Hot and Cold

Yesterday I said goodbye to mom and dad in the Dublin airport and took a bus back to Galway.  If I keep saying goodbye to loved ones in Dublin, I may start to resent the place.

Dublin is an international city with wonderful cuisine.  When Kevin and I were choosing what to eat for dinner in Dublin, we chose Italian.  By coincidence, mom and dad and I ate Italian, too.   Perhaps this is the beginning of a last-night-in-Dublin tradition?

We had a fascinating conversation with our taxi driver on our way to the Dublin airport yesterday morning.  The driver told us that he thinks the drinking culture of Dublin is changing.  He said that the habitual drinkers are mostly older folks and the practice is dying with them, “the biggest mourners at the funerals are the pub owners.”  He also commented that a person has to accept he has a problem if he finds himself at a pub every night.  When asked why he thinks this culture is changing, he replied that people need to stay sharp for their jobs and lives. 

Those of you who know my parents won’t be surprised to read that our visit was filled with philosophical/spiritual discussions and laughter.  While all three of us participated in all of this, dad often instigated the laughter while mom often instigated the spiritual conversations. 

One of the most interesting conversations involved thinking about how we frame events in our lives by telling stories to ourselves about them.  If we change the story, we can change the meaning.  This conversation started when mom shared something that worked for her one night.  As you may recall, I sometimes have trouble sleeping because of noise outside my apartment.  Before my parents arrived, I told mom that she might want to consider wearing earplugs.  She said, “I’m not like you, I like some noise at night.”  On their second morning here, after a particularly windy night, my mom said, “I had NO idea what kind of noise you were talking about!”  When the wind really blows here, you can hear it whistle around the building.  I don’t mind that sound; I often feel cozy and relaxed in bed when I hear it.  The problem noise is the persistent and insistent clanging of a sailboat line, one in particular, against a mast.  This sailboat is right outside my window.  When the racket woke mom, she addressed the issue by telling herself a different story about it.  She told herself a friendly and phantom pirate ghost made the noise; she then could sleep. 

The sailboat with the noisy line

I like to name things, so I suggested (mom might call it “insisted”) she name the ghost.  She resisted at first, so I started calling him “Frank.” She would have no part of that.  She didn’t know the ghost’s name, but she knew it wasn’t Frank.  Eventually mom named the phantom “Ichabod.”  I like Ichabod. 

Perhaps you had to be there, but for me the funniest moment of our visit was when we were walking in the Latin Quarter one morning.  As we crossed a street, dad saw a one-euro coin (worth about $1.37) on the ground.  He bent down to pick it up but it was glued to the street.  We laughed about it for days. 

The euro glued to the street

Dad is known by name and drink at a Grand Rapids coffee shop, Biggby Coffee on Plainfield Avenue.  When I am in Grand Rapids, I am a regular, too (red eye with a shot of chocolate).  The owner of the franchise, Jason, runs a slide show in his shop featuring workers and customers holding Biggby coffee cups or other Biggby paraphernalia.  I brought a reusable plastic Biggby coffee cup with me to Ireland and dad and I had fun taking pictures of it in various places around Galway. 

Dad with the Biggby cup at the Spanish Arch, built in 1584

Biggby cup (lower right) in Claddagh Park on Galway Bay

Biggby cup at entrance to Claddagh Park, the Corrib River and my apartment building in the background

At Arabica Coffee in Galway

Dad outside Galway Lifeboat at Galway Harbor

Biggby cup between Oscar Wilde and Eduard Wilde (Estonian author)

           The scrap pile is growing and it is even more fascinating than the first pile.

           This heap features three distinct parts.  The left looks like metal shavings.  

           The middle section is similar in texture to the first, but silver in color.  The 

           last and largest component is like the whole of the first pile—lots of bigger 

           pieces of scrap metal.

Scrap heap #2, still growing

This visit inspired an observation about my parents instigated by the hot and cold-water faucets in my bathrooms.  The bathroom sinks have a spigot for cold water and a spigot for hot water.  The hot water is scalding.  After a few days of visiting, my mom shared with us her way of dealing with this situation:  start with your hands in the cold water and sweep them under the hot.  My dad responded with, “I do the exact opposite.  I start in the hot and move to the cold.”  This difference struck me because I thought their solutions fit their personalities perfectly.  Dad goes through the pain first.  Mom fortifies herself for the pain. 

Now that my parents are gone, my apartment seems empty and quiet.  I keep thinking of things to tell mom and dad.  For example, the bay was dotted with large white caps last night. Dad would have been fascinated.  Yesterday I saw a man (in a suit of all things) on the noisy sailboat docked just outside my apartment building.  I wondered if he was going to tighten the offending and noisy line.  He might have because, even though last night was windy, the clanging diminished significantly.  I wonder if Ichabod sent him…