Postscript

June 6, 2022

We are somewhere above the Rockies. Cathy is asleep beside me. The entire cabin is dark save the glow of my laptop. The only sounds are the muted roar of rushing air and powerful jet engines outside and the tapping of my keypad inside.

         My short-term memory, already short, is growing shorter. I’m sitting here coaxing recollections to cooperate, like a border collie in a sheep dog trial, sensing time is about to run out, herding his charge into a pen.  Damn sheep won’t do what I want.

         It is a cliché, but true: the main attraction on a trip to Ireland are the Irish people.

• Sean the farmer, seeing us pull up to the cottage at Dunluce and noting Cathy is driving, pulling me aside and whispering, “Do ye not know how to drive an automobile, Robert?”
• Our first cabbie, after being told we are getting married, with no guests at the wedding, saying “That’s brilliant; feck em all.”
• The plump woman working in a donut shop where we stopped to tend to Cathy’s low glucose (okay, and maybe get me a pastry), sharing that she had been to America and once went wine tasting in Napa County, recalling “I’ve never been so fecked up in me life; I mean, what’s the point of drinking it if ye can’t swallow.” 
• The bartender in Portrush, when I ordered a Whiskey Sour, having had a delicious one in Dublin, looking at me as if I had lost my mind and asking, “Now why would ye want to ruin good whiskey by making it sour tasting?”

• The cabbie taking us back to Dublin, after Cathy and I had a wee testy moment while I tried to navigate us to a gas station to top off the rental car, asking us if we had an automatic transmission and, looking relieved, saying “That’s good; I’ve seen many a married couple fresh from a row at Hertz”;
• The woman in the United Polaris lounge with whom Cathy became a BFF, an Ecuadorian CEO, just into Dublin from Prague, waiting for her flight to Mexico City, who sported designer glasses that gave her the appearance of a female Ari Onassis, telling Cathy how hard it is to get “her people” to “just stop worrying about everything.”
• The cabbie instructing us on the proper terminology in Ireland, “Ye don’t say “awesome”; ye say “brilliant.”
• Or when our wedding photographer recalling how, just the past week, a husband, despite his bride’s demand, balked at kissing her on the forehead, complimented me on my technique and I told her it was “a signature Jackson move.”

I wish we had more time.  More time to create memories. But the lights have come up and the flight attendant has told me to “stow my tray and return my seat to an upright position.”  I need to wake Cathy and put this laptop to sleep. 

         I’ll find more memories another time. For now, I’m opting for the signature Jackson move.