Midlife Irish (14 page)

When talking with someone I started to respond in a very non-me way. I would pause a little before replying. I would savor
the words I had just heard, and reply in a more measured, oblique way. I would think about every word I said and heard. I
found that the “point” of the conversation was the least important part. I started to look at conversation as little dances.
Sometimes I would follow, sometimes I would lead. But I gave up the idea of any kind of conversational destination. A conversation
in America was a walk in a straight line. A conversation in Ireland was a meandering walk in the woods with lots of detours
along the way. And I never thought much about where exactly it was going.

The road is more interesting than the thing at the end of the road. And, after a couple of weeks in Ireland, I found that
I had adopted that attitude. Commitments? Expectations? Goals? I gave up on all that and found that it wasn’t missed. I existed
in some little, tranquil, directionless state. There was no point in hurrying because where were you hurrying? There was no
point in slowing down because why slow down? There was no point in stopping, unless, of course, you felt like it. We drove
and we ate and we talked and we went to the bathroom. Our plan now was completely gone. Our modified plan was completely gone.
The very idea of having a plan seemed absurd. What good can a plan do you in such an unplanned environment? No plan can help,
so the answer seemed clear: Avoid all plans!

We neither reaped nor sowed, like the birds of the air. We slept when tired. We slept where it seemed good to sleep—on the
ground, wherever. When I had to go to the bathroom, the bathroom became optional.

I once had a job as a security guard. I had only
one
duty: Turn on the lights. Yet I forgot this at least 25 percent of the
time. I sat there in the dark like an idiot, until it finally hit me: I’ve
forgotten
something!

It was like that now in Ireland. I struggled to keep the only two ideas I had to keep: 1) In a couple of weeks we have to
be at Dublin airport. 2) Find out where Mom and Dad came from.

Like the lights at the factory, these ideas kept leaving my brain. I finally wrote them on my hands: Dublin and Mom and Dad,
in big red letters.

I started to think of my mental state as related somehow to Ireland. Despite the fact that I have always been an airhead,
I think the Old Country contributed to my condition.

As I wandered around, I found myself doing odd things. Like watching turf-cutting. Turf-cutting is not a great spectator sport,
but in Ireland I watched a lot of turf-cutting, and I was not alone. I watched a turf-cutter for over an hour one day. There
was a crowd of about ten people with me. Some left, some came, but the crowd stayed about ten. Some brought food, which they
shared. The tool that turf-cutters use, I learned, was a “slan.” The turf-cutter we were watching was very good with his slan.
The crowd actually made comments.

“He’s good.”

“Look at that!”

“Man can handle that slan.”

That was about it as far as commentary went. You don’t need Al Michaels and John Madden to call a turf-cutting.

I couldn’t imagine killing an hour doing something like this in America. Even doughnut-making or taffy-pulling gets old in
a hurry in America. But watching turf-cutting seemed like a fine thing to do in Ireland. Next time I go back, I’ll know what
to look for in slan handling.

Every night in Ireland we slept in somebody’s house. There are bed and breakfasts all over the place. Many of them have a
little green sign. The sign means that the tourist authority,
the Bord Failte, has inspected them. The best thing about them for me was the odd sense that I was home. My mom’s sense of
what should go where is the same sense that informs all these B&Bs. Anne Forde, decorator, seemed to haunt the B&Bs.

Except for the brief time we spent in Dublin, somewhere in my mind, I was home. My days always began the same way. The B&Bs
were all different, of course, but they sort of bled into each other and I find that I have one big memory of Plato’s Irish
B&Bs.

I open my eyes in a room that looks like my room. Not the room I’ve been sleeping in for the past ten years. This room is
like the room I slept in thirty-five years ago.

This room has one bed instead of two, and the wallpaper is different. Still, there are many similarities between this room
and the room I slept in as a child.

There is a holy water font near the door so you can dip your finger and bless yourself when you enter. There are three crucifixes:
one over the bed and one on each side. I find this very comforting somehow, as if I am, in some odd way, back home again.

I get out of bed and look at myself in the mirror. I see a guy with a beard and some gray hair. The guy in the mirror has
wrinkles and squints like a man who wears glasses but doesn’t have them on right now. He’s only been in Ireland a few days
and he is developing a Guinness waistline.

I’m in Ireland, not the New Jersey of my youth. It’s July but the windows are a little fogged with the cold. I wipe the fog
off and have a look. It’s the Atlantic Ocean out there. I look over and see that Paulette is looking out the other window.
We’ve only been awake for thirty seconds but we’re already looking for Irish stuff.

After a low-water-pressure shower we get dressed and head downstairs for the breakfast portion of the bed and breakfast experience.
I’m already looking forward to what I know will be downstairs.

“The Irish breakfast” that is served at B&Bs and hotels is a remarkable thing. The standard meal is this: a lightly fried
egg, some homemade sausage, two kinds of bread, coffee and tea, sliced mushrooms, sliced tomatoes, Irish bacon, pancakes,
ham, some fruit, and usually, another variety of homemade sausage.

This might have been more accurately titled “The Major Cardiac Event Breakfast.” Anyway, people seemed to eat it and live.
(I saw four people eat it and make it out of the room.) So, I, too, ate it. I could feel an artery closing as I took the last
delicious bite.

We ate “The Irish Breakfast” every day we were there and made it back to America. I’m sure many were not that lucky.

As you eat your Irish breakfast, you will probably be joined by other visitors to Ireland. When we were there we met people
from all over Europe, but most of the people we met were Americans. Many were just traveling around, but many were engaged
in “searching for their roots.”

Most of the Americans weren’t first-generation Irish-Americans, but they had some Irish connection they were searching for.
It is amazing how many Americans are of Irish ancestry. For instance, 30 percent of Massachusetts is Irish. As you might figure,
that is the state with the highest level of Irish ancestry, but many other states are close. Rhode Island, 22 percent. Delaware,
21 percent. New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Tennessee, one-fifth Irish. New Jersey, my home, 18 percent Irish ancestry. If you
put an “O’ ” or a “Mc” in front of many, many names, they sound quite Irish.

On this particular day, at this particular table outside Clifden, the people at the table with us are Mark and Marcie Berk
of Philadelphia. They are very typical of the Americans visiting Ireland with some genealogical motivation. Marcie’s family
has the Irish connection. One of her grandparents emigrated from Ireland. She didn’t know where her people came from but she
was just trying to establish the general
area. Mostly the Berks were having a lot of laughs. They had been hitting a few pubs, listening to a lot of Irish music, and,
as happens to everyone who goes to Ireland, the beautiful places and the lovely people genuinely touched them. They would
be back. They almost didn’t want to find out too much about Marcie’s ancestors. They wanted a reason to come back.

That was a very typical morning. If you went to Ireland in 2001, meeting and talking to Americans was something that came
up all the time. Although some Americans attempted some form of camouflage, their Americanness was painfully obvious to the
natives. As soon as you opened your mouth you screamed “American” with your “Yank accent.” I grew up in an Irish home, but
sometimes in Ireland people would be so struck by my manner of speech that they would say, “Say that again. That’s lovely.”

There were many other red flags.

Americans tip way too high. In Ireland bartenders and waiters get paid a decent wage, but they are very happy when Americans
come in. It means tips that are uncalled-for, but welcome.

Americans call the money “punts.” Although that is the official term, I rarely heard it used by Irish people. Pounds and pence
are normal speak. The “euro,” which I had read so much about, is rarely used, except in banks. (In 2002, I am told, this has
changed somewhat.)

Irish tourism is a massive, billion-dollar industry, and the quest for Amero-Benjamins has taken some truly bizarre forms.
One of the most appalling manifestations centers on the famous John Ford movie
The Quiet Man.

The Quiet Man
is a wonderful movie, but it has become, in America, the cinematic equivalent of watching a Saint Patrick’s Day Parade while
eating corned beef and cabbage and washing it down with green beer. The touristic essence of
The Quiet Man
is floating all over 2002 Ireland.

“
The Quiet Man
Experience” is an amazing commercial
construction I observed near Castlebar. The movie is almost fifty years old, but still alive in the tourist mind. For a reasonable
fee the tourist is given the opportunity to dress as the characters in the film (“The Colleen” [Maureen O’Hara]; “The Yank”
[John Wayne]; “The Priest and the Minister” [Ward Bond and Barry Fitzgerald]; and “The Big Brother” [Victor McLaglen]) and
be photographed in the act of acting like Irish people in a simulacrum of the little thatched cottage. The fortunate tourist
will be able to (from the brochure) “get a feeling of what life in Cong was like during the filming by reading local newspaper
articles of the time.”

The brochure goes on to say, “Painstaking effort has ensured that all the furnishings, artifacts, costumes, etc. are authentic
reproductions [a phrase Richard Nixon would love]. The four-poster bed and the tables and chairs which ‘Mary Kate’ cherished,
the thatched roof, emerald green half door and white-washed front combine to enchant all who visit it.”

I was assured that this is a popular attraction for tourists.

“We always have lines,” the guy in front of the attraction told me.

One night in a pub, a young Irishman named Robbie Walsh told me something I remembered. Considering the time of night, that
is worth mentioning.

“Will you get offended if I tell you something?” He had to almost yell this over the frantic fiddling.

I assured him I was not easily offended. I was several pints past the point at which almost nothing offended me.

“You Americans,” he shook his head. This was hard for him to say. He went on after my blank eyes gave him the go-ahead.

“You Americans, don’t be offended, but you Americans are really, really stupid.”

“Why?” I asked. I was genuinely curious.

“Because we can take anything, put a fooking shamrock on it, and you’ll buy it. I could wipe my ass with a towel and sell
it to you because it’s Irish. I could sell some Yanks used toilet
paper and they’d take it home, frame it, and put it over the mantel. Then when their friends came over, they could say, ‘See
that? That’s real Irish used toilet paper. It came directly from Ireland. That is authentic Irish shite from the Old Country.’
”

I nodded. He went on, screaming into my ear.

“Why will you Yanks, who have the best technology, the most advanced stuff on the planet earth, the most money, the best schools,
the best everything, why will you Yanks spend good money on this shite? I saw a man selling fooking
sticks! Sticks he picked up off the fooking ground!
He tied a goddamn piece of green ribbon around them and he was selling them to the tourists at the Cliffs of Moher for ten
pounds! He called them ‘Celtic ceremonial twigs’ or some shite. But he was selling them to the American tourists. And they
were
buying
them!”

I looked at his utterly bewildered, alarmingly red face. We both had a sip. He had something else to ask, some overwhelming
question.

“What in God’s name is wrong with you Americans?!”

He offered his ear. I leaned over.

“Drugs,” I said.

When we were in Ireland, I had an odd conversation with Paulette.

“Why can’t you be more like these people?” she asked. It was a genuine question.

“What do you mean, ‘like these people?’ ” When in doubt I always lean on some variation of “define your terms.”

“You know,” she said, “Irish.”

“I am Irish, my mom’s from Mayo and Dad is from near Athlone.” I have said that sentence many times, my credentials for the
Irish guy’s club.

“You’re more New Jersey than Irish.”

This was true. Still, I liked to think of myself as “Irish,” not “New Jerseyan” (is there such a word?).

“Well, I’ve spent a lot more time in New Jersey.”

“There’s your problem,” she said. “If you could get rid of the New Jersey you, you’d be a better person. Like these people.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do,” she said. “It’s obvious. Plus, I know you. New Jersey. Not Ireland. Obviously.” People always say “it’s obvious”
when it isn’t at all obvious, at least to me.

She explained further.

“You have a core of Irishness. But the years and years of New Jersey have built up around you, like rust. Now it has to be
scraped away. If you did that, you would be a good person.”

“How,” I asked, “do you ‘scrape away’ New Jersey?”

“I don’t think you can.”

“So I’m stuck being a bad, New Jersey person?”

After a moment of reflection she said, “Yes.”

I silently promised myself,
I am going to scrape away New Jersey.

Many Irish writers modify their use of quotation marks or get rid of them altogether. Molly Bloom’s reverie in
Ulysses
is just the most well-known instance of this. Irish writers from Flann O’Brian to Roddy Doyle have abandoned the quotation
mark. After a while in Ireland, I realized why this is so. Conversation doesn’t seem like something that requires quotation
marks. It just seems that a period may be needed, maybe, at the end.