A week and a half ago, on Wednesday evening, Daniel and I finally made it back to the Charlotte airport where both of our mothers were waiting to pick us up so we could all ride home together. That evening when we arrived back to our apartment in Greenville, my mother gave us the news that our greyhound Nicksie had run off while she was staying with my parents while we were away. We stilled haven't found her or discovered where she is yet, and it's been really tough for both me and Daniel. She was our baby. I haven't been able to reflect on my dream adventure to Ireland without a tinge of grief nagging me about Nicksie. But this morning, while I sat at Grandma's kitchen table in front of my laptop with Jayne and Ted looking over my shoulder as I described each photograph's location and story, I was able to gather the amazing memories Daniel and I made together in the land I have dreamed of since childhood, and linger in the beauty and realness of the whole experience as I unravelled its pieces to my aunt and uncle. They went to Ireland some years ago, and could even relate to some of the impressions I got about Ireland's current culture and atmosphere.
I learned something this morning about myself, flipping through photographs nearly taken over by shaggy green landscapes and the gray stones of ruined, ancient structures. Well, actually I knew it but denied it, assuming it was a negative trait. It started with me saying what I've usually tried to say to people when they ask about the trip, something like "It was beautiful and amazing, everything you think it would be and more in the way of landscape and natural surroundings. But the culture is...well...very "westernized" and modern."
What does that even mean? Ireland is a western country, right? Basically, this is my way of saying indirectly that I expected everybody in Ireland to be into their own traditional music, know a huge list of fairytales and legends by rite Irish birth, and be entirely - somehow - quintessentially "Irish". Whatever that means.
What I learned about myself was just this: I have been imposing a personality on Ireland, for my own imagination's benefit, for my entire life. It was my Narnia, my Camelot or Atlantis for the majority of my tortured childhood as a mousey, stick-thin dark-haired girl who didn't really have many friends. I even learned songs in Irish Gaelic and sang them to myself during gym class in 6th grade. I was that weird, and not the kind of weird that hipsters claim pervaded their childhood, for which they can now be indirectly regarded as cool. Nope, I was just sort of a freak that didn't even fit in with the freaks.
You know, the kind of person who wants to go to Rome because - of course - every local has probably descended from the Greek gods in some way, because of Italian men being the most romantic ones you'll ever find, and because everybody sits in cafes drinking espresso all day, reading and thinking about the pasta and wine they'll have for dinner that night. I realized I have regarded Ireland in this way - as a fairytale land where everything is just how I imagined it would be, and that I'd fit in automatically because: I was meant to be in Ireland.
This, however winningly it got me through my imaginative yet uneventful childhood, is just not so. When Daniel and I arrived in Dublin airport and took a rather empty bus into the heavily industrial, pervasively international city, I knew I was in for a wake-up call from my dream. I was even homesick the first day and into that night, and cried over my tea in our no-lights, no-air conditioning hotel room on the second morning of our stay in Dublin. I think I knew it then, that it wasn't going to be exactly what I expected. Daniel and I discussed it, and we both decided to take things for what they are, to experience things as current Irish culture, and not what we expected Irish culture to be.
Maybe you're thinking, at this point, "Duh, Shannon! How can you not know this already?" The thing is, people who have known me all my life, like my family, expected (I believe) for my reaction upon visiting Ireland to be visually ecstatic, like my dreams have come true. Well, my dream has come true, only - it wasn't what I expected. It wasn't even better than what I expected: it was just different, but it was beautiful. For one, I never expected I would get to go there with my best friend and person I love most in the world - my husband. We did it together and, in my memory it is filed away under "Adventures with Daniel" instead of "Wishes Granted".
But, what I realized more fully this morning, was that I should not be embarrassed to admit this to anyone just because I have acted like Ireland equals heaven for my whole life. After all, if everything were exactly how we expected it to be, how could we ever discover and learn new things? This is the biggest thing I took away from my trip to Ireland.
Ireland, I discovered, is a big history casserole, where the layers are often physically visible. From the first days in Dublin, where an early Medieval castle (Dublin Castle) has been amended for many different uses over its lifespan, and is now mainly a tourist spot, to even the land itself, which tells a story in the nutrients of its soil where potatoes were (and still are) grown and the curves in the terrain shaped by millennia of human-land interaction, past ages are still alive in some way in Ireland. But, the thing is, they are valuable for what they lend to Irish history, but Irish culture as well, which is a very alive and progressive while it never forgets its roots.
I'll continue to write about my adventures in The Republic of Ireland in the future, especially so I can tell you about some of the individual experiences we had. In some way, they will inspire me for the rest of my life. But, of course (and this is the beauty of it), never in the way I expected.
A few pictures:
This is a typical western landscape. We took this picture as we drove the way from our ferry over the Shannon to the town of Dingle.
A quiet, picturesque beach on the Dingle Peninsula coast. We tried to drive off the tourist paths and find secluded, hidden places most other travelers would miss. This was one of them. Not to mention, to get to this particular part of the beach we had to climb over a wall-pile of barnacled, seaweed-covered limestone boulders. You can even see Daniel in there, walking unsuspectingly while I take his picture.
More later, I'm having trouble uploading photos right now!
Hope everyone is doing well. Don't worry, I'm back for good now so you'll be reading more of me from now on. Sorry for the huge gap (insert trip to Ireland). :)
