by Katie McKenna
Growing up in greater Boston, I’d had my fair share of nasty winters. Some of my happiest moments have been reading the thermometer and feeling that indescribable joy that comes with the saying, “Hey! It’s supposed to be above zero today!”
I know no greater joy than sledding – flying, rather – over a snow-packed bump, and no greater chill than having a snowball hit you in that terrible spot, right at the back of the neck, dribbling its way down your spine, and of no greater spite than hitting your brother right back. In Chelmsford, snow was the most popular daytime snack, and snowmen were an artistic triumph on front lawns.
And after years of freezing fingers and runny noses, being bundled from head to toe, I thought I’d be more than prepared for the Irish winter, what looked like a mere series of forty-degree, overcast days: I was wrong.
“If you can survive an Irish winter, you can survive anything,” is something my program director, or my “Irish sister” as she called herself, Fionnghuala Geraghty, shared with us all. It would turn out to be impossibly true.
The sun came out only a handful of times in the entire five months I lived in Galway, and snow was replaced by ice rain that hurt the skin, accompanied by the harshest winds I’d ever experienced in my life. Walking across a bridge to class, there were days that I truly and honestly thought, “I’m not sure if I’m gonna make it there,” a thought that had never crossed my mind in Massachusetts when I was plowing through snow up to my knees.
Because snow, though freezing and damp, is also romantic and childlike, and it is harmful in the same ways that it can bring joy. But the wind, the rain, and the lack of sunshine everywhere I stepped provided no such relief. The end of winter wouldn’t bring a hot summer of warm sand, no – the sun shined but a week of the year in Galway, and days didn’t get much hotter than 70 degrees.
You’d think that in a place that provided absolutely no breaks, natives would be hardened by such constant darkness, burdened by it, but for whatever inexplicable reason, the harshest weather on Earth produced some of Earth’s warmest people.
Soup, a cup of tea, or potatoes with a side of potatoes are always appropriate. With an unusually hot summer this past year, a meme posted by the National University of Ireland, Galway featured a picture of a woman crying with the caption, “I’d murder a cup of tea…but it’s 30 degrees out” (the equivalent of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit).
I’m not sure I ever witnessed an Irish person eating a salad, and that was because the heavy foods, the comfort foods, took precedence, and the drinks did too. A pint of Guinness, a glass of whiskey, even a pint of Bulmer’s – a popular Irish hard cider – all had one thing in common: warmth. Cigarettes had a huge presence in Irish culture, as one of my roommates described Ireland as “the only place where they have a smokin’ area at a teen disco,” recalling every kid over the age of thirteen or under the age of eighteen taking full advantage of the area. The smoking area isn’t so much about the smoking itself, but the warm conversation it generates.
In America, it would appear that we don’t drink or smoke nearly as much, perhaps because we know it’s bad for our physical health. We are a bit more logical about how we want to live our lives – Americans “take things so seriously,” which was something I heard on almost a daily basis, we’re “soft.”
The Irish don’t do things because they make sense, they do things because they want to – which, in most cases, means they don’t make any sense at all. Going out on a Tuesday was always excused by yelling, “Donegal Tuesday!” When I asked what that meant, the reply was simply, “It’s Donegal Tuesday…so we go out” and that was all there was to it.
No question I had, comment I made, or sentence I spoke, went without reply, most of which said something while simultaneously nothing at all. “You’ll have that” or “Ah, sure look it” I learned, seemed appropriate in response to almost anything. It must have taken my roommates about a month to get through a full episode of “Downton Abbey” in between “Howya beure!” (an expression used when Irish people see someone they think is attractive) or something else along the lines of “What in the name of living Jaysus is that, like?!” “What’s she on about?”
Walking down Shop Street In Galway, a short but charming little road lined with pubs and entertainment, you could stumble across a street musician about once every twenty feet or so, playing the banjo, the harp, the fiddle, some only there just to sing. Almost every pub provided some sort of live music, and everybody sang along. “Hey Jude” was especially popular, usually followed by a sea of people chanting “One! More! Tune!”
And that was always the answer – one more. One more tune, one more drink, sure go on, it’ll be grand, even when it won’t be. Maybe they weren’t always the most logical decisions, maybe not always the healthiest ones (and maybe that’s why I gained ten pounds in those short five months). But they were always the ones that filled life with heart and promise. The Irish lifestyle always reminded me of a quote by Boris Pasternak: “What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.” An Irish living taught me to – perhaps both literally and figuratively – always spill over the rim. To take the pint, to sing along, to embrace all uncertainties: to find warmth in the coldest of places.
Katie McKenna studied abroad at the National University of Ireland, Galway last spring. She can be reached at [email protected].
