the purpose of the trip was to visit my cousin kevin o'malley who was appointed by sir barack obama as the US ambassador to ireland. a very regal reason indeed, that i did absolutely nothing to earn! kevin's been living in the white house-esque deerfield residence in dublin, our presidents' and ambassadors' favorite accommodation when in europe, so we thought we might as well check it out while it belongs to the family.
my brother and i, being young and, with the rest of the millennial generation, addicted to experience, decided to extend our trip on the front end with a stop in iceland. denny and i took two bus tours around the country, which we discovered is the easiest way for tourists to hit all the natural wonders without tumbling into an ice crevice or stepping on a boiling hot spring.
we drove by volcanic crags, mossy landscapes, and miles of volcanic beaches, learning along the way from our friendly yet mysterious icelandic tour guides about the legends of trolls and elves which accompany the sites. along the way, we stopped at a black sand beach, a park full of geysers and bubbling geothermal pools, and a glacier, taking in the nature you only read about in textbooks. we even strapped crampons on our feet, grabbed some ice picks and hiked said glacier, which was an informative experience if only because of what we learned about the iceland by doing so. the glacier holds within it an active volcano - one of hundreds in the ohio-sized country - which was roughly 10 years overdue and could have erupted at any moment during our hike. if the volcano were to erupt, it would take only about three hours for the lava to break through the ice cap and begin to melt the hundreds-year-old glacier, pushing rivers of icy waters out towards sea and flooding the surrounding area. apparently this sort of science is the most common way waterfalls in iceland are formed, and has shaped the country's history and landscape such that the icelandic folk have built their lands and life plans with this sort of eruption / escape in mind.
i made sure to take some of the landscape with me by picking my signature miniature wildflower bouquets, and photographing them in front of waterfalls. of the flora and fauna, i was particularly awed by the stretches of land completely covered by these lush, vibrant purple flowers echoing hill after hill, mile after mile throughout the country. despite being an invasive species, the lupinous add brushstrokes of color to an already magnificent landscape. between the cool blues, volcanic reds, deep greens and bright purple, the flowers help create a bold, surreal palette only witnessed in impressionist paintings or on the cover of my first children's novel, the canvas.
denny and i stayed in reykjavik, where we were tickled by the icelandic language and in particular, the street names. our favorite was "freyjugata" which we inserted into phrases throughout the trip, for example, "freyjugata try this fermented shark". through our visit to the viking museum, we learned that the language itself is only spoken by the 300,000 icelandic folk on the island, is rooted in nordic tongues, and actively uses three gender pronouns. their progressive zeitgeist is reflected in its people, who are leaders in harvesting sustainable energy and in the arts, but are also daringly cooler than americans. they dye their hair targaryen-platinum, wear skin-tight leather, and proudly exhibit their tattoos. it's hot.
where iceland was about nature and exploration, our trip to ireland was indubitably about family. the moment we stepped out of the airport and into my dad's rental car felt like a brand new, more luxurious adventure, with the familiarity of his driving (despite self-consciously navigating the left side of the road) immediately bringing us the comfort of home.
despite the strong urge to sleep for days, denny and i were immediately thrown into the excitement of the euro cup, with the ireland vs. france game neck-and-neck by the time we passed the first pub on our way back from the airport. seeing all the green and orange (hair) in the packed double-decker pub rooting and hollering for the irish team, full-steam nationalism bumping into me as i pushed my way to the bar, was precisely my first exposure to a room of all irish people. my expectations were immediately met, and exceeded.
seeing the streets fill with swaying, drunk bodies after the team lost meant that my sunday evening in dublin was only beginning. after a recharging dinner of grass-fed irish steak with garlic butter smeared on top, a pack of 20 or so members of the our family walked around a few blocks, pretending as if it weren't absolutely hopeless that we'd find something to do with the underage cousins other than go to another pub. unfortunately for them, we eventually found ourselves at a crossroad (literally, a few of us had crossed the road and others had not) where the children were inevitably being drawn back to the hotel by our grandparents, the rest of the pack inching closer to the door of the nearest drinking establishment.
talk throughout the trip centered around which sites, landmarks and towns each of the individual families were visiting on day trips, mixed in with a sprinkle of family gossip or who's-doing-what-now. the next morning my brother and i stood in line for a much-needed cup of coffee ("i'll just get the americano, they can't put whiskey in that, right?") before heading out to the currently ranked no. 1 golf course in the world, royal county down. it was a nice coastal links course, bordering a kelly green mountain range, where i probably lost more than 25 euro worth of golf balls.
my grandpa had played with us and when we returned to the family for dinner, our grandma said she had never, ever seen him happier, which is saying a lot for a couple who've been together for more than 50 years. as we stood in the living room of the deerfield residence, watching pop's cousin talk of their parents leaving ireland hopeless, penniless for a better life in america, i could only imagine the intense emotion of having all of your children together there, but now in a decadent, presidential room that obama calls home when he's abroad.
it offered a lot of perks, rolling around the country with the ambassador. when we arrived in our hometown of westport, we were greeted by the mayor, who formally but intimately welcomed us "home". we learned that the o'malleys have a long history in westport, starting with king owen "blackoak" o'malley and his daughter grace, the "pirate queen", taking names and owning all of the "territory of the owls" in the 16th century. my brother, stepbrother and i hiked halfway up the summit of croagh patrick, the mountain where st. patrick famously drove the snakes out of ireland, and later learned that the mountain, the bay we looked over and the surrounding islands were once entirely ours.
my great grandpa's origins were much more humble, however. my grandpa's brother passed away earlier this year, and we spread his ashes in the moss, stone, and wildflowers on the farm where their father grew up. i picked a wildflower bouquet, and all the older ladies of the reunion followed suit. i was just doing my thing, but i realized that the act of collecting a piece of the land, feeling the ground with my hands, was perhaps the most powerful way of connecting to it. it's not going to get more real than that.
our last night on the official reunion circuit, the ambassador treated us with a private concert by the chieftains, who were described to me as "#2 in ireland to U2". the irish are a very musical people, and i found it interesting that hired musicians play their sets sitting on bar stools rather than stages and drink their guinness among the crowd. i was both mesmerized and vulnerable listening to their gentle, haunting songs of drunk parents and leaving home, but the irish know better than to leave a bar sulking. before even the bartender gets misty-eyed, the band has begun to play a cheerier song, one that has drinkers clapping the tables and shouting the lyrics of the next anthem. the chieftains, a bit classier than your average pub group though still irish, told us it was the same set that they played for joe biden, in private, the week prior!the reunion part of the trip checked off, my dad, stepmom, brother, stepbrother and i drove down the west coast of ireland, stopping along the way at the cliffs of moehr and the burren, a neolithic gravesite. it's chilling to think of who stood on the same ground in 10,000 b.c., what they looked like (i picture cloaks and furs), and how they buried their dead (we are not afforded such rich, honest history in the young US). we crossed river shannon on a ferry, witnessing a double rainbow over the same waterway by which vikings had entered the country in the 10th century. we then headed south through limerick to the town of tralee, and then to the colorful, coastal town of dingle, where we shopped and ate on our last day as tourists.
but what i learned over the course of our stay in ireland is that eating, drinking and driving around with my family of all people wasn't the only thing that made it feel like home. despite an american upbringing, and never having visited the country, i felt an inherent belonging there, as if i were finally surrounded by people just like me. it was a far greater number of far more familiar people than i'd ever be surrounded by in a public space in the US, that was for sure. i'd never considered myself "ethnic" so the idea of a "homeland" never really swam around in my head - but through my wanderings there i had time to marinate in the fact that both grandparents, who i am very close to, were raised by irish catholics. they even had irish accents, which, of course, is the truest test in degree of foreignness. sure, a lot has gone on since the early 1900s, and i sure as hell don't even understand our parents' generation. but from a historical perspective, 100 years is so little time, a millisecond of life. i learned that many of my childhood obsessions and favorite things are common in ireland - sheep are the unofficial national mascot, and the country subsists off a hearty diet of meat, cheese, and potatoes. they love to tell stories, golf, and be merry, and drinking is a national pastime. i've started to believe this isn't all a great coincidence, and that my biology, tastes, tendencies must come from those who came before me. and, those people belonged to the emerald isle.
featured artist: mike worrall
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