June 3, 2022
Weather wise, we’ve led a charmed life.
We’ve had to don our raincoats only once during our entire time in Ireland. When it has rained, we’ve been in the car traveling between destinations. Today is no exception. We planned for a day in Sligo just to walk about. It was raining as we drove here. It will rain tomorrow when we leave for Dublin.
But today, it is shirtsleeve weather. Downright hot.
Cathy has very fond memories of Sligo, as this was the hub of her family’s trip back in 2006. When she, her folks, Nick, Lisa, and cousins were here last, it was raining cats and dogs. She marvels how different a walk along the river is in sunshine.
Sadly, things other than the weather have changed as well. Covid seems to have taken its toll on Sligo. The bookstores which she and Lisa so loved are gone; only one remains. The Yeats Society still exists . . . a kind woman in a small office on the second floor, is helpful . . . but the museum the Society once operated is gone. Many streets are undergoing work, so the sounds of construction and the smell of slurry seal assault the senses.
We are staying in the Riverside Hotel. It sits cantilevered over the River and our room at the corner is the best room in the hotel. We look down upon the water where swans float between mallards. This is our view the rainy day we arrived.
We start our day, as always, tea and coffee. We learn from a young busboy in the hotel restaurant, who hails from there, that Donegal is not pronounced “DON—ee—gall” with the accent on the first syllable, as I have pronounced it, but “don—ee—GALL”, accent on the final syllable. It’s as if syllable were not pronounced “SIIL-uh—bull”, but “sill—uhh—BELL. Cathy teases me as I dwell on this from time to time throughout the day.
We make our way to the statue of Yeats which Cathy dearly loves. She had hoped to find a miniature of the bronze. It strikes her fancy. But the kind woman in the Yeats Society office tells us the artist never consented to commercialize his work and destroyed the cast after it was completed.
We make our way to Foley’s liquor store to take a photo where Cathy once photographed Nick to share with her friends Ned and Sally Foley.
Newfound students of whiskey, we stop in the bookstore where I of course cannot leave empty handed. One treasure, a guide to Irish whiskey, I plan to study on the plane ride home. I plan to make this photo a jigsaw puzzle.
Our blood sugars decide to do the Texas-two-step. Cathy’s climbs to over 350 and we race back to the hotel to tend to it. Mine—which we test with Cathy’s dad’s old finger prick device—dives to 70. Cathy gets an insulin shot; I get a pastry by the river.
There is no justice.
Sligo is all Cathy remembers. And it isn’t. Times change. Bookstores come and go. Our memories, like Yeats’ green grass, must yield to time and the mountain hare.
Memory
One had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.
"Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost" 