Interlude in Ireland..

Some People Live a Lifetime in a Moment.
Scent of a Woman


Looking back now I am noticing all kinds of connections I hadn’t before. Today I found myself thinking about a trip to Ireland I took last year and some of the things that happened to me while I was there.

I’d hit kind of a rough patch in my life and was struggling to figure out where I was going. I decided a trip to Ireland where my grandmother was from might help me make sense of where I came from, and maybe even offer some clues as to where I was going.

I had a deeply transcendent moment when I was in Ireland. High in the Wicklow Mountains I climbed to the top of the highest peak and looked around. Miles and miles of green hills, beautiful mountains, and clear skies surrounded me, and something just came over me. I knew that there was something bigger out there than just me. That I had been given a gift to get to dance here on this beautiful planet for however long, and that I was called to do something bigger than gratifying my own selfish needs.

So it was with this newfound awakening that I returned to Dublin to finish the rest of my vacation. I was staying in hostel that weekend, and my roommate was a girl from Spain who spoke very little English. I tried to talk to her but it was difficult, as I spoke predominantly busboy Spanish from my many years working in restaurants. Even still we tried to talk over dinner in the bar downstairs. Then I looked at her and saw a single tear fall down her cheek.

"Yo se que la vida es dificil" I said, (I know life is hard)

And with that she began to chuckle. She studied me closely and looked deeply into my eyes, apparently wanting and needing to convey something deeply important. Soon her smile faded though and she looked back down into the napkin that was folded in her lap.

"I am alone in the world," she said in broken English as she wiped a tear from her face.

"Me too," I replied, and she looked up with understanding eyes, this time patting my hand as she tried to comfort me.

"I know life is hard" she said.

And with this we both smiled, having discovered, in this odd little corner of the world, the power of making a small human connection.

So we spent some time together over the next couple of days, neither one of us speaking the other’s literal language, but both very much strangely attuned to something the other seemed to need. We drank, we ate, and we danced over the next couple of days, and in a sense it was one of the most intimate connections I had ever made with another person, despite the fact we were virtually unable to hold a conversation. We were two lonely people, who made each other a little less lonely by trying very hard to understand each other. This is exceedingly difficult with someone who knows the same language as you do, as often the words just keep getting in the way. Yet here, in this time, in this place, we had found a language that was unique just to the two of us, It was wonderful.

Eventually our trip came to an end. My last memory was the bus ride together back to the airport, where miraculously I remembered I had the song ‘Guantanamera” on my ipod. We both took an ear and sat and listened to the song as our time together came to an end. Both of seemed to sense that, although we had made an intense human connection, we both had to return to very different lives. It was sweet, it was sad, and it was perhaps the most melancholy moment of my life.

So we exchanged information and wrote back and forth a few times, but in the end, neither of us had the patience to continue to translate the other’s language. I hadn’t thought about her for some time, when a couple of months ago I got a postcard from her saying simply.

“Life is not so hard now, thank you for being my friend, it meant more than you know.”

My heart was deeply touched. I thought about her a lot after that. Was she my lost love? Should I have pursued her further? Tried harder? But in the end I think we were just supposed to have those few days together. In those few days we found a way to give each other something we both seemed to desperately need, and for me, it was an experience that will remain in my memory forever.