FRIDAY, SEPT. 14
For three days, we’ve been adjusting to our new lives, trying to figure out how to navigate a completely different environment, live in someone else’s home, care for someone else’s dog, function without the reference points we know, be at home anywhere. We are settling in to a totally new reality.
FAMILIARIZING OURSELVES WITH A NEW LIFESTYLE
I am learning to drive a manual car on the wrong side of the street, sitting on the wrong side of the car, on narrow, curvy, sometimes steep, often one lane, roads. I can’t over emphasize how terrifying driving in Ireland can be. Sometimes a car is coming straight at us in a one-lane road, and I am barely able to squeeze close enough to the bushes that we aren’t side swiped. I’m constantly on high alert, knuckles white. And then there is the lack of road signs. We have to find and memorize landmarks — a sign, a house, a church or even just a tree.
We are familiarizing ourselves with Fiona’s house and Saffi, falling in love with her really, learned her routine — morning walk and feeding, afternoon long walk, dinner feeding, out for an evening pee — and learning some of her quirks like throwing up on car rides.
In the kitchen, we are getting used to a gas stove, learning where all the cooking pots and pans and utensils are located. We’re figuring out Fiona’s way of organizing her food in the pantry and refrigerator, learning to vent the dryer out the window, or if it isn’t raining, to hang our clothes on the rack outside.
We have been struggling with the lock on the door and getting the toilet to stop running. What day does the compost go out? How does the heater work? We’ve found out that Netflix sucks in Ireland, and our internet service is sketchy at best.
In town, we watch the way locals interact sin our attempt to fit in, and not insult. Shopping in new grocery stores requires a quick study of layout and organization.
On walks, we wonder what amount of layers to wear so we aren’t cold when starting out or hot when climbing hills.
And then there is me…trying to write again.
It’s daunting. Each morning, I make a pot of tea and put it on the table beside me. At first, Saffi returned to her bed to sleep in, but once she got used to me and my routine, she came to the comfortable, down-stuffed couch and slept by my feet while Chloe sleeps in upstairs.
A WISTFUL MORNING
The wind sounded like passing cars this morning when I settled in the solarium, a glass room which Fiona calls “the conservatory” (I expect a piano in a conservatory). The house is a tasteful cliche of English country living with loads of soft pillows on creamy white couches and stuffed chairs. Wooly blankets cover couch arms and backs. In the conservatory, a large, chair, matching the couch sits across from another large chair, deep burnt orange velvet, worn and with a drooping seat. Fiona traded one of her white chairs for the orange one because her friend loved the white chair. That’s Fiona’s big heart for you.
A large, low, thick, farm-style wooden table fills the middle of the conservatory. It fits tightly between couch and chairs and window ledge. A worn Turkish or Moroccan rug covers most of the wood floor and a white Chinese paper, ball-shaped lantern hangs above the table. Two elephants, one in fake stone and one in wood (and there are elephants everywhere in the house – Fiona is a bit of an elephant freak) rest on the long windowsill next to a basket of small Chinese globe lanterns, a stack of New Yorkers that Sally passes along to Fiona, a pile of books, a wooden box and a small antique glass milk jar. A wooden Chinese mask hangs on the one tiny spot of wall; the other wall is an overflowing bookshelf.
The view glowed emerald — the wild growth covering the hill across the road, and the sliver of green sea only steps away defining the room even more than the contents inside. Here the sea, the wild Atlantic, flows into a jagged land of inlets, rivers, causeways, and fingers along a lacy coast.
I wondered about what really brought us to this moment as I listen to the startling silence, a silence so big it was heavy. The wind and a songbird, a single bird, broke the burden of silence, but infrequently.
I felt at home here, anywhere it seemed would be home — the Airbnb in London, the unintentionally retro hotel in Newlands Cross. We, Chloe and I, carry our family and stability with us, in each other. We learned to do this a long time ago.
Some lightning flashed outside and the wind began to move the clouds out to sea. Patches of blue escaped through the white and grey. It was supposed to rain but was beginning to look like another sunny day.
RAINCLOUDS COME DOWNSTAIRS
After breakfast, Chloe was drinking a glass of water when it slipped from her hand, and spilled over my computer. My screen went black; the computer wouldn’t turn on. I tipped it upside down and water dripped from the keyboard.
Chloe asked google what we should do. We did as recommended, placing the computer upside down on a towel and crate in the laundry room with the de-humidifer on. We were supposed to wait 24 hours before trying to turn it on again.
I was pissed, angry that Chloe’s accident had become my problem. This could be a huge setback for me, for us, for the trip and planning.
To calm myself, I thought back to our second night in London. Chloe was sleeping on a pullout futon, her hair wildly splayed on the hard pillow, the light from the streetlight coming through the window and across her face. My heart flooded with so much love. I was overcome with gratitude, feeling so lucky to be on this adventure with her. I held onto those feelings.
At times, our isolation concerns me. When we argue, I wonder if this is going to be a happy travel experience…or a long trip.
We are stuck together in a remote area, tied to a place and lifestyle that is not ours, but is ours now. We’ve been in Fiona’s house for a week, traveling for two. By the time we leave Ballinatona, something will shift in both of us. A coming into one’s self, I imagine. We need to settle in and accept our intense one-on-one world.
This is traveling as life, not as escape.
DRIVEN BY A DOG TO THE BUTTER TRAIL IN SCHULL
We couldn’t mope. Saffi needed her mid-day walk and off we went on a 45-minute drive with a very unhappy, anxious and heavily-drooling Saffi. Poor Chloe was drenched in Saffi’s saliva. We arrived at a tiny park next to a rocky beach and had a picnic while Saffi ran on the lawn.
Our destination was the “Butter Road Trail” but before we even reached it, we spent a good 30 minutes throwing rocks on the beach for Saffi. The fresh sea air, running on the beach — Chloe was trying to beat Saffi to the rocks — movement, made us happy again.
True to my name (Wrongway) and as we do time and again, we struggled to find the trail’s starting point. It was a bit weird for us to be walking into what appeared to be someone’s backyard to take a dirt trail, probably meant for farmers, into a thicket of green.
Saffi ran ahead while we adjusted to this lonely trail and the eerie nearness of cows. The sun broke through the thick vegetation after we passed a few farms and came to a hilltop of rocky terrain. We could see forever. Returning on the same trail, the smell of the sea eventually replaced that of cows, mud and fresh green air.
The trail, about ten kilometers, took us three hours to walk and honestly, it may not have even been the Butter Road Trail. We’ll never know. The maps are so wonky. But we learned something — lost or not, we are safe in this under-populated place. A hard to believe lesson for city folk.
A PERFECT MESS
We were almost home when Saffi threw up next to Chloe— it smelled not like throw up, but like shit, and it may have been. Saffi, in dog manner, ate some shit on our walk, and topped it off with some grass when we stopped for groceries in Skibbereen. It was a perfect, stinky mess. Chloe was gagging from the smell and almost threw up as well. A disgusting end to a rollercoaster of a day.
