New Beginnings

We've been in Ireland for a week, with at least fifty-one more to go, and we still have no idea what this year will be like.  That's because we've spent the time running about the country setting up a bank account, buying a car, getting European cellphones, buying necessaries for our new house, and generally figuring out how to live in a new and very different place.  And yet, along the way, we've still met a dozen new and charming people, had lunch with old friends, sat beside the wild shores of Lough Corrib, and walked country lanes picking and eating wild blackberries from the hedgerows under the suspicious gaze of cows and sheep.  In some strange way, the pace of life is slower and gentler even in the midst of working our way through our lengthy "to do" list.  Perhaps it's because of the way this year stretches out before us as this big empty time where nothing has to seem rushed.  While the people in the streets of Galway rush about as frantically as any crowd of Americans, just 30 minutes away up our country lane in Headford, the grazing sheep, the sleepy cows, the moody lake and the ancient countryside, create a different world all together that is somehow timeless.

There is a twelfth century castle ruin outside our front door.  It's half tumbled-down but you can still walk inside an see the remains of a medieval world.  We drive past the shell of a seventh century church and cemetery on our road home.  The grand manor house beside which our little cottage crouches as if in obeisance, embodies the world of the eighteenth century.  (It's beautiful to look at and to walk around in, but the poor woman who lives there can't keep up with it because it was designed to be run by a staff of at least ten.)  Even the stone wall that keeps in our neighbor's cattle has probably been there for centuries.  When I met the two farmers who own the herds outside our door (brothers from a family of twelve siblings), it even felt like they had been here for centuries.  The life that they lead seems more similar that of their great great grandparents than to ours (and yet, bizarrely, one brother is known as "Jimmy and the Cow" because that is his twitter handle).  Maybe the presence of so much that is so old makes time feel different, and maybe that is part of the appeal of this place.  One can rush about trying to accomplish one's long list of little tasks, but doing that in the midst of this world of ancient timelessness, changes how it feels.  And so I breathe a little deeper tonight as I rest beside the old stone of our ruined fortress knowing that none of the days business matters much at all in this ancient scheme of things.