March 8
At the kitchen table of my temporary home in Claregalway, I’m sitting next to a cup of cut daffodils so bright and perky I assumed they were fake during my first few days here. Now I see the very three dimensional yellow flowers everywhere, lining sidewalks and window wells and pub countertops. My host Oisín told me they’re a sign of Spring here, one of the few flowers that can tolerate the few nights of frost that arrive here in early March. Oisín and his wife Jaclyn are off in another room, completing the complex routine required to coax a toddler and six-month old into sleeping.
I’m here with the hope that volunteering at small organic farms will help me both build a relationship with land that my ancestors left a few generations ago as well as figure things out, so to speak. A week into my quarter life crisis romp through Ireland, I don’t have all the answers and I don’t really have the questions sorted out either. But I do have tingly hands from the sneaky stinging nettle plants that hide in the garden beds, where I’ve spent the past few days harvesting spinach, wheelbarrowing wood chips and looking lovingly at the little flowers on the six-foot sprawling rosemary plant growing along the south window of the greenhouse. I have soil stuck in every little crease of my palms - fertile, untilled soil - and my body feels achy but grounded, like it’s being put to good use. I have a little routine too, walking one mile past sheep fields and a castle to the garden on weekdays, and to the nearby bus stop on weekends. I also have one Hinge match, three hours away somewhere in County Cork, who said he’d ask his friends if they know anyone with surnames that match my great, great grandparents, so surely I’m on my way to uncovering to stories of my ancestors as well.
But how is the weather, you’re surely wondering! Thus far, unseasonably pleasant according to the locals, with just a few drizzly days thus far. My first friend (technically a barista who had to talk to me) called Galway the best city in the world when the weather cooperates, meaning when wet coastal winds aren’t whipping through it. After 20 miles spent wandering aimlessly around the relatively small city centre last weekend, I’ve developed a transient sense of belonging and a crush. I’m in that freshly enamored phase where everything about this city charms me - the permanent presence of street performers, the gushing river dividing the commerce-dense part of town from the more laid back west Galway by the University, the plaques proudly inscribed in the Irish language with fainter English below. I let out an audible sigh on Saturday while admiring the sunset light spilling onto the buildings through a break in the clouds. Maybe I’ll get sick of the street performers or become disillusioned by realities like the housing crisis pushing people out of Ireland’s beautiful city centers but for now, Galway can do wrong in my eyes and I’ll keep busing in to get to know it better whenever I can.
