Returned from the wilds of western Ireland (which is only about 3 hours from eastern Ireland, so we're not talking major travels here) and am now sitting safely ensconced in Seamus and Orla's Dublin apt. desperately trying to book tickets from Amsterdam to Paris and from Paris to London. Everyone is more than welcome to make fun of me for being completely disorganized and scatterbrained about making travel plans --- oh, but wait....I'm here, and you're over there. So nyah.

Please take a moment to think about the burning question posed on the MSN site for this afternoon: OK to freeze bananas? A question which may never be answered....dear god, can I possibly put this simple plantain into my Kenmore without incurring the wrath of evil forces uknown....How much more inane will society get before we all commit mass suicide??????

Sorry. I'm totally tangenting because the world will not let me book my tickets. I have money, can't you do anything with money?? Surely....

Anyway, on Saturday morning (having seen nothing more of Dublin's attractions than the inside of a couple pubs and the Writers Museum which is a cool little trip but only does you for about 1/2 an hour) Dad and I booked it for Mayo, which is, in case you're not aware, where at least one quarter of the ye olde McAteer family is from. Dad drives like a maniac on these roads. If I'd driven anywhere like what he did, he'd be hoarse from yelling at me the whole time. I can't say anything, I'm just the daughter, but it's my opinion that when you are less than a foot away from the embankment and all kinds of stone walls and road signs, you don't go 70 miles an hour and pass people on blind curves. God forbid anyone think us Americans should we be driving too slow or not overtaking 5 cars in one pass. Any of my friends who are afraid to drive with me, let me just tell you that I'm a grandmother behind the wheel compared to this action. Regardless, we made it to Ballina (which dad insists on pronouncing Ballin-I even after all the locals pronounce it Ballin-Ah). Ballina's about the 2nd biggest town in Mayo and has a couple hotels and b n bs, apparently Mayo has gone upscale since dad was last there, It's a cute little place but the town itself is maybe the size of Shepherdstown, definitely smaller than Charlestown, and if this is 2nd largest town then blimey, small towns in the US have nothng on this country.

By the way, they have the scariest most depressing recycling commercials here, I guess pollution is really a problem. Their anti-smoking commercials are pretty bad, too, they do the whole "these are the lungs of a 38 year old smoker" ones. It's enough to put you off your lunch. We could never run them in the states--someone would find them un-PC and there'd be lawsuits galore. But they're effective. AND Ireland will have a country wide ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants starting the 26th of Jan. of next year. And boy, I do NOT know what they're gonna do, because EVERYONE smokes. I mean everyone. Infants smoke. Dogs smoke. It's insane. The tobacco companies are scrambling to readjust the legislature but it's not going to fly, they'll never manage. Then all that'll happen is that people will simply stand outside the bars, and only go in to buy their pints. And in places like Belderrig (oh, just wait til you hear about Belderrig) the ban will be quietly ignored until about 5 yrs down the road when the town actually gets it's own Garda station (Garda are police) and will have to start enforcing it.

Anyway, we stay in Ballina for the night, after having driven into Ballycastle, 2nd smallest and most dead place in Mayo, to try the Stella Maris hotel. The Stella Maris is this amazingly beautiful hotel set on a sheltered cove off of Killala Bay. It's right out of some 19th c. Gothic novel, the hills rising behind it and the wind whipping right off, and i mean RIGHT off the cove in front of it, no joke, you could walk out the door and fall into the ocean. Unfortnately, the Stella Maris was closed til April (i'm coming back, tho. I should see if they need summer help---ohhhh, that's an excellent idea!). So we stayed at the Ridgepoole in Ballina, which was actually a Best Western in disguise and consequently upset dad's digestion although if he would stop eating so much pasta in marinara sauce he might let the acid level in his stomach drop and then he' d quit bitching about his tummyache all the time.

Our trip into Ballycastle both established the sheer emptiness of the town and the sheer nastiness of the weather (North Atlantic winter rain weather, absolutely miserable) and also helped us to find an old family acquaintance of dad's--Cauleen Caulfield Barrett. She's about dad's age, a little older, and is the daughter of a man dad and grandma met when they'd come up the first time to visit Mayo. Paddy Caufield was an archaeologist who lived in Belderrig and was familiar with some of our family history, helping my father to retrace his roots to where they'd originally lived (in Belderrig). Paddy's long since died, God rest him, but Cauleen was able to give us some pointers about where we might go and suggested that going to Mass in Belderrig would be a good idea, "since that's where the ancestars are." I wouldn't say that anyone was jumping out of their seats to welcome us, but it was a reserved and dignified kind of transaction, Dad and I trying to explain who we were and what we were looking for, and Cauleen and her husband sitting silently and listening, then coming up with a breif and concise answer. So needless to say, we took Cauleen's advice and went flying down the road the next morning to St. Theresa's in Belderrig.

Belderrig is no bigger than a postage stamp. You want a wide space in the road you got it. There is a church and a pub. And that's all. There are a couple B&Bs in what dad jestingly refers to as "greater Belderrig" meaning the outskirts towards the shoreline, but I have never seen a smaller town in my life. Even Leetown, WVa has a legit post office. So we were late for mass, just like our ancestors probably were, I think it's a genetic failing. And we crept in the back door with one other woman who was also late for mass and who gave me the evil eye when I accidentally shut the door on her going in. I was rewarded for my failure to wait by the fact that the door would then not close, no matter what i did, so I let it hang open and one of the men who sit in the back of the church, all the old farmer type guys who go to mass out of a healthy respect and superstition that should they not go, life might get even worse than it already is, walked over and shut it with a simple twist of the knob. I think I would make a really terrible diplomat. It was a beautiful morning, the sun was shining and the clouds that blew over head would sprinkle with only the tiniest of showers at times. Belderrig is chipped into the hillside, as there's no valley in the area, and all around are these huge barren hills with nothing at all on them. I've never wanted to hike up something in my whole life but these hills were calling me in the strangest way. It's as if you could see the rest of the world just standing on top of them---I've seen taller mountains and lusher hills than these but they were amazing.

So after mass--during which every single person in that church got a good stare in by they time we returned to the foyer after communion---dad was the only man wearing a suit in the whole place and boy, did we look ridiculous--we emptied out with everyone else and stood around in the lot waiting for the priest to come out (he never did). But there was a crowd that sort of lingered and dad and I were near a group of 3 older gentlemen who were apparently communing silently. I was not at all prepared to jump into the fray with any kind of ice breaker like, so, how bout we lost to Australia yesterday? Bummer, huh? or dad's favorite "So what do you think of the Euro?" That one's a real winner, let me tell you. Eventually dad drifted back to them and mentioned that we were originally from the town and that we'd been looking to research our roots. The men didn't really say anything. Dad takes the opportunity to introduce me. And then the ball gets rolling--slowly, to be sure, but it's going. We mention the Caulfields and the Carelans and make a few connections (but as one of the gentlemen point out, there are too many Flannerys out and about these days to really know when you're dealing with family) shake hands again and move on to the pub. Dad wanted his cup of tea.

So i'm thinking that the pub, at 11.30 am, will be kind of like the parish center, scones and tea and coffee and some hard rolls and a bit of jam and butter around. No. A pub is a pub is a pub. I never in my life would have believed it, I'd have thought it one of those exaggerations that some people make up when they've travelled, but honest to god we walked into the pub and every man jack of them was having a pint. The ladies had half pints. Not quite Guinness, no, but Carlsberg or what have you. I lost it (laughing on the inside, of course). No other place, probably not many left in Ireland as it is, would you walk in immediately after church and see half the congregation getting a start on their drinking. Once dad realized that tea would take a little longer (like, never) to get to us, he went up and switched the order to a couple pints. We sat in the corner and were just kind of dumbfounded. I didn't know what to say, or who I would have said it to.

We finish our pints and dad wants to go explore a bit--can't say that I blame him, like i said, i was ready to walk for miles, just to see what could be seen. We drove up towards my favorite of the hills, a knobby looking thing that looked as though it might have a promising sheer drop on one side if you could just get up there. These were the peat bogs,up on the mountain, and there were bags and bags of peat ready to be taken down and sold. There were little clear streams on either side of the gravel road and the rain swooped through and around once in a while. No treees, not much vegetation, just the water and the peat and our little Citroen. And..................


.................RAINBOWS. There are rainbows ALL THE TIME. You know how you'll see a rainbow maybe once a year if you're lucky? I'm not much of one for spiritualism or hokey holisitic ideas but this place must have been blessed by God. At no time was there not a rainbow, or a half of one or just a fragment, if not the full bow or a double bow, shining in the sky. It's the most beautiful place on earth. I didn't get a picutre of it but I will remember for the rest of my life, the best image ever which was to see the bay on one side, where the rainbow began, and the hills on the other where it ended, with the tiny town and its church and its pub and its taciturn and hardscrabble locals right in the middle. If everything else on this trip goes wrong, if I end up stranded in the Dam working the shopwindows in the Red Light District, or huddled under the bridges over the Seine in Paris, or even living in the tube tunnels in London, I will have the picture of Belderrig with the rainbows and that will make everything worthwhile.