A Very Irish Day

A friend sent me a pho­to today, of a bunch of red­head­ed girls in school uni­forms and woolen pullovers and their ponies on a sparse beach under an over­cast day with the chill ocean wind blow­ing hair, manes and fet­locks and break­ers rolling up on the sandy shore. ^***

It has every ami­able qual­i­ty of what I and my Lost Beloved would call a Very Irish Day… of our favorite days in Ire­land that com­bined what we called Snug­gle Weath­er with crisp clean scent, the smell of the ocean, the cool mois­ture of the air (but nev­er damp), the over­cast sky, and so much beau­ty that gave the feel­ing of a very High Dynam­ic Range photo.

Such was our first day in Ire­land when we pulled into the car park of the Rocky View Farm­house B&B in Fanore, Co Clare. We were greet­ed by a lit­tle short-haired cat that despite the cool wind was almost painful­ly warm to the touch who insist­ed on being thor­ough­ly pet with a lit­tle pep­per-box grinder churn­ing away in its throat.

We get a cou­ple of Very Irish Days with the chang­ing of the sea­sons here in Mis­souri. They always leave me yearn­ing and nos­tal­gic. Until a few years ago I was still able to greet them in my scratchy Aran wool cardi­gan and wool dri­ving cap. Years before that we would tell one anoth­er that it was a Very Irish Day and hold one anoth­er and just smell and feel for a brief while. I con­fess, I always smelled the day through the scent of her hair in my face.

I’m very grate­ful to have these lit­tle occur­rences every so often, though in truth they now feel like some­thing that hap­pened to some­one else. It feels like I expe­ri­ence them at sec­ond-hand, vic­ar­i­ous­ly through some oth­er. I think maybe that is for the best. I think that in this way God gives me a way to re-expe­ri­ence the joy while buffer­ing any sor­row that might still be lin­ger­ing in clos­ets I thought well swept out.

*** Not so very dif­fer­ent from the pre­co­cious school chil­dren on the Aran Islands who want­ed to play tin­whis­tle with me and pet our Whin and exclaim, “Oh, and isn’t he gor­geous! Has he had his nuu­uts?”. For­tu­nate­ly by this time we had heard this exact state­ment made dozens of times across both the Repub­lic and North­ern Ire­land, and I was able to answer, “Thank you. He’s a she and yes, she’s had her kib­ble this morning.”