son headed on a trip to Ireland. My family’s heritage is deeply steeped in Irish ancestors. Now my kids know the travel ropes. My international travel has been nil, I had never been outside of North America.
But, with those two experienced travelers waltzing me around like prison guards closely flanking an intransigent inmate, ensuring they would forestall any missteps that I would take inadvertently, or as they really feared, would take intentionally, it was thought I’d be fine.
I’m, however, a career criminal when it comes to high crimes and misdemeanors in being embarrassing, exasperating or mischievous in the presence of my children, and doing so intentionally. They may take me alive, but, oh, at times do they ever want to put me back.
But, I had no intention of messing up the travels with calculated family mischief or insurgencies. Now, the unintentional kind was a whole other story. If the Dublin International Airport had an Extended Stay Guardhouse I’m sure my kids would have checked me in as a guest for ten days. My daughter ruefully told my son they didn’t. My son insisted she check on it again. Twice.
When we arrived at the Dublin airport my daughter led me to the Irish customs station. She had previously cautioned me before of how I should behave, how I should act. She was convinced, after growing into adulthood for some years now, and as I grew deeper and deeper into an older adulthood, that I was an idiot. Benign, even kind, if not provoked, but regardless, an idiot.
In Ireland I’m someone they would refer to as an eejit, Irish slang pronunciation for idiot. Who knew my wretched condition was multi-national. It was a good thing I had gotten that traveler’s medical insurance.
My daughter feared I’d act like myself, either doing some very dry, low-key, “Wait, what did he just say? Did he really just say that?!,” wise-cracking or, worse yet, would want to chat up the customs agent because I wanted to get to know them, even if just briefly, because they seemed to be someone worth knowing, even if just briefly.
Either was possible, but I understood I should behave. Customs agents are to be passively feared. They hold great power. They can deny you the chance to step over their doorstep and into their home. I knew to behave and I wanted to behave. I didn’t want the agent to have a bad day in their own home caused by a practiced idiot. I have to say, I’d feel crushed — very crushed — if I had done that.
That was actually my base reason to be earnestly and warmly cooperative. Nonetheless, my daughter’s great fear was I would engage that agent in a way that might strike a lit match, resulting in the conflagration of two individuals engaging in their own personal low-intensity Troubles.
It would be the result of an Irresistible Force, the American Idiot, versus an Immovable Object, the Irish Customs Agent. While my daughter stood close, she stood not quite that close. I think she was trying to maintain a distance that would offer up a plausible excuse if Interpol showed up.
It went smoothly. The agent was sharply observant. She understood that my daughter had me tethered on an invisible leash that could shock with high voltages of withering, deadly glares. My daughter’s lethality was palpable. I was a dead tourist walking.
The agent understood our familial dynamics. She smiled to let me know that we, the Irish Customs Agent and the American Idiot, would have kinship. She’d help me through. While we never touched, she held my hand as I crossed over the doorstep and into her home. Welcome. You’re not on Interpol’s watch list. Your daughter can now relax that thumb you’re under.
All this was done with brevity. But, deep meaning can be done swiftly. It’s as if it was a quick exchange by two old Cold War spies in a crowded place packed full of people, some with watchful eyes, as the two operatives passed, almost imperceptibly, packets of meaningful info. It can go well or it can go all wrong. The American Idiot and the Irish Customs Agent were pros. Only the two of them saw and understood the exchange.
We parted ways, but had our moment, and moments make up our hours, days, months and years. Making good moments is a sweet, wonderful pastime. Making great moments is a memorable life.
I wish I could have gone there not as an American, but as an Anonymous, my nationality vague and not something that could be pinpointed. Certainly not wrapped in a “type” I felt could unleash actions, reactions and norms of how I was to be perceived, treated or endured.
Of course, no fault is being placed on those who encountered me and braced themselves for a low point in their daily life. I didn’t want to be the Ugly American or the Plastic Paddy, an American overly exuberant about their Irish lineage. I wanted to be the Invisible Anonymous. You don’t see me, but sense enough not to walk through me. You let me have my space, but I'm not an intrusion on yours. Oh, dear God, please don’t let me be an intrusion on theirs.
Intrusions put to the side, there was so much to Ireland, but often I took delight in the smallest of things, and the everyday way of things, while there.
In Dublin we hailed a taxi at the airport, later we would rent a car. The taxi driver seeing our waves slid to the curb and we got in. I told him where we wanted to go. His head swiveled and he said, “Oh, I thought you were Irish.” A win. I was turning from being an idiot into an eejit. We talked and found out his name was John Kennedy. A win. This pleasant chatting turned to places he would visit in the city. He noted a few and then mentioned the National Museum of Ireland, he was especially excited because it currently had an exhibit of Ireland’s Bog People.
Bog People are mummified remains of humans that had been buried in the peat bogs of Ireland, their bodies preserved by the bogs. They exist elsewhere, too. Immediately my daughter quizzed him about the exhibit, these sort of things being right up her alley. I knew right then we were going. If you knew me you’d know that there are certain things I avoid vigorously. Anything mummified gets marque billing on opening night. A loss.
John, you are a wonderful person, so how could you do this to me? We were on such a roll. That said, the museum was excellent and I enjoyed it immensely. Alright, a tie.
Me, and my two offspring went to a hurling match, a thoroughly Irish game, at my son’s insistence and with my daughter’s agreeable curiosity. My son and I were both familiar with the game, though he was much more versed in it than was I. It was one for a county youth league. The players seemed to be around seventeen to eighteen years old. It was a late-round playoff game or even possibly the finals.
We stood quietly and drew very little attention, save for some slightly questioning smiles from those immediately at our elbows, those that had heard our American-accented murmurs. We were far, far out into the countryside. I somehow knew we were the only Americans there. There was no reason for tourists to take in the match. Which means it was perfect. I wasn’t visiting Ireland. I was in Ireland. The feeling somehow has a different cadence.
The match was exciting. Strong and young, those kids were stocked with enthusiasm and vicious vigor. One particular piece of action happened right in front of us. It was, for me, the best of the match. The players were jostling and jousting with such a ferocity that it made it electrifying, and they did so for a fair amount of time, at least as it could be for a fast moving game like hurling.
I hadn’t settled on a favorite team to cheer for. I couldn’t, or didn’t, want to pick sides, so had up until then silently cheered the athletes themselves. But with that play in front of me I lost myself in the action and begin to loudly cheer with approval. The smiling Irish looks at us went beyond those at our elbows and to a wider circle after the play had moved further from us. My piping up had a benevolent consequence. For some reason I felt myself relax in a way I hadn’t yet. I guess I was shedding something I didn’t know I was wearing.
My daughter had booked a restored stone cottage in the Galway countryside for part of our stay. It was such a touch to our trip. We arrived during a light misting rain. Twenty minutes after our arrival the mist stopped and the sun retook the sky. I stepped out of the cottage and then out from under the thatched roof. I was immediately struck. A gorgeous rainbow showed its full fanfare in colors that were so spectacular it was more like a trick of the eye. It was a cloying love letter from the woman I was wooing.
In Cork we went to a supermarket where I mistakenly tried to leave the wrong way. A store clerk mildly admonished me for my misstep and questioned wryly if I had ever been in a grocery store before? “Not one in Ireland,” I said, with sincere atonement as my accent smacked at the air.
His face showed some quick surprise. Had he taken me for a native? A local acting the clod? He quickly said he was sorry. I traded his apology for my own and took full blame for not being more attentive to the signs. He smiled and so did I. I slipped him another apology, a way of over tipping for the intrusion I promised myself I wouldn’t do. My children hustled me out of there like a shoplifter.
There were plenty of things we saw and experienced. There were many more we cataloged in a wish list for the next time, if there would be a next time. I’m older, in the zone that has you thinking of the end game. At this point, when I hang a new roll of toilet paper I just hope to see the end of it. And there is so much more I could tell you, but a travelogue this isn’t. I was graced by a kind customs agent who held the keys to her land out to me. She set the tune, I did the dancing.
Ireland you are wonderful, and I enjoyed the heck out of your hospitality. You’re a beautiful land with some joyful people, and there are countless things I could say about how well you carry yourself as a nation. I heard your music, I saw your dance. I have read your words, I have seen your history, but that was while growing up. But, intimately rubbing up against it in its birthplace was, well, beyond the Pale.
But, I say the Pale not as a put down, as it was originally hung on you for your alleged savagery and backwardness, but as a mighty tribute. Because those who hurled that as an insult were being intentionally dismissive of the Irish.
They took your fierceness and ferocity in making a stand to be an independent people, and resisting subjugation by a civilization that really wasn’t civil, as an affront, so they declared you were unreasonably uncouth for it. By not taking a knee, they aimed a slap at the face.
Well, they didn’t understand, couldn’t understand and refused to understand, that you were making yourself into a people that would one day stand on a world stage so comfortably well with others. And be a welcomed presence.
Look, Ireland, I’m awfully fond of you. Thanks for letting me tread on your streets and sod. You were nice. You didn’t yell at me to get off your lawn. I was once one of you, by way of some old ones that had tread on that same soil before moving to new beginnings. If somehow, while in your country, I had stepped precisely in a spot they had once stood, well, knowing so would give me a pleasure that was immeasurable. No troy ounces of gold, in any amount, could hold the same value.
Many, many of us are orphaned from something or somewhere. And the adoption we wait for is not something easily voiced, but if it were to come it would fill our ears with angel mirth. I’m not a native son, but I'm a loving one.
Look at it this way. I’m an eejit. And from what I heard the Irish speak, there are a number of my kindred walking among you. So, there’s gotta be room for one more, in spirit, in longing, in belonging, right?
Well, here’s hoping so.
Sláinte