By Robert Duffy
Long, long ago there was a map of Ireland on my classroom wall. I was aged about six and was in Senior Infants, probably First Grade in the American system. Dublin, Cork and Galway were places I had heard of but there was also a constellation of other towns marked on the map. My village, Hacketstown, wasn’t shown but there were places like Athlone, Drogheda, Castlebar, and Wexford, to name a few that might be vaguely familiar to American readers. However, Robert zoomed in on Ballinasloe, a town about a hundred miles away.
Ballinasloe…I wanted to go to Ballinasloe, nowhere else–Ballinasloe was my Shangri La. When preparing this wee story I Googled a map of the USA to see if I could give an American parallel for what I was feeling. Imagine your eye landing on Fort Wayne, Indiana; the whole country is there for you, but the only place you want to go is Fort Wayne, Indiana. (Sorry, Fort Wayne readers. Bear with me.)
When I was aged eleven, my father took my brother and me on a fishing trip to the west of Ireland. I remembered that my private excitement was all about Ballinasloe–we were going to pass through Ballinasloe. The fact that we were going to a huge lake with a castle on its shores didn’t matter. For me it was all about–passing…through…Ballinasloe. However, we crossed the River Shannon and turned north, fifteen miles shy of my ambition. But there was enough happening with the fishing trip; my encounter with Ballinasloe would have to wait until I was older.
I first glimpsed the town when I was fourteen. A train took a bunch of us to an Irish language summer school on the far western seaboard of Connemara. I drooled when the train stopped at Ballinasloe station, and I could savour the housing estates nearby, and two church steeples on gently rising ground in the distance.
In time, I finished my secondary schooling and moved on to study in University College, Dublin, an experience I shared with people from all over Ireland and further afield. It was a mix, a hum, an adventure. While I was there I met Audrey and we fell in love. We married in her home town and moved back to my home town. We have three lovely children–but they are not children any more. Within the last twelve months, two grandchildren have added their magic to our lives.
Years ago, when I looked at that map on the wall, when I looked at Ballinasloe through the window of a parked train, I didn’t know that my heart was already there. I didn’t know that one of the churches I was looking at was where I would be married. Audrey was already there, playing on her avenue, living her life, beginning a journey that would take her to college in Dublin where she would encounter a fellow from a village that wasn’t marked on any schoolroom map.
We are still living happily ever after.