First, let me get it out of the way in saying that I have the utmost respect for Mr. (Matt?) Mitchell and in this piece I mean him no harm. If there is any “shade” being thrown here it is all internally focused. You, dear reader, will also note that I am unsure of Mr. Mitchell’s first name. These are recollections from more than 30 years ago. All the more interesting that I have now become my Middle School Assistant Assistant Principle some 30 years on.
I have talked about Scioto County before; my birthplace in the Appalachian foothills in the Ohio River Valley. I love my home, so it is with perfect clarity that I see it for what it is: steeped in tradition, conservative, protestant, hard-working but not ambitious, provincial, suspicious of outsiders, rural, local, and individualistic. With two feet in the Midwest, but leaning hard to the American South, our people put practicality about 30 feet higher on the priority list than presentation.
My wife and I noted this on our last trip to Europe in which we sailed up and down the Douro River in Portugal. Even Europe’s squalor is classy. Old homes lay in ruin along the Douro, but all that is left is the timeless stonework. It looks like a Led Zeppelin album cover, mystical and legendary. No plastic flapping in the wind, no garbage strewn about. That cruise could never happen on the mighty Ohio River. Both the Douro and the Ohio are working rivers, but the scenery is not comparable. On the Ohio, manufactured homes with blue tarp serving as replacement shingles and plastic flapping from windows mar the otherwise picturesque greenery. I have digressed.
However, this practicality-over-presentation is exactly the point I want to illustrate. Mr. Mitchell held the position of Assistant Assistant Principal. Yes I know that sounds weird. This was the time when corporal punishment was still common in public schools. I am pretty sure that Assistant Assistant Principal was the school’s way of not calling Mr. Mitchell the “Corporal Punisher.” Mr. Mitchell was a HUGE man. A former football player, it was clear that he lived for the former glory. He was a coach on the all-important middle school football team. The only thing more important in the community than this team was the high school football team. Mr. Mitchell dressed like a coach. Every day. Polyester coach’s pants, white socks, all black training shoes that could be used for refereeing, coaching, or – in many cases around Scioto County – comfortable office shoes. On hot days, he would swap out the coach’s pants for coach’s shorts: same polyester cut with double snaps at the waist, just cut above the knee to display calf muscles that could (and probably did) move automobiles.
As I dressed for work this morning, I slipped into my pro-golfer branded “Traveling Pants.” It was my wife and better half who pointed out that these are essentially the same as the 1980’s polyester coach’s pants. And yes of course, to help protect my feet from the day-to-day pounding I give them while running, climbing, biking, etc. I have paired my Traveling Pants with all black trainers. I don’t wear my all-black athletic shoes all day at the office, but I wear them to- and from- the office for comfort and to protect my office shoes from the often harsh Ohio elements. Practical. So this morning, I paused in front of the full length mirror to offer one last check before heading out the door and confirmed it. I have become my middle school Assistant Assistant Principal, only much less imposing.
I first met Abdi and Omar Mohamed in 2006, or maybe it was 2007. I can’t remember the exact date. I didn’t record such things back then. It was through our local soccer club in Northeast Columbus, called Blast FC. My son Xavier played for the Blast, which brought together the more competitive and skilled recreational players whose parents were willing and able to fork out the extra fees for some great coaching and more competitive games. Lesh Shkreli, a former professional soccer player from the former Yugoslavia, ran (and still runs) the boys’ side of the club. Lesh was always generous with his time and offered a few scholarships to talented kids from the neighborhood. Enter Abdi and Omar.
My son’s age group featured a duo of Somali boys, which later became a trio, who lived nearby and loved soccer more than anything. Abdi and Omar Mohamed (unrelated, although they claimed to be at first) were both extremely shy and polite and they each had smiles that would disarm a would-be bank robber. These characteristics made it easy to offer them the occasional ride home from practice when they needed it. Little did I know that this simple and minimal act of kindness would enrich my life for years to come.
The occasional ride home turned into the occasional pick up for practice or for a game, which then led to me providing rides for the boys to tournaments, which then gave rise to me signing off on parental forms and handling birth certificates and all kinds of other ancillary matters. I became a surrogate soccer dad. I don’t say this because it was a hassle or a burden of any sort. I always wore it like a badge of honor. To earn this right, I needed to go to each boy’s house and meet his father. To shake hands and look the patriarch in the eye, because both Abdi and Omar were (and still are of course) well-loved and well-cared for by their respective families. However, as part of a wave of Somali immigrants who settled in Columbus, Ohio, their families often took working class jobs (sometimes multiple) and simply didn’t have the luxury of taking the boys to their events. In Abdi’s case, his father was (and still is at an advanced age) a hard-working small business owner. Omar’s father was working in a factory on third shift. The families greeted me kindly, offered me food and drink, and thanked me for my service. Just like that, I had a bigger family. I became the boys’ primary provider and decision-maker for soccer concerns.
Soccer concerns dominated most of our free time in this age bracket. The boys diligently practiced throughout the year often 4 days a week in addition to games. Lesh always found indoor spots for his teams to practice, so skills training went year-round. We played in indoor leagues in winter and outdoor leagues in spring and fall. Now having been around the game for 40 years, I can say that Lesh offers some of the best youth training around. If a player was serious, he could potentially go far. My own son thrived in this environment with his own accomplishments. But his is another story. This is a story about two of “my” other boys who took their training seriously and went all the way.
As our team aged, some boys developed their skills beyond others. Omar certainly stuck out from the rest. He displayed skills and creativity in games that impressed everyone, including the opposing team coaches and parents. Abdi was always incredibly talented and smart, but he lagged behind in size, which made it easier for bigger kids to knock him off the ball. Omar was our superstar. Abdi kept working. A couple of years later, we picked up a third Somali boy, Mohamed Adam. Mohamed was a big boy and he carried himself authoritatively. He became our midfield enforcer and garnered a lot of attention. Omar kept shining. Abdi kept working.
Often, we would have to stack the four boys in the back of my small sedan to get everyone home. My son and Abdi were the smallest. Inevitably this led to shenanigans. The bigger boys wouldn’t pick on Xavier as much even though I encouraged it. If we’re going to be a family, everyone is going to get equal guff. But the reality is that Abdi took most of the ribbing. Just when I could see the frustration on his face, I’d verbally slow down the shenanigans and tell the bigger boys to watch out because Abdi is going to be bigger than all of them one day. Abdi would figuratively thumb his nose at them and sit a little taller, smiling. Don’t get me wrong here, the boys were all respectful and treated each other like – well – brothers. They may pick on each other in the car from time to time, but let someone from the opposing team step on Abdi or whack my son from behind. Paybacks are hell. Usually, that came from Mohamed.
As the boys aged, we did like all families do. We started to drift apart. Soccer club politics, playing opportunities at other clubs, high school interests, all kinds of things set in. But even when you don’t see your teenagers all the time any more, there is still a bond. Every now and again, we’d run into each other around town and catch up. It was – and continues to be – great. We keep contact through social media and I have followed the boys’ soccer careers ever since.
Dreams Come True
Everyone from the team is now in his early twenties. Three years ago, Omar signed his first professional contract to play for FC Cincinnati. Since then, he’s moved to the Portland Timbers, spent time on loan in Sweden and Switzerland, and if all goes right, he’ll be joining his old manager back in the US for another pro team this fall.
Omar and I share a friendly hug after a rainy game in Cincinnati
Abdi joined The Ohio State University out of high school in 2015 and started as a freshman at center mid, where he played for three seasons. For his senior year, he transferred to the University of Akron and changed to the position of right back. Akron is a smaller college than OSU, but their soccer program is much bigger. This past season, the Zips went all the way to the final in the College Cup and I cheered Abdi on from my living room. Abdi’s performances in college earned him a spot in the Major League Soccer (MLS) College Combine. We got together for a good luck dinner prior to Abdi’s departure, a photo from which is the lead picture in this post. I presume he did well because this past Friday, January 11, 2019, he was selected by New York City FC in the second round of the MLS Super Draft.
Abdi Mohamed selected by New York City FC (NYCFC) on Friday, January 11, 2019
Beaming with Pride
As I watched the video on my phone of Abdi being selected by NYCFC a sense of pride welled up inside. Not because I had anything to do with Abdi’s success. No, his work is all his. Just like Omar. For that matter, just like the other successes that other boys from the team have had. Rather, the sense of pride that I have for Abdi as he hugged his father in that ball room in Chicago after being drafted was my sense of pride in America. Say what we will about all the negative headlines and the three ring circus that we call Washington DC. But the fact remains that this country, warts and all, still provides a chance for a young man who came as an immigrant from war-torn Somalia to settle into sleepy Westerville, Ohio and to “make it.” Obviously, Abdi has a lot of work ahead of him. Getting drafted essentially means that he’s earned the right to put his head down and keep working the way he’s always done. But just for a moment, let’s celebrate this young man. And yes, let’s celebrate America, which is still the land of opportunity.
“Going home and spending time with your family and your real friends keeps you grounded.” – Jennifer Ellison
This weekend, my wife and I went “home” to the greater Portsmouth, Ohio area. She and I were both born and (as for me, mostly) raised there. Her parents are still there. Mine moved on when I was 14, but I still have plenty of roots. We were without kids this weekend and owed her Mom some “we” time, so made the 2+ hour drive from our house to my wife’s childhood home. I think I can speak for my wife to say that going home for both of us this weekend was bittersweet.
Life in Portsmouth is completely different from our life in Columbus, Ohio. Portsmouth is the epitome of small-town middle America with a population of less than 30,000. Columbus is a major metropolitan city where the population approaches 2 million. In Columbus, we have something going on every night of the week; dinner with friends, kids’ sporting activities, organized after-work events, and so on. In Portsmouth, there might be one event per week in addition to Wednesday evening church service. When we go “home,” we experience the life of our childhood. The life that we couldn’t wait to escape. The slower, sleepy life that would drive us nuts from boredom on the long-term, but that we honestly relish in bits and pieces on these brief weekend treks down memory lane.
This weekend, I went hiking for four hours with my cousin’s husband. From start to finish, neither of us could get cell service among our three mobile phones. Not that we wanted it, I’m just offering a sense of how remote things are in the greater Portsmouth area. My wife and I also attended a car show, which is where people from all around the local Tri-State area (Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia) drive their always polished, often restored, sometimes cobbled together hotrods and put them on display for eager gawkers and some serious bragging rights. The night usually wraps up when the hotrods begin to file out onto the main road and leave a good bit of rubber behind in a plume of blue-grey smoke. It is like a scene out of the movie American Graffiti. We spent a good bit of time with family sharing food and catching up on stories and events. My wife and I also squeezed in a 3 mile training run in the downtown area and on the campus of my first alma mater, Shawnee State University. During our travels around the county, I drove past every house I lived in until I moved away from the area. All of this brings me back to the bittersweet point.
A part of me – a very small part indeed – misses that life. Sure, we couldn’t live in the house we live in now. Our kids wouldn’t have had the opportunities that they’ve had in the Columbus area. No, we couldn’t travel like we do. Yes, I find myself getting cranky at the painfully slow drivers while I’m down there. On and on. But. BUT, a small part of me misses that simpler, small town life. A part of me misses the time when the big event of the day was putting two bare feet into the water and casting a fishing pole. That same part of me misses the house I grew up in, the friends with whom I learned about life, and the roads on which I learned to drive. Judging by my wife’s eagerness to show me the artifacts of her past, I think she share’s the sentiment.
I’m sure this is just the nostalgia of the trip taking hold. If you moved us back to Portsmouth today, my wife and I would go stir crazy in 3 days – or less. I think the important thing here is to revisit memory lane with vulnerability every now and again. With vulnerability, I mean to be open to the trip, to slow down and walk the paths of the memory, to revisit events and consider their impact on you. We can so easily get caught up in planning the next big trip or office politics or whatever. But there’s nothing like a trip to your childhood home to ground you in the terra firma of who you are and what in life is important. It offers a whole new perspective to the impending work week.
The house featured in this post is the current state of my parent’s home when I was brought home from the hospital more than 43 years ago. I remember it as a quaint red brick and red siding house in good repair surrounded by a chain link fence to keep me and our small dog in the yard. But that was a long time ago. Times change.
I have a busted rib or two at the moment. After about a week of trial and error, I have figured out that the only way it is going to get better is for me to reduce physical activity to a bare minimum. Within a day of hurting my rib, I figured out how to “run” at a slower and modified stride. But I also quickly realized that with the deep breathing and still occasional jolt of the stride, I wasn’t doing myself any favors with actual recovery. I’m now on day 3 of minimal activity. The words “stir crazy” seem to fit the bill, so I needed to do something. So this fine Saturday afternoon, I decided to go to Highbanks Metro Park and go for a hike.
I use the term “hike” here pretty loosely. Its pretty much a walk in the woods on improved paths. But… the place where I wanted to hike is underwater from the June monsoons Ohio has been experiencing, so you’ll just have to bear with me. On a lark, I took my camera along for the ride… er, hike. I figured I’d catch a squirrel or a couple of migrant songbirds with my trusty DSLR. It turns out, the squirrels were not in the mood to pose for me; and the vegetation was so dense that I only spotted a few birds but I wasn’t quick enough to catch them with my camera. So I hiked on.
Undeterred by the unwillingness of Mother Nature’s sentient beings to pose for me, I snapped several pictures of the park’s flora.
After a bit, I decided to slow down and take a deeper look at the world around me. I’m so glad I did. A whole new set of life opened up right in front of me. I found a frog or toad that would sit comfortably on my thumbnail, a daredevil snail transitioning from one blade of grass to another while upside down, a millipede making short work of the gravel mounds it was traversing, and a moth that didn’t seem to care about my camera one iota.
Heartened by my transition from the big picture to the smaller focus, I decided to transfer back from fauna to flora. What views!
As I close, I have to admit that this rib issue has had me on edge. For several weeks, I have been plodding along, running easy pace miles. I am supposed to be running some quicker miles over this week and next as I officially begin marathon training on July 6. Not only am I not ramping up into my training, I can’t run at all. Instead of wallowing in my own self-pity, I decided today to get out and move in a way that won’t hurt my rib. I hiked up and down hills for nearly 3 hours. Along the way, I was able to capture several snapshots of the absolute magnificence of this world we live in. I hope you enjoy.
This past weekend, I captained a team of 10 runners that ran 150 miles in just over 24 hours. When I tell people that, they usually say, “I don’t know how you do it.” But when you break it down, its actually not very tough. Each runner covers on average 15 miles, which is really nothing compared to a marathon. The toughest thing is finding a way to rest as you cycle in and out of a van and in and out of a camp site or hotel room. However, taking 24 hours out of my life and focusing on one goal instead of balancing work deadlines and automotive repairs and upcoming graduation ceremonies, etc. offered me a chance to pick up a couple of life lessons.
Lesson 1: Let go
Coming into this run, my training wasn’t perfect. Far from it. I didn’t get to the speed work I intended to accomplish. I also didn’t do the hill work that I knew I would need to charge up and down the Appalachian foothills of Ross County Ohio. Part of the reason for my training misses were injury related. I busted my foot playing soccer three weeks before the race. My own fault. Another part was illness, I came down with some mystery bug for about 48 hours that had me all out of whack 2 weeks before the race. The other part was just life – too many irons in the fire.
My team also wasn’t much for being a team. Out of 10 runners, I had six replacements; 4 in the four weeks running up to the race. I offered up team training runs and the occasional team outing. No one replied. My Van 2 driver offered up a plan to travel together to the race location. Everyone drove separately without responding. Without any sense of team or camaraderie, I wondered how we would handle the stresses of working together for 24 hours.
Here’s the funny thing: None of it mattered. I wound up turning in great times for my segments, so my busted training plan had little effect. Where I could find flat ground, I was running 2 minutes per mile faster than I had in months and my hill work was respectable. My team also came together on race day like a well oiled machine. People knew where they were going and got there on time. We didn’t have a wasted moment during race leg hand-offs, no one forgot any critical pieces of equipment, and we cheered each other on like we were one happy family. As our last runner crossed the finish line and we all cheered him on, I paused for a moment. All my concerns were for nothing. Sometimes the best thing to do is let go and let the chips fall where they may.
Lesson 2: Leadership is a journey
I’ve been a manager in my professional life on and off for 20 years. I’ve taken training galore and read all the right books. Leadership is practically a formula, right? Nope.
I came into this race with the baggage that I wasn’t as fit as last year with the knowledge that I had signed up to take on the toughest run of the race. I wound up letting that baggage through in some of my communications. I mentioned to one new runner that I “laid the hammer down” and was putting in some quick miles on one of my early runs in spite of my lack of training. I watched him glaze over and think about something else – probably how I sounded like a self-important peacock. I wasn’t inspiring him. I was stroking my own ego to feel better about my performance; and he wasn’t impressed. I had this malarky story in my head that to be captain, I had to demonstrate that I was among the best on the team. I later realized that this was my insecurities talking, which shines through for others to see like a broken bone in an X-ray machine.
I have this iceberg belief that if a leader isn’t where he or she needs to be (preparation, experience, whatever), that leader cannot possibly ask for more out of others. I call it an iceberg because it isn’t something that I outwardly communicate, but its there lurking under the surface and it can certainly sink my ship. This comes from my blue collar, Appalachian, Protestant, ultra-egalitarian, roots. If you’re going to tell me what to do, you damn-well better be standing on higher ground than me. So I hold myself to that standard. The reality is this: Life gets in the way for everyone. At no time in life is anything ever perfect – including for the person selected, volunteered, or otherwise promoted to leadership. But that can’t stop someone in a leadership position from asking of their team what they need. The leader’s role is to lead; to get the most out of the team, regardless of other limitations. Although I didn’t feel comfortable about it, I delivered some less than perfect news to the team late into the event and asked them to deal with it. They did it without question and it worked out nicely.
So, I lived and I learned, and that’s the good news. To quote the Dalai Lama, “If you lose, don’t lose the lesson.”
The satisfaction of accomplishment
At the end of the run, the whole team was there cheering on our last runner. The sense of accomplishment started to sink in for all of us. It was a bit rainy and the after party wasn’t as upbeat as the year before, but none of that mattered. As we stood around and shared stories and traded pictures that we took over the course of the run, our achievement took shape. We just ran 150 miles in 24 hours! All of us were operating on too little sleep. None of us trained as much as we wanted. Yet here we are. 150 miles later, injury free and smiling at our accomplishment. The fact that our team fees helped benefit drug prevention programs in the epicenter of the American opioid crisis certainly helped our feeling of purpose. In addition, I picked up a couple of lessons along the way. All in all, it was a good weekend.
If you’re interested in taking part in this run next year, please visit The Buck Fifty. Its a great cause and a great time. And like me, you might just learn something about yourself along the way.
42. That is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. At least according to Deep Thought, the supercomputer in Douglas Adams’ seminal work, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it is. Those who have read The Hitchhiker’s Guide… will already be snickering with this reminder. Those who have not, should. Having recently completed my 42nd trip around the sun on this tiny blue planet, I’ve decided to have a look back on my Ultimate Year.
It was my first full year without my Dad. He died in 2016, and looking back, his death has had a huge impact on me. Most notably, the circumstances of his death had a profound influence on my mindfulness practice.
A year of seniors. My son is now a senior in college, my daughter a senior in high school. My, how time flies.
I ran my first marathon. And my second, and my third, and my fourth. I can be obsessive.
My first full year of eating a plant-based diet. Inspired by Scott Jurek and Rich Roll, I’ve got better health numbers now than I did in most of my 20’s and all of my 30’s.
It was a good year for my career too. I want to keep my career separate from this blog, but it was a good year following a promotion to a leadership position. I have a fantastic team full of amazing individuals. I wouldn’t trade a single one.
My mindfulness practice tipped – in a good way. I read several insightful books this past year, but two of the best were The Power of Now by Eckart Tolle and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Gaining insights and simply fumbling my way through it, I have taken control of my emotions and want for almost nothing. I would by no means call myself enlightened, but it is a fascinating state of being.
I supportted my wife as she pursues her passion: a Master’s of Psychology from Harvard University.
I fell in love with trail running. Previously, I had only pounded the pavement. In my 42nd year, I ran several trail races locally and, perhaps most life-altering, I got the chance to run the petit balcon in the French Alps near Chamonix. This is where I took the lead picture of this post.
I was able to go whale watching. Surprisingly, this was the highlight of our trip to the Massachusetts beach house in Marshfield. I expected to like seeing whales. I didn’t expect to be mystified.
We finally took the trip to Montserrat. After years of traveling to Barcelona and always thinking about it, we finally took the day trip to Montserrat. The monastery houses the Black Madonna and my Mom was speechless. The views from the mountain are stunning.
As I wrap up this short post, I find myself in a state of complete gratitude. My wife and I both hail from small towns (I’m not even sure “town” is the right word for these places) in the Appalachian Ohio Valley, home of economic backwaters and the opioid crisis. Sometimes we look at each other and just shake our heads in awe of what the Universe has provided. The views at 42 were pretty grand.
The view from the Marshfield, MA beach house:
Whale Watching on Cape Cod
James and me (right) in Chamonix before heading up into the Alps
If you’d like to connect with a people and their culture, spend a couple of days in the hospital. I know, I know, that sentence didn’t end the way you were thinking. Our trip hasn’t exactly gone the way we thought it would either. On the second half of our bus tour of the Ring of Kerry, my wife started getting sick. By the time I got her back to our Airbnb in Killarney, she was literally green and feverish. After she had a nap and overcame her fever, we consulted WebMD and discovered her symptoms checked all the boxes for an appendicitis. Having never experienced a health problem away from the US, we called her insurance company for some direction. The response was swift and admirably simple: go to the hospital and save your receipts for reimbursement.
On the Road to Tralee
Our stay is in Killarney, which is a lovely little town of about 14,000 residents and no hospital. The closest hospital is about 30 minutes drive into a neighboring town of Tralee. We consulted our Airbnb hosts and they confirmed that Kerry General Hospital in Tralee is the place where they go if needed. So, we packed up and headed out. I was raised in the US so driving a sizable right-side drive, manual transmission vehicle on the left side of the road is a bit disorienting. Luckily, I’ve had a few days practice so I was able to deal with the added stress of driving my wife to the hospital at night on roads I hadn’t seen. However, I’ll readily admit that my knuckles were white from time to time over the half hour drive. Over the next 36 hours, I would make this drive in both directions several times as I made provisional trips to and from the hospital. Travel Tip: Planning to drive in Ireland? On top of allowing yourself some time to orient to the left side of the road before jumping into city traffic, I HIGHLY recommend paying the extra fee for the GPS. It took the guess work out of reading road signs (written in Irish first, English second), navigating countless roundabouts, and helped me keep track of the not-always-noticeable speed limit signs.
Irish Healthcare
In hindsight, I’d have looked up the information before traveling to know what to expect. What I learned in our exhaustive time in waiting room of the Emergency Department is that Irish Healthcare is among the slowest in Europe. My wife was seen promptly for admissions and was seen by the triage nurse within 35 minutes. After a very short interview, she informed us that it would be a 4-5 hour wait before we could see the doctor. It was closer to 6 hours. Having arrived at the hospital at roughly 9 PM, we were able to see the doctor at 2:45 AM. Other than taking blood and urine samples and a basic interview of symptoms, no diagnostic work was done until the next morning. At least she had a bed. After sitting in the aluminum bleachers in the waiting area for hours on end, getting a bit of rest in a hospital gurney helped her feel a little more comfortable. I spent the early morning in minimally padded chair next to her and only nodded off briefly once or twice. Over her 36 hour stay, she had an ultrasound, a CT scan, and several consultations with knowledgeable and caring nurses and doctors. The amenities left a little more to be desired.
Other than during her initial consultation with the doctor, she spent the entire time on a gurney in the hallway because the hospital was over-full, which we’re told is quite routine. I promptly lost my chair when she moved into the hallway and either had to go sit in a waiting room away from her or stand in the hallway near her bed. Perhaps the most frustrating part of the visit was the delivery relative to commitments. For instance, after learning that her ultrasound did not help with the diagnosis at 10 AM, we were told she would have a CT scan by 3 PM. She actually received a CT scan at 5:30 PM and was later told that only emergency CT scans are read after 5. That was when we realized that she’d be spending another night in the hallway. Thankfully she didn’t require surgery and was released the next morning with prescriptions. In the end, I would rate the care received as very good, the amenities as less-than-adequate, and the wait times to be longer than average. Travel Tip:If you need hospital care in Ireland, Americans can expect quality care comparable to what we receive in the US but with significant wait times.
The Human Connection
Spending 36 hours in a hallway gurney along with other patients and their families provides significant opportunities to connect with people. We met, among others, a 12 year old girl who broke both wrists in an elliptical bike accident, an elderly lady who was denied an oxygen tank because she hadn’t demonstrated that she had “given up the fags” (stopped smoking), a retirement-aged mother who personally thanked me for the existence of Bon Jovi, and a nurse who wondered what we thought about President Trump. We also got the chance to sit quietly for a bit and listen to conversations among locals. There is a wonderful, polite rhythm to the Irish conversation. It might go something like this (the reader will have to insert the Irish lilt):
Man 1: Alright John?
Man 2: Never better. You and the missus?
Man 1: Nary a complaint
Man 2: Where’s that no good partner of yours?
Man 1: Did ye check the canteens and pubs?
Man 2: I ‘spect he’ll be shutting ’em down later
Man 1: Dontcha know
Man 2: Alright, gotta get on with it
Man 1: Good luck to ye
Man 2: T’anks a million, take care
I mentioned in my last post that Ireland and her people reminded me of my childhood home in Southern Ohio. Never was this more apparent than in the hospital. The spoken and body language communicates so much with so little. There is a wonderful wit and wisdom communicated with a sense of humility in these little exchanges. Briefly, one can let the another know that he feels for him and that “we’re in this together.” My wife and I discussed this at length. We believe this comes with the homogeneity of culture that permeates much of rural Ireland. Because of their shared culture and vernacular, they’re “hyper-communicating,” which is my term for sending paragraphs of dialogue in verbal and non-verbal shorthand. And while our accents are different, this brand of communication is very much a part of Southern Ohio’s Scotch-Irish culture. In fact, we even share several colloquialisms. To illustrate, I was giving one of the nurses a hard time and she didn’t respond, feigning frustration. My wife told her to not take me seriously and I said, “Ah, she knows I’m only just funnin’.” This prompted an almost immediate reply from a third party nurse: “Where did you say you’re from again? Because you’re clearly Irish.”
Welcome Home
I wouldn’t wish an appendicitis on anyone. My wife experienced intense pain and I’m sure she was “this close” to having an appendectomy while in the middle of our vacation. However, the experience – without question – gave us a chance to better connect with our host country. And when you boil it all down, that human connection, that rediscovery of the common thread that binds us all together, is essentially why we travel. In the waiting room, as we were chatting with the mom and her little girl with the broken wrists, an elderly lady overheard us and asked if we were American. We said that we were. She smiled from ear to ear, looked at each one of us and said, “I’m sorry for your trouble, but welcome home.”
Ireland has been on my bucket list for quite some time. Like many in the US, and like most people from the town in which I hail, I have more than a little Irish heritage. I’ve always wanted to go to Ireland and have a look around. My favorite author, James Joyce, is also famously Irish. Walking around Dublin and seeing the sights of Joyce’s epic Ulysses has been of dream of mine for several years too. Our trip plan is to start in Galway and see the Cliffs of Moher. Then we’ll travel to Killarney and tour – among other things – the Ring of Kerry. Having checked the box on beautiful countryside, we’ll move on to Dublin for several days. I’m a few days into the tour and I wanted to pause for a few reflections.
Ireland feels like home
I’m originally from Southern Ohio. Think, “foothills of the Appalachian Mountains along the banks of the Ohio River.” My part of Ohio is dominated by Scotch-Irish culture that has had time to ferment in a small town environment for a few hundred years since our ancestors predominantly migrated from Ireland. Our people are a heavily accented, slow-paced, kindly folk who are fiercely independent and suspicious of “outsiders” who might be selling solutions to problems that they likely don’t understand. The Southern Ohio landscape is dominated by lovely rolling green pastures, forested hills and plentiful natural water sources that support farming and outdoor activities such as hunting and fishing. I honestly can’t say I was surprised to find a very similar land, culture, and people. Admittedly, I haven’t made it to Dublin yet, but what I have experienced feels like my rural Ohio roots. What I have been struck by is the amazing beauty of the Emerald Isle.
Did I mention that Ireland is Amazingly Beautiful?
So far, I have driven from Dublin to Galway, taken the Cliffs of Moher tour, driven from Galway to Limerick with a brief stop for lunch and a tour or King John’s Castle, and then on again from Limerick to Killarney. The sights are absolutely a.maz.ing. In just a couple of days, we’ve been able to see (pictured in order) 1. The River Corrib in Galway, 2. The Cliffs of Moher, 3. The rocky coast of the The Burren, 4. King John’s Castle in Limerick, and 5. Muckross Lake in Killarney. I am absolutely enamored with the beauty of this country – and, while Southern Ohio cannot totally compete – the sights are at least reminiscent.
The River Corrib in Galway
The Cliffs of Moher
The rocky coast of The Burren
View of the River Shannon from atop King John’s Castle
Quixote Goes 