I’ve heard it said that a smart man learns from his mistakes but a wise one learns from the mistakes of others. While it is indeed my aspiration to one day attain such wisdom, for the purposes of this day, “smart” was enough.
After returning his future wife to The Chemist and depositing Mrs. Trinket and her MS on a train bound for Dublin, I set my attention to learning the lesson of making my way to the rainbow house. In the snippets of time in between returning borrowed puppy stuff to Sadie’s breeder, getting all of her EU Pet Passport and immunization documents in order, settling utility bills with The Princess, sorting, and packing, I searched the Sraith Eolais for roads that might lead me to—or at least near—my wall. Neither road nor trail was marked, and the topography seemed rather steep. Whenever my shrinking schedule allowed, I would drive along one route or another to see how close I might come.
The map had been so accurate and helpful to me over the prior three months that I was surprised to find an unmarked path beyond one of the roads that the map showed winding to an end. I guess it was really more than a path but far less than a “road.” The way this dodgy thoroughfare cut across the hillside deterred me from turning the rental onto it, but at least I could see that the hiking might be made easier by some margin. Destination known, road chosen, and access confirmed, I would spend my next and penultimate day in The Town seeking out a place of childhood fantasy.
Heartily breakfasted and loaded down with bottled still water and snacks, Sadie and I set off for the end of the marked road and the beginning of an unknown path. We parked the rental just before the unmarked bit and began to cross the field. Within twenty yards or so the path, which was marked with what looked like truck tire tracks, bent behind a rise and I could no longer see the car. It was at that point that it became obvious why the way had been forged.
Around that corner the hills and fields fed themselves into a flat and open ancient bog. Wet with the mid-winter rains, there was no one digging the land and only a few sods of turf strewn around the trenches. The path itself was much more drivable at this point and I could see that it continued for about a quarter of a mile beyond where we stood. I also saw, beyond the brown-black scar in the earth where men had recently dug fuel, that my wall was much closer to the end of that road than I had expected it to be. It was also fitted atop a much steeper hill than I had imagined … or hoped for.
As early as breakfast, I could already feel the day’s energy balance draining away from me. Rather than spend it on a half-mile return walk, I retreated to the car and attempted to make it past the first, rough part to where the way was flat. A few uncomfortable bumps and maybe one major bottoming-out—-but, eh, it’s a rental!—and we were riding along the tractor path as though we belonged there. I’m glad for the decision, as my estimation of distance fell far short. We drove closer to a mile than to a half—for the bends and turns of the road—to the place where the diggers had made a turn-around for their vehicles.
Invisible from the distance of our prior posting was a sheep path that ran past, but very near to the makeshift car park. Once again Sadie and I embarked, with our pack and two sturdy walking sticks, on our destination.
Expending far less energy and time than I had budgeted, we reached the crest of the hill adjacent to our destination. I looked across the valleys and glens toward the west and saw the rainbow house and the spot on their road where I had first spied the ruin. It was, indeed, more than a wall; it looked like the remains of a shepherd’s shelter or maybe the fallen pen where sheep had once been held for sheering. Whatever it was, it was close, and my view of the surrounding bally betagh was like nothing I’d seen in the three months of my stay.
I could see for quite a distance in every direction from where we stood, and saw no apparent reason for Herself to stay on her lead. I unclipped the hook from her collar and we began to walk. She sensed the freedom and began to run circles around me. With her tail tucked under her bum and that bum subsequently tucked low under her legs, Sadie increased the size of her orbits and made them increasingly elliptical. She settled on a path that brought her within ten feet of my beam on each side but cut closer to my stern as she passed. Those distances remained constant as the forward end of her loop took her thirty or more yards away from me.
She ran with a passion and enthusiasm I would have matched in the days I could still run. I was beginning to have trouble just keeping my current pace walking our path without stumbling over the smallest rock or tuft of heather. The racing of Sadie’s legs and her heart was matched, however, by the happiness that rose in me as I watched. She would slow as she neared me at each lap and she shot around me from behind with increasing speed. With a little work and a trained hand, Sadie would no doubt have made a fine herding dog—one of the many laudable traits for which Wheatens are known.
By the time we came up the side of the next bump on the hill where the stones lay—some stacked, some askew—Sadie had stopped herding me and was now sitting at the far apex of her turn to await my increasingly staggered arrival. She would then again tear around me and park herself ten or so yards ahead and do it all over again. Finally she disappeared off the hill just beyond my sight. Like a worried father, I stopped and called for her to return. The furry face that peaked at me from over my visible horizon was as happy a puppy face as you’ve ever seen. She bounded down and jumped at me from a spot about shoulder height from above.
Dropping my sticks, I caught her wriggling self in my arms and fell into the soft, prickly heather. I was rewarded with a shower of kisses from my happy and panting little girl. I set her down next to me, where she rolled over on her back to be scratched. I don’t know if I’d felt happier at any point in my life. She popped up to offer more sloppy affection as I attempted to get up on my feet. Back down I went, and I could feel how much she had grown since the first time she’d jumped onto my chest in the gutter out front of B&B#2 on our pajamaed trek her first morning in The Town. My puppy was nearly six months old already and I wondered where the time had gone.
“I promise you,” I vowed into her big, brown eyes set into her white mask and not yet covered by an adult fall, “I will bring you back here. This is your home, Sadie. It’s our home and I will bring you back.”
The promise was as much to myself as it was to Sadie, but it was no less an oath to my wonderful companion’s spirit.
The wall—or whatever it was, but we’ll go with “wall”—was not the place I had created in my mind nearly thirty years before; little of our childhood fantasy ever is. It was at the same time less than and greater than the wall of my happy place. That’s all we can really strive for in life, isn’t it? We take that for which we hope, mix it with experiences both good and bad and see if any bits of reality can stick to our fantasy.
The view from the brow of the hillock where the stones lay mostly stacked was indeed a bounding one, down from this hill to the next and several in succession to the sea. The stones were dark and dead. They were more of the landscape than those in my head that had, over the imagined centuries, become part of their surrounds, not simply placed upon them. Pellets of sheep droppings made it difficult to find a place to sit, but Sadie and I found a spot that was relatively clear and I resigned myself to doing another load of laundry that last evening.
The real wall was not warmed with sun. It was cold, and I could feel the warmth of my body migrating through my jumper and coat into the gelid rock.
Sadie bounced around the hillside as I dug into my pocket for the pipe I’d filled and stuffed away for this moment. The gentle breeze was really a wind that came up from the salty water. It was brisk and cold and it was the smell of rain, rather than receding tide, that it carried. I made several attempts to light wooden matches for my briar, but after many failures I just stuffed the pipe back into my pocket along with the spent sticks.
No blades of green grass bounced or brushed against me. Scraggy tufts of tundra plants poked through rocks, small clumps of heather anchored themselves against the Atlantic winds, and the burnt remnants of the invasive gorse bushes—often set ablaze by farmers to clear an area for grazing—lay on a short, sheep-clipped carpet of the barest grass.
This was a much harder place than I had remembered it being. As with looking back on life in general, most things are harder than we think they will be when we are young. I surely never considered the prospect of living the rest of my days fighting my own immune system. I wouldn’t have envisioned divorce or the relationship difficulties that continued. But at the same time, the reality of my wall offered a comforting beauty to balance the harshness of reality.
Sadie came around the wall licking her chops, for she had likely found a scattering of sheep shite fresh enough for her liking, and lay at my feet with her chin across my legs. I could not feel her on my numb, left leg, but the deep sigh of contentment she let out traveled up my right side and straight to my heart.
Getting what we need out of life has as much to do with what we take from it as what we are given. Living life with a chronic illness is all about taking back. I do not believe that my illness can be cured with the butterfly farts and unicorn piss of the “attitude is everything” believers. I did not cause my disease by my actions and I cannot cure it by them either. I can, however, try to find the beauty in my new life.
Multiple sclerosis did not steal my future. MS robbed me of the future I had intended to have. The responsibility for what happens next—experiences, loves, the impact on others around me—those are things that are still in my control. Like “my” wall, which is nothing like I had created yet everything I actually needed, the task a winter in Ireland had set for me was in finding the beauty in the things for which I had not planned and the importance in having a plan in the first place.
I came to realize the truth of the statement I made to you in the introduction: “Hope without a plan is just a dream.”
My childhood dream had been to one day visit a land my ancestors had left longer ago than the history I studied in Mrs. Magee’s class. That dream had become a hope that I might be able to visit that dream before multiple sclerosis robbed me of the ability to travel and enjoy the people and places of this magical island. Only with the help of doctors and nurses and researchers, friends, family, and the love of the dear one who had first given me a taste of this “home” had I been able to create a plan to make them all come true.
My disease will progress. As my doctor once said to me, “Aggressive MS doesn’t become benign MS, Trevis.” I can accept that as a pragmatic person. I too, will progress, thanks to the experiences I gained during my winter in Kerry. Aggressively, I determined, would also be the way I’d fight to retain what MS has not taken and to regain what might be taken back. I was given a gift of staying in the cottage, a gift made more special for the people who came to experience The Town with me. And my dream was made real by the wonderful, genuine, quirky people who welcomed me into their town, if only for a short time. It was my duty then, as much to myself, to live fully the life they had helped me realize.
The next day would have Sadie and me chasing the sun all the way to America’s west coast, as I once had chased it from Kiev to San Francisco in search of a new job and a fresh start after Sheri and I separated. The Town hadn’t ended my search, not for this wall, nor had it quelled my desire to live amongst its residents. The time had been too short. That I was thinking of eighty-nine days as “short,” in retrospect, was evidence that the seeds of my desire weren’t simply scattered there, in the hills and valleys and wilds of West Kerry. They had been planted in rich soil, tended by caring friends, new and old, and they had been watered …. Oh, aye; they had been very well watered.
I am not finished trying to live my life the best I am able, and Sadie and I are not finished with Ireland … and I’ve made a promise.