the irish call them gweedore, dungloe, and mulloduff, but secretly they’re more like avonlea, the glen, and carmody, stuffed to the brim with veritable miss cornelias, matthew cuthberts, and josie pyes. this i discovered after a six-hour bus ride northwards, with all three drivers in our caravan radio-ing personal news and snide comments about slow tractors back and forth. sarah gorman (who insisted on being referred to as claire’s sister rather than her mother during our saturday night escapades) met us at the gweedore bus stop, and we whizzed away over the wet and winding roads to my immense glee. you really can’t help but smile when the stars dance inches above your head and the careening car seems bent on displacing every one of your abdominal organs. who needs kennywood?

friday saw the awakening of mother-ish tendencies as we stayed home with orla while sarah, ellen, and three-year-old jane floated off to a proper irish wedding, complete with fancy hats and promises to be home before three a.m. the drip-dropping rain on the rocks and bracken seemed sufficient enough an excuse to stay in, so we whiled away the day by feeding stew to orla, and every now and then putting another lump of turf on the fire. actually, using real live turf was maybe my favourite part of the weekend … although saturday’s scenic drive and hours-long visit to nana nora were nearly as entertaining. then there was the fancy dress night at the seaview hotel, and an hour of shivering by the road as we waited for charlie mac to bring us home, and a half-hour of chattering over who-kissed-who and how-to-pronounce-seinn-ogs while riding with eoiny (the other taxi driver who eventually did come for us; and yes, there are only two taxis.) loads of tea, cream crackers, and cold pizza sustained us afterwards as we sat up late in the kitchen laughing at silly boys and sillier girls and how sensible we three had all been, having kissed nobody. not, i might add, that there were none willing to be so dealt with, because assertations of “you’re fair pretty, you are” followed by laughing cries of “he fancies you! he fancies you!” were flying about all night. i took a secret joy in informing any male within earshot that my lad may be over the ocean but he is unquestionably in my heart and they’d be wise to save their cheeky lines and enthusiastic dance moves for girls less enraptured than i.

back down again on monday then, under the kitten-grey sky, with our noses pressed against the windows to see the russet hills and bits of the ocean, through letterkenny and donegal town and killybegs and sligo all the way down to galway. which, i realized while trotting past the cathedral to return ghosts and dubliners to the library, is already home. strange how fast these attachments form, how quickly we begin to belong…