Green, The Wearing of

Two years ago on this date, on a bright spring day, I stood in Cahir Square, Co Tipperary, and watched as representatives from the town’s clubs, schools, sports teams and merchants paraded past Cahir Castle, across the bridge over the Suir, up Castle street and around the square. Among the marchers were Hannah Rose, twins Ava and Michaela, and their big brother Callum, who are grandnieces and a grandnephew of Himself and me. Green, gold and white banners fluttered in the sun. The Cahir River Rescue team, of which Callum’s, Ava’s and Michaela’s father is a member, towed one of their boats in the procession.

After the parade ended, people milled in the streets. Children ate sweets and ices; parents shouted after them as they romped away. In the sun’s warmth, we visited with friends and family and watched as a bandstand was set up. Soon the music began, and local children and musicians sang and played their instruments. Then, as the music ended and the crowd broke up, I began walking down the town and out the road toward the Cahir Golf Club, on my way home. By pre-arrangement, Himself – who had gone ahead on an errand – met me on the road, and together we drove home.

Back in Garryroan – the townland just outside Cahir where our house stands – Peggy, my mother-in-law, had prepared a special meal of lamb and a nice bit of bacon (ham, for all the difference in it), mashed potatoes and cabbage. For Peggy, St Patrick’s day never lost its significance of as a Holy Day. The day began with mass, and the midday dinner would be as important as Sunday dinner. We shared a bottle of wine, and while Himself and I did the dishes – a formidable task always, after one of Peggy’s dinners – she went into the sitting room to rest. Later, Himself and I would meet with others in town for a drink. That evening, RTÉ would broadcast video of parades from all over the country, small towns and large, all with marching bands, children in school uniforms, sports teams in their colours, and, in the larger cities and towns, floats and costumed players, bands from America and beyond, festive amid banners and streamers and crowds.

St Patrick’s day in Ireland is both religious and patriotic holiday, a day off to celebrate both Saint and Country. People wear funny hats, to be sure, oversized bright green furry top hats, or hats representing foaming pints of Guinness. But, more importantly, their collars and labels sprout bunches of fresh shamrock, which is, along with the harp, the symbol of Ireland, the ‘wearing of the green.’

On this evening three years ago, Himself and I, along with his brother, walked through the rain and the muck of a terrible ‘durty’ evening across the fields outside Cashel, Co Tipperary. There a spectacular fireworks display and laser show was one of the national festive events to mark the day. The fireworks went ahead despite the rain. I stood on a hillside looking over the magnificent, historic Rock of Cashel and watched as rockets exploded against the murky sky. It was my first year living in Ireland and I felt a strange disconnect seeing a patriotic display comprising gold, green and white rather than red, white and blue. It was another in a string of adjustments, large and small, I hadn’t anticipated but which made sense in the moment.

This evening, I’m typing this in a room growing darker with the oncoming dusk. It has been grey and rainy all day, and I feel far from the festivities of Ireland or, for that matter, from the American exuberance surrounding the day. Soon, however, Himself will be home from the office. We’re both wearing our badges of shamrock encased in plastic, as we do every year on this day. We’ve planned to meet with some others from his office at an Italian restaurant for dinner. Then we’ll go up a narrow gasse under glowering Mönchsberg to Murphy’s Law, a pub run by a sometimes cantankerous Corkman. It will be crowded with Austrians, most likely, with a smattering of Americans and a handful of Irish, the noise and the crush growing as the evening goes on.

But now, in this quiet before we go out into the crowd, I pause for a moment to think of the hedgerows across from our house in Garryroan. Today they will still be brown and bronze after the harsh winter, but perhaps the bracken is just beginning to green. Perhaps there is the faintest haze of green as the beeches across the fields begin to bud.

And perhaps Peggy – if you were still there, Peggy – perhaps you would have brought in some willow, the catkins just swelling. We might even be able to find, were we there to look, the first of the pale primroses, half-hidden under the fall’s scatter of old leaves, the sight of which, Peggy, would bring a flush of child-like joy to your face. For me, that would make St Patrick’s day complete.

Beannachtaí Lá le Pádraig to all.

Awkward, continued

It was a late afternoon in autumn, about six weeks after we had arrived in Ireland to live. After wandering along the River Suir under drooping amber chestnut leaves, I was sitting alone at a small table in front of the Lazy Bean café, staring across at the Charteris memorial in the centre of Cahir square.

The transition to life in Ireland had been harder than I had expected. Despite having my husband’s family around us – my mother-in-law as close as next door – I felt isolated, cut off. Our shipment of  belongings was still somewhere on the ocean,  so we had little in the house and no cosy chair or sofa on which to relax. Eircom, the phone company, had promised a landline, but weeks passed with no action. Mobile phone coverage was spotty and nearly non-existent in the house. Which meant, of course, we had no internet – no mobile connection, no DSL, no dial-up – no way to stay connected to the world at large.

Our new house, surrounded by hedges and green fields, was lovely, and I was happy to be there. But still, I was finding it hard to settle. I missed my friends. I missed the long telephone conversations and spontaneous email exchanges, the lunches out and shared shopping trips, the special bond with my young friend’s daughters.

As September became October, and the days grew slowly but perceptibly shorter, I took to driving the five kilometres to Cahir, the nearest town, in the late afternoons to have a cappuccino at the sidewalk café, hoping to find conversation and incipient friendship.

This afternoon, though, foreboded rain, and the square was abnormally quiet. So the other tables were empty when the three women arrived and sat down near me. They were dressed in light tan waterproof jackets, beige hiking trousers and thick-soled shoes. And, not unusually for tourists in Cahir, they spoke with American accents.

I overheard them discuss their next stop, now that they had seen Cahir’s 11^th century castle, the town’s big draw. Should they go to Cashel? What about a tramp along the river? Or would they continue further along towards Dublin? They looked at the guide book and considered the possibilities.

The irony of this tale lies in my normal reluctance to engage with American tourists. I usually observe them quietly, deliberately keeping my distance. I suffer, badly, from what might be called the ex-patriot disease, a kind of smug arrogance felt toward one’s former fellow countrymen and -women. Maybe it’s evidence of a childish insecurity. Maybe it’s a natural response to the vulnerability one has felt as a tourist, conscious of the poorly disguised contempt of some locals, the uneasy notion, hard to push aside, that one is being sneered at by supercilious merchants, waiters and hoteliers.

Or maybe it’s my character flaw alone, not generalised among other ex-pats. (Though I did meet, on St Patrick’s night here in Salzburg, another American near the ladies loo in an Irish pub. She was about 22 or 3, a student, who, in our brief conversation as we stood in the queue outside the locked door, was at pains to insist: ‘I’m not a tourist, you know. I live here.’)

So, for better or worse, I tend not to greet other Americans in restaurants or on buses. I don’t engage with them when I bump into them on the crowded streets of Salzburg or in the shops of Cahir. I hear their accents, I spot the matching windbreakers and new white shoes, and I lower my voice and turn away.

But that dull afternoon, the bright Georgian facades lining the square did not touch my heart as they usually did. The charm of the Charteris memorial faded, and the pewter sky lowered oppressively. I studied the women, who seemed interested in some of the same things that attracted me to South Tipperary. I told myself that they might welcome my experience of my new home, experience gained through study and dogged sightseeing during 20 years visiting the area.

I turned toward them as they huddled over their map and caught the eye of one. In her mid to late thirties, she had short curly hear and a square face with an expression of assurance.

I spoke.

‘Cashel is definitely worth a visit. The Rock is one of my favourite places in Ireland. It's magnificent.’

She stared at me, not speaking at first. Her companions, also about her age, looked at me and then back at her.

‘Ah.' She squeezed it out. 'Thanks.’ 

The three women nodded at me. Then they leaned in over their coffees, talking softly. After a few minutes, they stood and walked away toward the river without looking in my direction.

Undoubtedly, they didn’t see a resident but another tourist, middle-aged and on her own, likely to try to insert herself into their plans. A nuisance.

I think of the sixty-ish woman encountered at breakfast in a hotel in Clare one morning. Overhearing the American accents of myself and my companion, a well-travelled professor making a brief stop to see me in Ireland, the stranger had tried to join our conversation. The woman, on her own at the table next to ours, leaned toward us and commented on the breakfast. She asked what we thought of Ireland, told us about her job in America, and wondered about our flight times. Then she broached the idea of sharing a taxi to the airport.

Focussed on our own conversation and aware that our time together was short, we found this an intrusion, and, after a few short answers, ignored her completely. I felt a stab of sympathy as she absorbed this humiliation, finished her breakfast and left without a word. But I was greedy for private conversation with my friend, whose demanding schedule makes time very precious and our meetings infrequent. It was a case of letting our own needs prevail in the moment.

So I understood the women’s need to establish, as they say, a clear boundary. But, oh, the sting. Oh, the irony.

Oh, the loneliness.

Landscapes

Late last week the weather turned spring-like here, the days warm and bright, soft air drifting in through open windows. It reached about 18 or 19 C yesterday, too warm for the wool sweaters that are all I brought with me. The mountain that’s closest to us, seen through the windows of our hotel room, is green, its snow entirely melted. The towering alp to the northeast though, the other side of which we saw as we drove from Munich, still rises white against the blue sky.

The close mountain is about as tall, relative to our position, as Galteemore, the tallest of the peaks in the Galtee Mountains, as seen from our windows in South Tipperary. The summits of the Galtees, though, were stripped of their forests millennia ago, cleared for cultivation, and through erosion became, over time, boggy heath land. The mountain seen from the windows here in Salzburg are still forested at its summit, deep pine green and faded brown conifers in the early spring. Here and there, halfway down, are large grassy clearings with isolated buildings. The clearings are steep, steep as those in the wild Connemara mountains in the west of Ireland, where highland sheep graze on spindly black legs in nearly vertical pastures.

I see no sheep on this mountain, only the occasional flash as the sun glances off a passing car on a road not visible from here. I will miss the now-familiar green meadows when we move this weekend to our flat by the wood. The mountains are more distant there.

I’ve been struggling with how to describe Salzburg and the surrounding Bavarian countryside. What does it look like? Why or how is it different from Ireland? Or the Mediterranean landscape of Southern California, also split by mountains? I’ve compared Salzburg’s mountains to the Wasatch in Salt Lake City, but they’re similar only to a point.

The landscape and the architectural aesthetic is so different from these that it’s as though I have no words, or am only now beginning to find the words, to write about it. Away from its historic centre, Salzburg is not particularly remarkable. Its buildings are low – no office or tall apartment blocks here – a bit blockish and fairly modern. Parks and green space are plentiful, and many are dotted with schlosses – grand houses of the past. A long narrow park with a path through it is lined with these schlosses, set far apart. Along the river opposite the Altstadt, a 10 or 15 or more large, square-but-gracious-looking pastel-painted schlosses sit side by side.

The river, the Salzach, is wide and shallow, at least where I’ve peered into it. Its waters flow north in gentle ruffles and are pale, pastel green-blue, through which I can see stones on a sandy bottom as through pale blue glass. It’s very different from the deep bog-brown smooth-flowing River Suir that runs through Cahir, rising fish glinting in the late sun of a summer evening. Thickly leaved horse chestnuts and beeches clustered on its banks are reflected on its mirror-like impenetrable surface. The rocky banks of the Salzach, by contrast, slope steeply down to the river and are nearly bare.

As a Californian, used to muted earth-toned and pastel buildings, I was impressed by the use of colour in Irish towns. Colour is even more evident in the cityscape of Salzburg. Buildings are painted deep, saturated and bold colours. Just from my window on one small neighbour, I see apartment buildings painted salmon, saffron, lemon yellow and rich sky blue. The white house across the way has a purple door and mailbox; even its chain link fence is painted purple. The office building next to it, also white, has window frames of magenta. The schlosses, as I mentioned, are pink, yellow, blue and gold. In the Altstadt and the surrounding distracts, rococo facades are also painted pastels with filigreed ornaments in contrasting colours.

In the country side, buildings are timbered, often with hipped roofs decorated open-work gingerbread shapes. Churches in country villages rise in tall, narrow austere blocks, with vertical thrusts of steeple attached on otherwise unornamented front walls. Many of the steeples bulge with onion-shaped bulbs just before their pinnacles. So unlike the stone churches of Ireland, they still startle me when I see their masculine silhouettes dominant in the landscape.

In memory, Ireland seemed comfortable and emotionally accessible from the first time I saw it. Although new to me, the landscape seemed natural, familiar to my psyche. Here, the landscape seems exotic, and though I once had the vocabulary of art and architecture, now I stumble, searching for words now lost to me. Like German, the landscape is not disagreeable; it’s just pushing me to find words to express meaning.