52 Deoch an Doras

“Deoch an dorais” is a common expression in Irish pubs and homes: it literally means “drink of the door,” but a more idiomatic translation would be “parting glass” or “one for the road.” There’s a popular song about this idea: it’s not simply about downing one more drink while you can but more about marking the resolution that must accompany a departure that is not eagerly anticipated—far from it. As the song “The Parting Glass” says,  But since it falls unto my lot That I should rise and you should not I’ll gently rise and softly call Good night and joy be with you all. I’ve been saying goodbyes for the last few weeks—to people and places—and though I’m no drinker, I’ve often thought that a good swig of something strong would ease the process. True, I’ll be back here soon and often (I don’t deserve your pity as I have three trips to Ireland planned in the next thirteen months), but I won’t be living in Ireland for an extended period in the foreseeable future, and that makes me sad. To end our sabbatical year, Ron and I planned a two week trip hitting favorite spots from past trips and including places we’ve always wanted to see. In spite of all the roads and lanes we’ve gone down in the last year (see map: the orange line shows our last trip, the pink lines show trips we’ve taken this year), as we drove around the country we couldn’t help but compile a new list—all the places we still want to visit, all the things we still want to do, all the towns, beaches, high crosses, pubs and restaurants, museums, lighthouses, monastic sites, lakes, mountains, birthplaces and graves, prisons, Big Houses, guided walks, and many more places and experiences we haven’t been able to fit it, not to mention all those we haven’t yet discovered. When I started this blog last July, I wrote, “Over the coming year, I expect everything I think I know about this country to change—or at least to grow new roots and shoots”—possibly the understatement of the century. I haven’t even begun to take account of how much I’ve learned and, as an outcome of that learning and of being away from home, how much I’ve changed. Much of that transformation has been due to the travel, research, lectures, courses, reading, conversations, etc. that I...
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51 Woodbrook

Oddly enough, one of the best books about Ireland—a book praised by Seamus Heaney and Brian Moore among others—is a memoir by a Scotsman who lived in County Roscommon for just ten years during the 1930s. Woodbrook by David Thomas was published in 1974 and was instantly recognized as a masterpiece. Many writers and others talk about its influence on them. Des Kenny of the legendary Kennys Bookshop in Galway included it in his book Kenny’s Choice: 101 Irish Books You Must Read (Curragh Press 2009). Though I’m always on the lookout for interesting memoirs, I picked up Woodbrook by accident on a visit years ago to Strokestown House, a Palladian mansion also in Roscommon that today houses a museum dedicated to the Great Famine. The Woodbrook family, the Kirkwoods, and the Strokestown family knew each other, as families from the great estates or “Big Houses,” as the tradition is called in Ireland, were likely to do. When I eventually got around to reading it one summer, I was immediately entranced, not only by the elegant writing, but also by Thomson’s unusual interweaving of memoir, geography, and local and national history. If you are looking for a book that reads like a dream and evokes the essence of Ireland, you can do no better than to read Woodbrook. Woodbrook was the name of the house and estate of the Kirkwood family, who hired the eighteen-year-old Thomson as a tutor to their children in 1930s. Located amid the lush plains and quiet lakes of Ireland’s Midlands, the house had been built by the Phibbs family in 1780, possibly on the site of an earlier structure, and the Kirkwoods bought it from them in the 1860s, adding wings on either side of the original square house. Both family were English in origin and arrived in Ireland as a result of “plantations”—land grants designed to populate Ireland with families from the British aristocracy regardless of any native Irish claims. In addition to farming their land, the Kirkwoods bred racehorses and one of theirs, a horse named Woodbrook, won the Grand National in 1881, a glory that the family were never quite able to equal again. By the time Thomson turned up at Woodbrook, Charles and Ivy Kirkwood were trying with little success to keep the place going. By the end of Thomson’s tenure with the family, they had to sell Woodbrook and...
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50 The View From Here

June In June 2014 Ron and I came to Dublin for a week to find an apartment for our sabbatical year. Traipsing around the city we barely knew at the time, we saw several nice places where we could imagine ourselves setting up house, but when we visited 78 The Dickens at The Gasworks and took in this spectacular view from the living room along with the apartment’s other positive features (extra bedrooms, two bathrooms, lots of windows, and easy access to nearby shops, restaurants, and public transportation), we were hooked. Shortly after we moved in on June 29, I rearranged the furniture somewhat awkwardly so that as I sat at my desk each day, I could look out on the DART tracks; the rooftops, chimneys, steeples, and cranes of Dublin 4; the Dublin Mountains in the distance; and the weather that generally moves towards the apartment from the southwest—the view from here. Over the course of the year, I’ve gazed at this live painting with its subtle but telling changes for hours every day and tried to capture it in photography many times. This is my Dublin.   July We arrived on June 29, and by July 3 had a coffee maker, a daunting load of items from IKEA (some assembly required), a strange assortment of groceries, and the beginnings of a tentatively sketched out work routine. By all accounts, it was one of the most beautiful Julys in recent memory, with many days gloriously sunny and warm–that means in the 60’s–like the day in the photo, the view from here. It’s a good thing our son Nick came to visit us a week after we arrived in Dublin, or we might have spent the whole month organizing the apartment and hunting down essentials like a set of wooden tongs for the toaster (found at Tiger), a big garbage bin for the recycling (Argos), or lots of hangers since there are so few drawers in the apartment (Dunnes Stores). We didn’t really need any of the things that much, but part of the fun of moving to a new place is solving these mundane puzzles and getting to know the city through the medium of your daily life. Conquering complicated new rules no one understood to get a bank account, setting up gas and electricity, getting the Internet and cable going, finding the food and household items we wanted at local...
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