Take Me Home

In the same instant it feels like it's only been a few weeks and more than 10 years. Everything is still so vivid and feels so far away. The soap opera my wife got hooked on in Carrick-on-Shannon. The anticipation as we walked into the first pub in Dublin. The eyes of an old Dubliner singing a traditional tune between sips in the International Bar as one of his friends struggled to remain standing. My young friend Aofie sneaking back to tell us about the parade she and her brother and sister were marching in, before her folks who ran the B&B in Fenagh chased her off again, worried that she might be bothering us. Talking with home builder/sheep herder Simon Foley in a cold and windy field outside Kinlough about the prices of homes in Leitrim ("in Leitrim! Used to be everyone wanted to get away." I guess our gang being a reluctant case in point). Arriving at the Cliffs of Moher at precisely the wrong time of day, bright sun directly in our eyes and cold winds sweeping from every direction. And every night the family meeting up in a pub to talk about the day, compare pictures and figure out whose round it was. I feel like I never laughed so much as I did while I was there and had these emotional moments that would suddenly and unexpectedly overtake me. I was hit with an indescribable feeling when we arrived and felt an even stronger desire to stay when it was time to go.

Someone I used to work with said that we now know what it is like to be homesick. I'm looking through all our pictures for a few to post here, Irish music blasting in the background, tears in my eyes, and I'm instantly pulled back a year like it just happened and being so, so anxious to return. It will never be soon enough, long enough, often enough. A few of us joked about getting tattoos while we were there to commemorate the journey. We never found the place, or perhaps the courage, but I think we did come away with something indelibly left on us all that will always be there to remind us and time will never erase.