May 31,2022
As Cathy and I tidy up the Thistlethatch, pack our bags, load them into the car, and look out from the Dutch door in the kitchen on the valley below, we comment how difficult it must have been to emigrate, as the owner of this home once did. This seems particularly true for those who left for Australia or America, land so vast, brown, and dry.
No wonder the Irish are prone to reminisce and drink. Memories like this must have been a comfort . . . and a torment.
The owner Andy is late. So Cathy and I walk to the far corner of the property behind the cottage where Andy has hung a swing on a tree near a rock wall. We agree a good swing ride cures what ails you and takes you back to your childhood. For Cathy, she is seven. Me? I’m wondering how strong the limb is.
Andy arrives. He presents us with a coffee mug he had made for guests as a thank-you, asks if we have heard the cuckoo bird, once common, now rare, but recently rediscovered near the cottage on early mornings. When we hesitate, Andy seems dumbfounded, mutters “Have ye not heard of a cuckoo bird?” and pulls his phone from his pocket to look up the cuckoo’s call. We glance at one another as if it is a trick question and, while Andy works his phone, Cathy interjects “Is it the same as the sound of a cuckoo clock?” This thought has curiously never occurred to Andy and he is tickled when, playing the bird’s call on his phone, he realizes, as we all do, the connections we never make in life.
Andy tells us of his efforts to find Rooneys that might be related and shares how tickled his mother was last night when he told her of the American couple staying in the cottage before going on to the North Coast to be married.
I find a handful of wool a sheep has left on the wire across the road trying to wiggle beneath. I give it to Cathy as a souvenir of the cottage.
I suppose it’s the Irish in me. It seems no matter how bright the horizon and the promise that lies beyond, we can’t help but feel just a wee bit of melancholy leaving a place we have grown to love, if just for a short while. I look out to the valley beyond the swing, and as I do, the warmth on my face of a soft good-bye gives way to a cold wind that knifes beneath my coat and whispers in my ear
“Take a moment . . . you’ll not likely return.”
"Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost" 