Cornamona, Ireland December 1998
I sit next to an attractive woman enroute to
London-Heathrow. She is from Florence,
Italy and had been visiting her uncle who lives in Rochester Hills. After the usual
customary remarks she tells me she wants to write a book about serial
killers. In her intermediate-proficient
English she says we all have the capacity to kill many people. I think of those who have hurt me and those I have hurt. What motivation propels us into actions of
violence or revenge. I never saw it growing up, I'm thankful this wasn't a model to consider. I have threatened
to hurt and recoiled in fear at the threats. Would I step over that unthinkable line brings chills and I ask the red headed flight attendant for another blanket.
Thomas Merton spends a lifetime cultivating the contemplative. Going to Ireland is a hope
someone will speak to me or show me the road I need to take for
the next year, for the rest of my life. A road free from conflict and fear, pain and suffering.
On a cold Sunday morning, I wake up in the village of Cornamona and in Josie Coyne’s bed and breakfast. Horizontal rain pounds all who stumble outside. Though the walk from Macs pub to the Josie’s is only a few meters, I am whipped and slammed and thoroughly soaked. This morning I am given a full Irish breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, brown bread, toasted tomatoes, and two kinds of blood pudding, along with enough coffee to satisfy a dozen graduate students.I walk to the Catholic church with Pat, Josie’s son, Josie, and her sister Clara, who is visiting the homeland from New York, where she has lived for the past 30 years. Mind you I wasn’t invited to go to mass, I was expected to go to mass. Sacred Heart is an old parish in a new building, but none of that matters. The mass is in the Irish, though the homily is in English. There is no music, and an interim priest holds the fort while the regular pontiff is holed up in San Francisco on vacation.
On a cold Sunday morning, I wake up in the village of Cornamona and in Josie Coyne’s bed and breakfast. Horizontal rain pounds all who stumble outside. Though the walk from Macs pub to the Josie’s is only a few meters, I am whipped and slammed and thoroughly soaked. This morning I am given a full Irish breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, brown bread, toasted tomatoes, and two kinds of blood pudding, along with enough coffee to satisfy a dozen graduate students.I walk to the Catholic church with Pat, Josie’s son, Josie, and her sister Clara, who is visiting the homeland from New York, where she has lived for the past 30 years. Mind you I wasn’t invited to go to mass, I was expected to go to mass. Sacred Heart is an old parish in a new building, but none of that matters. The mass is in the Irish, though the homily is in English. There is no music, and an interim priest holds the fort while the regular pontiff is holed up in San Francisco on vacation.
Pat is an amiable fellow, a student at Trinity College in Dublin. He is an aspiring musician and plays about
20 tracks of his work for me in his parent’s sitting room, the same room I
dined in a few hours earlier after the service. Trying not to yawn too
noticeably, I tried as best I could to listen to him tell me he didn’t care
much to coming home from Dublin, said he, Cornamona is a trifling slow. Ay
unless you’re looking for a slice of the trifling, mate.
Pat offers to take me to Aunt Margaret’s home. We stop at the tiny grocery store, which is also the post office, to pick up turf briquettes for the fire. We stop at Sadie Coyne’s house to pick up the key. She lives to the west of Aunt Margaret and was asked to keep after the home. Sadie tells me she has six children and two of them still live with her; Aengus, a precocious twelve year old and Maureen, pronounced Maurry, a 16 year old biting at the chomp of real live experiences. Her boyfriend Declan was there that first day.
I entered the house and it's colder inside than outside. Aunt Margaret was never one to complain and certainly didn’t seem bothered by perpetual drafts from door jams and the upstairs. It’s humbles one to know there are people in industrialized nations who still live without modern conveniences. But she was present at the Miracle of the Sun in 1917 and chose at that moment to live a life of simplicity. Aunt Margaret cooked most of her meals over the fire. In 1995 she was given a TV by Uncle Bill and Aunt Eileen. A few years later a stove was brought in. Why would anyone give a stove to a woman who was already in her 90’s? A few years ago a space heater was installed by Sean Sullivan, Aunt Margaret’s eccentric electrician neighbor on the other side. He lives with his 86 year old mother Sara, and tries to explain to me why he didn’t turn the heat on though a few too many Irish cocktails make his English and Irish indistinguishable. I can see my breath in the house, Sean, for the love of Jesus Joseph and Mary, turn it on. Sadie gave me a little space heater which I embrace like a mother and her chicks. Can I keep it under the blankets?
The house is so cold I wear my polar fleece hat and winter coat to bed. For two hours the next morning I am trying to start a turf and timber fire in the hearth. Outside I look for anything dry to burn. Next to the house is a shed where I find a pile of turf in the corner, in addition to cattle feed and farm tools. Margaret never married and her brother Tom lived in the house with her until he died in 1962. In 1996 she moved into a nursing home in Loughrea, east of Galway city, roughly 45 minutes south of Cornamona. Sadie says Aunt Margaret didn’t want alot of visitors so she settled for a home far enough away for other neighbors from pestering her. Sara Sullivan just about came out of her skin when I brought this up. It’s all just Sadie wanting to control Aunt Margaret and eventually get the house and the land, both of which the Sullivans and Sadie wish to have for their own. They don’t talk to each other anymore, on account of Aunt Margaret and both try to persuade me the other is the devil incarnate. The Sullivans and their immediate relatives, the Hopkins family all have it in for Sadie. Sadie says she won’t go to mass anymore with the likes of such evil people. Sadie’s a fighten woman, having gotten rid of an abusive and drunk husband and raising a half a dozen of her own, she’s spirited about life in Connemara and believes with the world against her it only gives her strength to prove them all wrong. But one cannot help but wonder how Aunt Margaret’s move to Loughrea may have been handled if Aunt Eileen were there to deal with the matter herself.
By lunch I’m still fighting to make a fire and decide to take a hike and photo the surroundings. Directly in front of the house stands a rocky mountain with grazing spray painted sheep dotting it for the eye’s length. It takes me an hour to find a passage to begin climbing it for there is barbed wire to keep in the livestock and presumably me out. I see Aengus and ask him for a route and he points to a break in the wired fence over this hill past the waterfall. This entire landscape is saturated like an enormous sponge. Every step is squish squish. Sometimes I am up to my knees in spongy sod. It takes an additional hour to climb to the top of the hill where Lough Corrib can be seen. The second largest lake in Ireland isn’t that far from Aunt Margaret’s home, the terrain simply makes it impossible to walk there in any time shorter than driving to California from the Midwest. But by golly, it’s beautiful and brings out the manly. Even in the dead of winter a heartiness encourages the fight must go on and by golly if there is a God and I don't climb Croagh Patrick and ask for forgiveness and a new wife have mercy on me and keep me warm.
In a few hours I am to rise and make way for the workmen’s bus to Galway and then it’s a bus to Dublin before I return to the states. The rain at one in the morning is evil, another horizontal slash and in my daze and anticipation sleep is bad when all of a sudden there is a pounding at the door and I jump out of bed ready to defend. It’s Sean and I let him in reluctantly, he’s drunk and plenty angry. ‘You were gonna leave without saying goodbye to me mother, were ya you dirty yank, all of youse work for the CIA I tell ya.’ I am in no mood to argue with a man with missing teeth and broken glasses so I agree to return to his home and say goodbye to Sara. Standing at her bedside I lean over dripping on her and say my goodbyes. It was the right thing to do.
Sara sang a beautiful song in the Irish at Macs Bar during the Christening party. How wonderful would it be to grow up in a village where everyone turns out for little Caroline’s special day? Rounds of Guinness, shots of Paddy’s, a spirit collective, grudges set aside, the treasured are lifted, the song draws us in and lets us remember the faith.
Pat offers to take me to Aunt Margaret’s home. We stop at the tiny grocery store, which is also the post office, to pick up turf briquettes for the fire. We stop at Sadie Coyne’s house to pick up the key. She lives to the west of Aunt Margaret and was asked to keep after the home. Sadie tells me she has six children and two of them still live with her; Aengus, a precocious twelve year old and Maureen, pronounced Maurry, a 16 year old biting at the chomp of real live experiences. Her boyfriend Declan was there that first day.
I entered the house and it's colder inside than outside. Aunt Margaret was never one to complain and certainly didn’t seem bothered by perpetual drafts from door jams and the upstairs. It’s humbles one to know there are people in industrialized nations who still live without modern conveniences. But she was present at the Miracle of the Sun in 1917 and chose at that moment to live a life of simplicity. Aunt Margaret cooked most of her meals over the fire. In 1995 she was given a TV by Uncle Bill and Aunt Eileen. A few years later a stove was brought in. Why would anyone give a stove to a woman who was already in her 90’s? A few years ago a space heater was installed by Sean Sullivan, Aunt Margaret’s eccentric electrician neighbor on the other side. He lives with his 86 year old mother Sara, and tries to explain to me why he didn’t turn the heat on though a few too many Irish cocktails make his English and Irish indistinguishable. I can see my breath in the house, Sean, for the love of Jesus Joseph and Mary, turn it on. Sadie gave me a little space heater which I embrace like a mother and her chicks. Can I keep it under the blankets?
The house is so cold I wear my polar fleece hat and winter coat to bed. For two hours the next morning I am trying to start a turf and timber fire in the hearth. Outside I look for anything dry to burn. Next to the house is a shed where I find a pile of turf in the corner, in addition to cattle feed and farm tools. Margaret never married and her brother Tom lived in the house with her until he died in 1962. In 1996 she moved into a nursing home in Loughrea, east of Galway city, roughly 45 minutes south of Cornamona. Sadie says Aunt Margaret didn’t want alot of visitors so she settled for a home far enough away for other neighbors from pestering her. Sara Sullivan just about came out of her skin when I brought this up. It’s all just Sadie wanting to control Aunt Margaret and eventually get the house and the land, both of which the Sullivans and Sadie wish to have for their own. They don’t talk to each other anymore, on account of Aunt Margaret and both try to persuade me the other is the devil incarnate. The Sullivans and their immediate relatives, the Hopkins family all have it in for Sadie. Sadie says she won’t go to mass anymore with the likes of such evil people. Sadie’s a fighten woman, having gotten rid of an abusive and drunk husband and raising a half a dozen of her own, she’s spirited about life in Connemara and believes with the world against her it only gives her strength to prove them all wrong. But one cannot help but wonder how Aunt Margaret’s move to Loughrea may have been handled if Aunt Eileen were there to deal with the matter herself.
By lunch I’m still fighting to make a fire and decide to take a hike and photo the surroundings. Directly in front of the house stands a rocky mountain with grazing spray painted sheep dotting it for the eye’s length. It takes me an hour to find a passage to begin climbing it for there is barbed wire to keep in the livestock and presumably me out. I see Aengus and ask him for a route and he points to a break in the wired fence over this hill past the waterfall. This entire landscape is saturated like an enormous sponge. Every step is squish squish. Sometimes I am up to my knees in spongy sod. It takes an additional hour to climb to the top of the hill where Lough Corrib can be seen. The second largest lake in Ireland isn’t that far from Aunt Margaret’s home, the terrain simply makes it impossible to walk there in any time shorter than driving to California from the Midwest. But by golly, it’s beautiful and brings out the manly. Even in the dead of winter a heartiness encourages the fight must go on and by golly if there is a God and I don't climb Croagh Patrick and ask for forgiveness and a new wife have mercy on me and keep me warm.
In a few hours I am to rise and make way for the workmen’s bus to Galway and then it’s a bus to Dublin before I return to the states. The rain at one in the morning is evil, another horizontal slash and in my daze and anticipation sleep is bad when all of a sudden there is a pounding at the door and I jump out of bed ready to defend. It’s Sean and I let him in reluctantly, he’s drunk and plenty angry. ‘You were gonna leave without saying goodbye to me mother, were ya you dirty yank, all of youse work for the CIA I tell ya.’ I am in no mood to argue with a man with missing teeth and broken glasses so I agree to return to his home and say goodbye to Sara. Standing at her bedside I lean over dripping on her and say my goodbyes. It was the right thing to do.
Sara sang a beautiful song in the Irish at Macs Bar during the Christening party. How wonderful would it be to grow up in a village where everyone turns out for little Caroline’s special day? Rounds of Guinness, shots of Paddy’s, a spirit collective, grudges set aside, the treasured are lifted, the song draws us in and lets us remember the faith.
I’ll take this to heart and to hearth.
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