Clean treads

I washed the Wicklow mud off my Wellies this afternoon. Grass still clung to them in places from the walk this morning that took me past the spot where we built snowmen (and a snow cat); a few small pebbles were wedged between the deep treads from the newly graveled village car park where once the bins overflowed. Once they had dried in the fleeting sun, I packed them with a few tubes of vegetable pâté from Mary's health food shop and nestled them in the suitcase next to the game of Monopoly we got as a present from the Easter Bunny and the box the boys constructed to protect Danny's paper lantern from the St. Michael's festival procession last fall. I have to squeeze a lot of memory into these suitcases.

As I stood up and stretched my back (all that bending and back and forth between cases), the phone rang; Alfred's carpool was in Brittas, he'd be in town in a quarter hour and could I pick him up. I grabbed my keys, and left the boys to play soccer and football (Gaelic, of course) with our tree surgeon neighbor: this exercise is part of his rehabilitation from his ruptured Achilles tendon a month back. I nabbed a parking spot on Main Street in front of the same pizza place that provided the stack of pies for Danny's birthday party (they're on holiday until mid-September, so I shall miss saying goodbye to them), jogged over to Harvest Fare for passata and soya milk, and was going up the road two doors to the bookshop to pick up one last book: The Irish Companion, a lovely little tome full of trivia in no particular order. There is a spot in the suitcase reserved for it.

Husband in now in tow, we head home. As we pull into my usual parking space in Tulfarris, Alfred's phone does its little dance to get his attention. The mechanic is calling to let us know that he's finished the car. Had he only called fifteen minutes earlier, I could have slept in on Friday.

At the beginning of the week, I hatched a cunning plan: I could knock a couple hours off jet lag if we stayed to go to bed late and get up late. This plan met with approval from the teenager in my life and the young one likes any plan that involves jammies. Even my Darling Spouse was amenable, especially the bit anout late nights, since that gives us more time together (but only theoretically, as any parent of a teen can attest).

However, the car gods decided it was not to be. Alfred had been noticing a rumbly noise that changed frequency with the speed. Teenage boy said he should call Car Talk (from Ireland?), but his dad did the boring parent thing and took it to the mechanic. Toothless grin Tom diagnosed bad bearings, so in an uncanny twist of fate, at the same moment I was making an appointment to show his car, darling husband was making an appointment to get it fixed. Our buyer was copacetic with waiting a few days, especially if it meant we paid the mechanic to do the work, and so Alfred figured he would drive in, leave the car at the mechanic, and hitch a ride in with a local co-worker. He'd do the opposite in the evening, and we would get the car to the buyer later in the week.

However, plans don't seem to do well in this climate, and it turns out that it wasn't just the bearings. I wont bore you with the gory details, mostly because I don't know the fancy word for the round bit of metal that was sheared off, but it translated into making us a one car family until Tom could find the part and get it shipped to Ireland--for Clio came from Belfast, and is a sportier model than is sold here.

The good news is that Alfred could carpool, no problem; the bad news is that the carpool left from the monument tree in Blessington at 7:15. And I needed to drive him in. So much for my cunning plan.

This driving in at the same time has all the cachet of a regular commute, something I gave up so many years ago that it almost holds a certain charm. Seeing the same drivers on the road at the same time (and being passed by the same '97 Toyota from Baltyboys on the same straight stretch); then there's the power walker in the orange jacket, and of course the number 65 bus, which explains why all that traffic is converging in town at the same time.

Still, there are some advantages to commuting here, not the least of which are the breathtaking views as you cross the bridge: look to your left, there's Burgage Castle; to your right, there's mist in the hills. I could wax poetic about the hills: like a beautiful woman who dresses differently every day, but always turns heads. Even the Irish talk about this part of the country as one of the most beautiful, calling it the Garden of Ireland. We're wondering if the view is ever the same twice, and if we would ever tire of it, but, alas, one year is not long enough to answer those questions.

Sighing, I tucked my freshly washed wellies into my suitcase.