Irish blessings

I have some sort of deep attachment to Ireland.

Since I've been in England, there have been times when I've been struck with a sort of longing for Ireland. England comes very close, but not enough, just similiar enough to remind me that I'm not there. And a few weeks ago I confessed to the youth leader of my church here that while I'd love to live abroad for an extended period of time, England is not a place that I have to live. I liked it well enough, but it's just another place I'm living, really. In the end I'll leave and look back on my time with warm feelings and nostalgia (I hope, of course), but I won't have the same sort of desire to return as I have to always go back to Ireland.

I got to go to Dublin this past weekend. It's a little strange, taking weekend trips to foreign countries. I had a nice time. I bought a Claddagh ring finally, which I had made myself wait to buy until I was in Ireland again. I spent a day wandering around Dublin, spent a night in Temple Bar, stayed in hostels for the first time (they are soo cool), spent a late morning/early afternoon by the coast (the Irish coast is amazing), watched part of the English-Ecuador world cup game in an Irish pub, hung out with a Danish girl and a bunch of Frenchmen. I prefer the coast and the green mountains of Ireland to Dublin, but it was nice just to be in the country again. The weather wasn't great half the time and I had to deal with a pulled muscle in my foot for the majority of the trip, but when I walked down O'Connell street at 430 in the morning to catch my plane to Bristol, I was sad to think that this could be the last time I'm in Dublin for a very long while. I'm going to get out to western Ireland still, but another trip to Dublin will probably not be for at least four more years. The funny thing is, as I was on one of the three trains I took back from Bristol to Southbourne, I noticed places that have become familiar to me, cricket fields, horse paddocks, train stations. And I thought of the children, how this first month has passed so quickly and I only have five more ahead of me, how one Tuesday in November I'll send them off to school with a real goodbye. And now I've realized, I'm not only attached to this wonderful family, I'm attached to this land. The cricket fields, the mill pond in Emsworth, the endless train tracks over field and hill. I may never find myself living here again, but it's going to be hard to leave. Harder than I thought.

Even though Southbourne is the tiniest town in the world. There are only three places that are not cities where I would consent to live: in a villa in southern France, in a coastal town in Ireland, or wherever the love of my life waits.