The crossing was a disaster. The sudden storm had turned pleasent tourist ship into a lifeboat of survivors, heaving over its sides or groaning in its even more rocky bowels. Twenty-nine of the thirty Belfast Schoolchildren still played their street games on the Galway Bay's deck. I wondered lamely whether their month long holiday on the Aran Islands would conquer their violent energy : or whether they would inflict on this place that time forgot some of their war- torn present.
The one remaining, a small boy of about nine, hung his head between his legs and sighed deeply.
The sigh,knocked me out of musings and self pity. here was I, perhaps the only passenger besides the twenty-nine children who wasn't ill,' sitting and being mesmorized by yet another strain of "The Girl from Galway" that blared over the ships loudspeakers. I cast a glance' " at my, companion; and was painfully reminded of the deep friendship. disintegrating under the strain of this trip we had so long looked forward to. Our daily lives had turned into petty squabblings and putdowns. And we had only each other. We were an ocean away from home. Ireland, the home of the ancestors we had come to find was now the strange land, and we were strangers now, most painfully of all,even to each other. She would resent me going over to mother the child, as she had. resented everything I had done lately, as if it were directed somehow against her. But myself, I had to hold onto myself I stroked the boy's hair.
"We'll. be there soon, really soon, wait till you see how beautiful it is - look there's the lighthouse now! The schoolteacher stood above me, calling out his thanks "...Good of you! It's a Galway girl you are then?" "No, I'm from New York:" Where is it you say?" "New York- America!" I shouted and was amused that it took the fierce winds of the Atlantic to. finally conquor my accent and make me a countryman. .Grandma, you must be in there somewhere, I thought wanely.
The voyages end found returning smiles on the fades of our small band of hearty tourists. Our distress was forgotten as we peered out at the rough hewn beauty of this land, deposited off Ireland's west coast by some mad god or glacier. The people on shore staring back at us seemed somehow offended and disappointed by the sight of us. Still, they pulled and scratched at us to take their pony and cart tours. But we two rich Americans had about seventy cents between us(and not an American Exuress office in sight). So we walked.
The lady from Boston took my picture and told me how sweet I was have mothered the Belfast child, so I was beaning and ready to walk anywhere; The first where came eight miles later as we ducked into a tearoom and out of the stiff cold and bleak repetition of rock fences and sea that confronted us for hours. What a strange land of stone sea and people who either grabbed at us or shrunk back and stared wordlessly at us, as if wehad come from Mars.
The tea room had a fire and before it sat Ernie. His face brightened as we came in, as if we were old friends.
"Would you ladies like to sit over here at my table and warm up?"
The accent. He wasn't Irish But not quite American either. He soon filled in the mystery. Ernie is a Vermonter. And a more proud Vermonter I've never known. He at first looked tired and ill, to me but his strength grew with his company, the tea and breads, and the fires light. We were soon joined by two young Irish men with the same name in different languages, Shawn and John. We five companions got on so well that our fifteen minulte rest period in the cosy. tea room turned into a three hour stay.
We began by explaining to our Irish friends the perplexities we had found since on this island. Ernie explained about his pony and cart ride and how he begged the driver not to whip his animal so badly. He finally dismissed the man mid way because he couldn't. stand for the cruelty he had shown. Shawn told us that tourism was the way the people on this land made most of their living, and it had been "A long season without rain". He was surely speaking figuratively, as it had actually rained every day of that summer, destroying all of Ireland's main crop, its tourists. Our enlighthtenment from Shawn did not excuse the man's cruelty, but it did make us understand a little better.
When I brought up the fact that the people we'd seen on the road did not speak, John asked, Did you speak to them?"
"No, we confessed rather shamefacedly.
"That's all well, he laughed. "They would not have understood you. The people speak Irish here, ladies" What the Irish call Irish is what we term Gaelic and a more beautiful though foreign language I have not since heard. All the children are taught it in school and the signs bear its strange symbols, but in only a few time forgotten pockets like this one, it is the only language known.
As we talked, I noticed Ernie more and more. I wondered how he didn't. fit into any of my senior citizen stereotypes. Here he was, traveling alone at seventy-six. He had braved a Galway Bay. crossing that had sent shivers down the youngest of of our spines, and he wasn't complaining about his health. He was not anything like the old people in the nursing homes I had visited. He neither lived in his past, nor did he want only respect and a good listener. He was avidly interested himself in whatever subject came up, from irish brown breads to the Concord jet, to the great beauty of his own "country", Vermont.
The eight mile trek back to the Galway Bay waiting for us at the pier was a world different from the journey there. We had found a family. Sean and John were stayjng at their retreat for the weekend, but insisted on walking us back to bid us good-bye at the dock. Even our tea room host, at first disappointed at the few patrons, caught the spirit and bid us a hearty farewell- as we stepped out into the suddenly shining sun. Sean and John decipered Gaelic signs we met on the way, and obscure piles of rocks were transformed into ore-historic sites and remains of the dwellings of Dark Age monks prserving Western civilazation's books. We re-met the hearty people of this land with our new learned perspective and greeted them with returned smiles and Ernie's ever present "Hi" He explained to us that this shortest American greeting got him the most cordial results from his non- English speaking hosts. We spoke of the pleasures of walking, of the Vermont and Appalachian trails, of Sean and John's need to escape the pressures of their airport jobs.
At the dock our new family split for the first and last time. I felt a flush of sadness while waving at the two lone figures. I think'Ernie felt it too. We had shared something very special together that none of us would forget. The crossing this time was so sublimly peaceful that we almost regretted the sight of Galway on the horizon. We felt our experience on the island so broadening that we made ourselves good will ambassadors for the little while the ship would be our world again. Without the din of a storm, conversations wore simplified. We met the ladies from Boston and a shivering denium coated youth from florida..
The Belfast teachers, even relieved of their charges, still seemed a little shaken up, but they sat with us and a warming cup and told how their and the children's lives had changed since the war had begun to tear up their city.
Walking was still not out of our systems (or, perhaps 'it was the good 'talk that walking induced) and Ernie and I spent time traversing the deck as we learned nore about each other. I told him of my coming marriage, he seemed deliighted and spoke warmly of the wife who had died four years before. Theirs had been a love match I've never heard the equal of before or since. It was a great change from friends asking, "What do you want to get married' for in this day and age?" The quality of Ernie's life with his Hazel will ever be a goal of mine.
Ernie also told me about his brother who had been a United States senator from Vermont who was instrumental in the senate's eventual rejection of Joseph Mccarthy and his still reverberating anti-Communist notions. There was warmuth in Ernie's eyes when he spoke and the saddness of loss in his eyes as I realized that his brother had left his life too. I remember wondering how Ernie had managed to be so proud of such an overwheleming force' as a famous older brother. This man, I mused, must have a great capacity for love as well as a good deal of confidence in himself and his own abilities.
A gentle rain was closing our day as we pulled into the Galway dock, Ernie',great Victorian gentleman that he is, tucked my friend and me under his umbrella and walked us to our bus stop.
I had been greatly touched by this man, We had given each other our names and addresses but I had not thought that the perfect memory how he changed that day and my life could be continued. A few, days after our return home, I recieved pictures he had 'taken of us and oun Aran Island family. Enclosed was a beautiful note telling me hdw he had watched me during the crossing and,hoped,that our lives would 'come together somehow, because he had known I was a special person. Even in the midst of wedding plans,"I was overwhelmed with a feeling that he was never getting away from me now and so far, he hasn't. I invited him to our wedding, and, from Vermont to the Catskills of New York he came and brought grace and dignity to our celebration. The years since meeting Ernie have changed me greatly, but out friendship has grown ever better, ever deeper. We have shared both our turmoils and the great happy times, like the birth of our daughter Abigail with her "Uncle" Ernie. Ernie himself has married, and that one sad emptiness about him has been filled by his beautiful Fran. That day on the Aran islands was only the start of the lovely moments in a lifletime enriched by Ernie.