I’ve been reading about all the heat you are all having in the states, and I’m sitting here drowning my body in warm hugs against the cold! But... you know that windy rainy day that feels just “heavy”, like happiness is being suppressed but fighting it’s way back to the surface at the same time, that’s the heaviness I can feel in the air... There’s sunshine coming this weekend, finally our summer has installed after deluges of rain, the fields so waterlogged that the rain is running straight off onto the roads... but it’s not the sunshine I’m longing for, it’s the mornings.
When the land is that wet and then the heat comes, if you get out early in the morning, this surreal mist clings to everything at ground level. Yes, I know it’s evaporation, but it’s just so pretty. There’s a stillness, a perfect happy balance between damp and wetness and the dry heat that’s yet to come. You can walk through it and make swirls and patterns, disturbing the peace but creating art. And the funny thing? Well, I’m not really a morning person - but sometimes, just sometimes, mornings make it all worthwhile...
Days will pass and lush green grass will be follow, delicate buds that have survived the downpours will burst and bloom, silage season will begin (who doesn’t love the smell of freshly cut grass!?), tractors will hum through the night. We call it “silly season” here, all the farmers are exhausted but smiling through it all because their fodder is in. A community pulls together, young and old side by side going farm to farm. Lunches and dinners are seldom at home, instead being served on neighbour’s tables, men complimenting wives that aren’t theirs and asking for recipes to bring home to their own (all in jest, don’t worry...). Conversations turn to stories of old, the machinery used, the myriad of funny stories that will be remembered for generations, memories of relatives long gone are placed firmly in the mind of every child listening intently hoping they won’t be caught out of bed. This is the Ireland I adore, full of hard work, community and laughter at its core.
Memories of my own grandfather flood back, going field to field with his little trowel, he would gather a handful of soil from each one. These would carefully be brought to a stream on the land where he would place his enormous shovel of a hand into the gently flowing water and oh so delicately open out his fingers. Depending on how the soil floated, washed and sank, that would tell him what to do with the field that year - was it to be harrowed, fertilised, limed, or was he to plant a crop to plough in and rotavate at the end of the summer in preparation for the following year. There was no science, just his rough hands filled with precious soil and a little river to tell him what needed doing. I remember distinctly when I finally asked him why he was doing it, and his words have always stayed with me: “only nature can tell you what she needs you to give back.”
He was an intelligent man, a gentle soul, a hard worker who never gave up. Quiet and thoughtful, patient to a fault. He never raised a hand to his children. Any moment he had spare, his nose was buried in whatever paper or book he could find, his hunger for knowledge always greater than his need need for rest. His disappointment was enough to bring tears to any adult, never mind a child. A true gentleman.
In his later years, I remember regularly cutting his nails for him. His hands were genuinely enormous, though he himself was not. He’d smile, then pretend I’d cut his skin making me jump every damn time then collapse doubled in laughter at my fright. I’d turn them over, feel how soft they were now he could no longer manage the physical work he so adored. Yet the memory of my small hand as a little girl disappearing into his rough calloused ones and the sense of safety and pride it gave me will always stay with me.
