Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire

I'm having trouble writing lately, or rather I'm writing things and not publishing them. I suspect many of my blogging friends are in the same boat, and that boat is full of elephants, and do we talk about those? Do we distract ourselves? What is the Right Thing?

I wrote about suicide a couple of weeks ago, in part to let people know I'm okay since I've come out of the suicidal ideation closet (I'M OKAY!), but what the whole thing boiled down to was "love is an active verb, not a commodity to be given, received, earned or deserved" and "what if all that REALLY matters in the end, when your heart is weighed against a feather or Saint Peter consults his heavenly Moleskine or whatever it is that happens, is how you treated other people?" *

It pretty much sounded like your stoned friend yammering at you somewhere between the bong and the biscuits, and so forever shall it remain unpublished, alas.

I also tried writing about one of those other elephants but THAT kept turning into a story about how my privileged, white, US-citizen daughter H was (and still is) completely and utterly fearless and how every time we took her to the emergency room, which was A LOT OF TIMES, I was terrified Child Protective Services would be called in to take her away from us, and how my very first thought when I woke up on the morning of her 18th birthday was, "Now no one can take her." And about the unbelievable relief I felt over that. Which had nothing at all to do with the horror of what is happening in this country and my state right now and, in fact, bordered on appropriation. So yeah.

Since last we spoke, C isn't doing so great, or rather he IS doing REALLY great but only because he currently has zero demands placed on him, WHICH ISN'T GREAT. I've stepped back my involvement with the food pantry to deal with this situation, also not great, and my dealing with it isn't going great because life keeps getting in the way, and I'm spending a lot of time feeling like I'm failing all the people I most definitely do not want to fail and then beating myself up over the fact that I'm beating myself up over that. This is what it's like to live in my brain. Now you know how surprised and delighted I was to make it to 50! (Fifty-one now!)

H moved out of our house again and I think/hope she's doing okay but I don't get to see or talk to her nearly as much as I would like (I would like EVERY DAY please). I miss her more this time than I did last time, what's up with that? I think I just want all my chicks in the nest.

P and I aren't traveling anywhere by plane this year as far as we know, and I am both relieved and disappointed. But mostly relieved. We're taking a couple of car trips this summer and fall, one to visit family and one to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, and I don't know where we're going other than "west". For the second one, I mean. That first one is "east" until we hit beach.

I'm knitting a sweater, which is kind of a milestone for someone who up to now has knitted only shawls, scarves, cowls, socks, a few baby items and one ill-fitting hat. It's not at all appropriate for the current season but I've bought the yarn to knit another sweater that WILL BE appropriate for the current season except we're likely to be firmly into the NEXT season by the time I start it, but whatever, I knit sweaters now and I'm kind of excited about it.

I don't know what else to say. I hope you're all doing well. I'm surprisingly good in spite of it all. I'll try to write more often even if it's stupid.

* I'm pretty sure it IS the only thing that matters, and that I have a lot of work to do.

Quocunque jeceris stabit

Since last we spoke I have been some places and seen some shit, man, and by "shit" I mean horse plops. You are so excited to read this update now.

P and I flew out of Austin at the tail end of Harvey, leaving our adult children here with the wind and the rain and the panic-induced gas shortage (there are a few things I've done as a parent for which I may never completely forgive myself and I've tucked this trip away into a tiny little corner of that space). We were in Dublin for five days and the only touristy thing I did that I'd done before was Trinity College and the long room in the old library because come on, if I'm in Dublin I'm going there, you can bet money on that. I am going to sit in that room for an entire hour, and during that hour there may come a point at which you wonder if I am okay, and the truth is that I'm SO VERY OK that I appear not at all okay, and it's fine. Just leave me to it. I'm inhaling the aroma and soaking in the filtered light and trying to pretend I'm alone in there, just me and the books and the busts and that incredible ceiling.

Apart from also visiting the National Museum of Archaeology (which is FANTASTIC) and getting lost in Temple Bar (WHO DESIGNED THESE STREETS?) I mostly stayed south of the canal this trip, stomping around Rathmines and Ballsbridge and Ranelagh, visiting little shops and parks and gardens and admiring the gorgeous ironwork fences and the view of the Wicklow Mountains and the chimneys of Upper Leeson from our hotel room window.

Just like last year, we were in Dublin this time for an industry conference that P attends (he was presenting this year), and we learned this trip that next year the conference will move to Dusseldorf, and I am sad because that likely means this was our last trip to Dublin for a very long while, and I LIKE DUBLIN. I like all of Ireland, actually. I understand Ireland, nothing there feels strange to me. If I have a home away from the US, Ireland is it. South Dublin is it. I will miss it so much.

After Dublin we hopped a little propeller plane for the Isle of Man and OH YOU GUYS. If you ever get the chance to visit the Isle of Man. DO IT. Do not hesitate, not even for a second. It's 30 minutes by air from Dublin or Manchester. It is by far the most beautiful place I've ever been, ever ever ever, with by far the nicest people I've ever met in my entire life. We stayed right on the Central Promenade in Douglas and only saw a fraction of the island, from Port Erin up the southeast coast and then north to Laxey and Snaefell, but holy criminy was it amazing and gorgeous and just ... wow. Just wow. Go there. You will not regret it.

The weather was gorgeous our first day on the island but the second day there, which was at the halfway point of our entire trip, it turned wet and grey and chilly and windy and I kind of hit a wall that day from which I never recovered. I have about seven days in me, vacation-wise. Ten if sun and sand and slushy drinks are involved. But this was a fifteen-day trip, you guys. That is too long for me. I am a delicate fucking flower; I can't go that long without my food and my kids and my bed and my Texas weather.

After three days of Manx shenanigans we headed to England, specifically to Cheshire, more specifically to a little town called Lymm that lies on the Bridgewater Canal between Manchester and Liverpool. We were there for a week and the weather stayed awful and my mood stayed awful but holy shit was it gorgeous there. We were there specifically to do some genealogical research on P's side but I did not expect to fall in love with this little town, with its footpaths and deep dark woods and gorgeous meadows (full of horse plops, but also flowers! and berry bushes! and apple trees! and chestnuts! it was so pretty!).

We were in England for another five days and then we flew home sweet home just as Irma was roaring through Florida. Whatever else happens, I am home now. I have my kids and my dog and my bed and my house and my warm sunshine. It's so good to be home.

But you know what? The UK is fabulous. We didn't have a bad meal the whole time we were there, not one. The people we met were without exception friendly and kind and incredibly patient with us, even the old sexist, racist anti-Semites (that was all one guy; his name was George). Everywhere we went was gorgeous. EVERYWHERE. So green, so many trees and flowers, so many dog owners, such beautiful waterways. Dublin is super fucking expensive but the Isle of Man and Cheshire are dirt cheap in comparison re: meals and lodging and transportation. They have Strongbow Dark Fruit cider on tap everywhere, which we can't even GET here in the US, so unfair.

It was an amazing trip and I'm glad it's over and yeah. Let's do fall now. I'm super ready for fall.

In Prague I knew I'd been a witch

Oh, hi. Remember back in May when I said I wasn't doing Facebook much anymore and I hoped it would lead to more writing over here? Those were more innocent times, weren't they?

Yeah. Hello. I have no idea what I've been doing for the past couple of months. But the photographic evidence suggests I've been hanging out in hospital emergency rooms (I wasn't the patient, and everything is fine, and that's all I'm gonna say about that), and I've been buying flowers at the farmer's market, and cooking some stuff, and buying a new chair for my office, and killing yet more plants, and knitting a whole hell of a lot.

AND ... planning another trip to Dublin, with additional stops on the Isle of Man and in Cheshire, UK. I know! Exciting! That's all happening at the end of August/beginning of September and I'm super freaking out over it.

See, my people aren't really travelers. Growing up, I think I got the idea that, much like sleep-away camp, it wasn't something on which working-class people spent their money. I didn't know a single kid growing up who went to sleep-away camp, not until we moved to Texas. The kids I knew all spent their summers the same way I did: running around our blue-collar suburban neighborhood engaging in casual misdemeanors. And I never knew anyone who traveled internationally unless it was across the border by car into Canada or Mexico, or unless it was a military thing.

It's so weird to me that this is a thing I get to do now, that my kids are adults and my parents are still in relatively good health and I can just do this, leave the country for a couple of weeks. Go to a completely other country. I know for some of you this is a typical Thursday or whatever, but for me it's just SO weird. I'm like a little kid with this. Wow! I get to go to Dublin AGAIN! And I get to go to the Isle of Man, who's done that?! (Wait, have any of you done that? Tell me everything!) I get to go to England, where I've never been, and stay in a little inn near Manchester and stomp up and down the canals and drink cider. CAN. NOT. WAIT!

So yeah. Wow. What a summer, eh? H moved into an apartment with friends and got a promotion at work and is doing so great with the adulting, I am SO SUPER PROUD of that kid. C is thisclose to getting his driver's license and did great in his summer class and has been making tons of new amazing music and has a new job, maybe? (I feel very first-trimester about the whole job thing right now, so please just keep your fingers crossed, okay?) So super proud of that kid, too. P is busy getting ready for the conference that is the whole reason we get to go to Dublin again in the first place. And I'm just obsessively googling "minimalist travel wardrobe" and drinking matcha lattes and stress-eating way too much guacamole. Oy.

Actually, that's a lie. I've been reading books! I know! I only have good books to recommend to you anymore, because if a book isn't good within the first couple of chapters I just delete it from my Kindle and move on with my life (and eat more guacamole). This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that I have upwards of 500 books loaded onto my Kindle and that I'll likely only live long enough to read 426 of them. You know, if I'm lucky. And don't get ritually sacrificed to Manannan for trying to use euro in Douglas in a couple of months.

But yeah! The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy: excellent. Required reading if you read and liked Harold Fry. Daniel O'Malley's Stiletto, the sequel to The Rook: excellent. Tig Notaro's I'm Just a Person: excellent. Code Name Verity: excellent! I liked Maria Semple's Today Will Be Different VERY much, apparently much more than a lot of other people did.

Right now I'm reading Captain William R. Anderson's The Ice Diaries, about the first nuclear submarine and its Cold War mission to explore the Arctic Ocean while completely submerged under polar ice (all covert-like). You wouldn't think that would be my kind of thing, but (a) I love true stories about Arctic and Antarctic exploration for some damn reason, and (b) my father-in-law was a career Navy officer and navigator and both of P's brothers served in the Navy aboard nuclear subs. Mostly this book is making me miss my father-in-law because I think he would have LOVED it and I'm sad that I can't buy him a copy.

Anyway. That's what's going on around here. We'll have to talk about TV another time (OMG GAME OF THRONES BROADCHURCH CLAWS WRECKED YAY).

We found the craic

They say it's the same sky the world over but it isn't, not really. I'd never been so far north and east of home before and my body was in shock for one full day of the seven that we spent in Ireland this summer, husband P and me, half a world away from everything we knew and everyone we loved.

Nearly seventeen hours of daylight per day but temperatures like our winter back home. The softest rain I've ever felt against my skin. Everything in Texas wants to kill you; the sun cracks you open and the rain leaves welts and the insects sting and the reptiles drip venom and the scrubby vegetation holds no sustenance or comfort. But Ireland seduces. It promises soft rain and succulent grasses, hot whisky and peat fires, a woolen blanket of heartstring-thrummed music. It catches your eye and then glances away, brushes against you then shows you its shoulder, caresses and then draws back with a sharp slap.

We arrived in Dublin on a Sunday morning, brilliant and crisp, church bells pealing, giddy with lack of sleep. P had told me we would fly over land almost the entire way, right up the Eastern Seaboard and across Canada to Greenland, up and over, hardly any water at all, but that was a lie. We flew up the Eastern Seaboard and Canada until we ran out of Canada and then we shot straight across the Atlantic. I have a phobia of heights and depths and the shock of having done that left me feeling completely reckless and outside of myself. I didn't even think about punching the cab driver at the airport when he called me "sweetheart".

I was left to my own devices in Dublin as P was attending a conference, the whole reason for our trip. The furthest I walked on any one day was from Christ Church Cathedral all the way back to our hotel near Upper Leeson with stops at Dublin Castle and St. Stephen's Green on the way. I sat in the Long Room in the Old Library at Trinity College for an hour with its soft light through the vellum-covered windows, perfume of old books and comfortable rustling of faded ghosts while French tourists whispered to one another over my shoulder and tried not to get in the way of my photos. Nice happened three days later.

I wandered across the stunning tilework at Christ Church Cathedral, gawping at the beauty of it all, and snorted down the ancient stone smell of the crypt like a line of coke, trying to draw every last particle of it into my body to keep it a part of me forever.

I wandered the grounds and gardens at Dublin Castle, home of Tana French's fictional Dublin Murder Squad. I inhaled my way through St. Stephen's Green, startling tiny ruffled birds in the undergrowth. I stomped my Keens up and down Grafton Street until tourists started asking me for directions.

I spent an entire day in bed in our hotel sure that I was dying, lifting the "Do Not Disturb" sign just long enough to accept cups of rooibos tea and bowls of beef and Guinness stew from room service.

I ate rashers of that odd hammy bacon that only exists outside the US, I ate black and white pudding and the most delicious little crisp-skinned  pork sausages, I ate salmon and hake and smoked mackerel at Farm and Hatch and Sons and The Sussex. I ate the most gorgeous flourless cakes with clouds of whipped cream. I forgave Ireland everything all over again -- the spitting rain and wind and sentient, malevolent gloom -- every single time I put a fork in my mouth.

And just like that, P's conference was over and we were on a train to Limerick.

We stayed in the Medieval Quarter on King's Island, within walking distance of St. Mary's Cathedral and King John's Castle and the Milk Market. All of which were absolutely spectacular.

And then one day we piled into a van with another American named Arthur, a lovely English lady named Carol and four nameless-to-us Italians while an Irishman named Frank drove us around County Clare, through The Burren, up to Black Head and around to the Cliffs of Moher and it was quite possibly the best day of my life.

I can't explain quite what it was about County Clare that burrowed deep inside me and has stayed there ever since. A good many of my ancestors came from Ireland and I have no idea whether any of them ever even set foot in County Clare, but walking through The Burren and wandering Caherconnell and Poulnabrone, driving through Ballyvaughan and Lisdoonvarna, seeing those karst domes razed down to bumps in the last ice age and the erratics left scattered around Galway Bay by the glaciers -- something about that felt familiar. Not in a past life sort of way or anything woo-woo like that. It felt like something I didn't even know was missing had been returned. It mended something in me that I hadn't realized was broken. I don't have any other words to describe it.

I don't sleep when I travel. It doesn't matter whether I'm in the same time zone as home or six time zones away. In Dublin the view out our hotel window looked like this:

And so in Dublin I spent long hours staring toward the ceiling in the pitch dark, listening to Hindu devotional music through my earbuds, conjugating German verbs and otherwise trying not to wake P before his long days of conferencing.

In Limerick, though, we were right on the River Abbey.

And so every morning when I inevitably woke before sunrise, I'd carefully insert myself between the curtains and the glass and just sit in the window for the hour or so before P woke up, watching the eastern sky for signs of light and the water for signs of life. And then the final morning we were there, just a few hours before we hopped a cab for Shannon Airport and home, this:

Two swans somehow made their way up the Shannon to the Abbey to just below my window in the paper-thin morning. And as corny as it sounds, it felt like Something. Like a gift. Like a promise.

Oh, and if you're looking for the craic? It's at the Locke. You're welcome.