A piece written by Fírinne McIntyre for her Leaving Certificate English examination in June 2019.

I want to travel. I want to go to China and eat a dumpling. I want to walk through a Japanese garden, and I want to feel the snow of Alaskan ground. I want to feel the heat of an African safari, to eat Belgian chocolate in Brussels and fresh croissants in Paris, to see where terrible things happened in Germany and where great things happened too. But most of all, I want to travel.

Travel back in time, to places I’ve already been, to revisit the Californian suburban bungalow where my mom grew up, where I spent most of my summers, and where my grandpa died. I want to travel back to when I was sitting in an armchair as an earthquake passed beneath my feet; “Don’t worry,” Grandpa had told me, “it happens all the time.” I want to go back to later that night when my grandfather asked me to always express love and care for his wife, my grandma, for he knew his time was running short. I want to live within my memories of them, of their home, and I want to make more.

We used to go for three weeks at a time, once a year or every second year, over Easter or just after school had finished for the summer. The flight was long, 10 hours, and I was never much good at sleeping on loud and trembling airborne containers. But I never really minded, for I’d never felt at any other time that absolute happiness, that floating surreal sort of feeling, that was to be felt upon stepping off of the plane into the blaze of heat at LAX International Airport, and to see the faces of my grandma and grandpa in the flesh – not through Skype, not Facebook, not in the photos of the albums my grandma would print for me at the end of every trip. There is something magical about that feeling, and I don’t doubt that I will feel it again.

When I reflect on my Californian days, I see them as almost dreamlike, through the eyes of a child – as they were recorded in my head. And it was dreamlike; what other Irish kid got to spend 3 weeks under the American sun, being spoiled with love and candy and valuable life experiences as I was? Trips to Disneyland, to San Francisco and San Diego, to the Hollywood Hills to see the (in)famous sign up close; my grandparents, my only set, wanted to give me everything. I was their “first favourite grandchild”, as my grandpa would fondly tell me (with three others to follow in the shapes of my 2 cousins and younger brother).

My grandpa had served in the army in his youth, and had a good sense of what was right and what was wrong, and he dedicated some time to instilling his values into me (mostly for the sake of my mother, so that her daughter wouldn’t be quite as unbearably cheeky upon returning home to Ireland).

My grandmother cultivated in me her love for music and art, and creativity. Everything I’ve been taught and gifted by them, I still hold dearly to my heart. Everything that happened within the walls of that one-storey house, all the love and laughter and tears, I feel it all when I stand barefoot on sun heated pavement, or when I smell the sweet-scented dust of my grandma’s knitting room in a place unexpected, or when I drink a carton of chocolate milk that tastes just like the Hershey’s brand I would share with my grandpa in his kitchen years ago.

It really does feel like I’ve been to two different worlds: the dreamworld of California, and my Irish reality. It used to be that the second I stepped in through the doors of my own home in Louth, the image of their faces would vanish from my mind almost instantly, like it was just a dream, and I would be reduced to tears in my frustration of trying to hold on, and recollect. And now, I do visit California in my dreams, and I hold those dreams just as dear to my heart as I do my memories.

The last time I ever visited California (in reality) was when I was 14 years old. We stayed from mid-July to mid-August, and my grandpa’s health was declining rapidly; the chemotherapy made him weak, but his heart never once wavered from its love for my mother, brother and I. He likely knew it was the last time that he would see his Irish grandchildren. I wouldn’t let myself believe it – and he didn’t want me to either, telling me that we would see each other again. He died the next spring.

My mother attended the funeral and cared for him in his last month as I was preparing to sit my Junior Certificate Examinations. She read out a poem at his service, in both his honour and mine, as requested by me. I chose ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’ by Robert Frost, as I knew in my heart that my grandpa was gold and everybody else knew it too, and that he himself knew he couldn’t stay, being the gold that he was.

And so, our gold did not stay, my grandma moved to Arizona to where her son lives in the mountains (where my grandpa would have loved to live could the strength of his lungs withstand the high elevation) and our trips to California ceased to exist.

Nothing gold can stay – but as the poem implies, it can be renewed. Our trips to California have renewed themselves into trips to Arizona now, where the old feeling is similar, but different. My grandpa has gone, but all that he has taught me has stayed in my heart. He lives in California still, a place in my soul that I visit from time to time when I crave to travel. I carry it with me always, and I know someday that I will return. It is a part of who I am.

California has shaped me and taught me what it means to recognize true gold when it is present. Not only did it allow me to know my grandparents, but it introduced me to my mom, who she used to be, not the American woman living in Ireland but an American woman at home. I have many stories of hers told by old friends now in their 50s and 60s, reflecting on the times of their youth in the 80s and 90s of California.

I feel that California allowed me to experience something much bigger and grander than my own life, to meet a whole new type of person (and believe me, the American stranger is very different to the typical ‘howaya?’ stranger of Ireland). And, it allowed me to learn so much more about things I was certain I already knew.

So, I want to travel. And I will. I’ll go to China, to Japan, to Alaska, Africa, Belgium, France, and Germany, and everywhere else on this planet that calls to me. And after all that, I will travel to the west coast of the USA, and I’ll step onto hot pavement in my bare feet, and I’ll smell roses tended to by somebody else’s grandma, and I’ll sip a new type of chocolate milk because maybe at that time Hershey’s won’t make it anymore. And it will be different – it won’t be the same ‘gold’ as I saw through my younger-self’s eyes, but I think, that in a flood of memories rushing back to me, real and unreal, in the surreality of it all, I will feel at home.

 Fírinne McIntyre is a first year languages student at Trinity College Dublin.

Travelling

A piece written by Fírinne McIntyre for her Leaving Certificate English examination in June 2019.

I want to travel. I want to go to China and eat a dumpling. I want to walk through a Japanese garden, and I want to feel the snow of Alaskan ground. I want to feel the heat of an African safari, to eat Belgian chocolate in Brussels and fresh croissants in Paris, to see where terrible things happened in Germany and where great things happened too. But most of all, I want to travel.

Travel back in time, to places I’ve already been, to revisit the Californian suburban bungalow where my mom grew up, where I spent most of my summers, and where my grandpa died. I want to travel back to when I was sitting in an armchair as an earthquake passed beneath my feet; “Don’t worry,” Grandpa had told me, “it happens all the time.” I want to go back to later that night when my grandfather asked me to always express love and care for his wife, my grandma, for he knew his time was running short. I want to live within my memories of them, of their home, and I want to make more.

We used to go for three weeks at a time, once a year or every second year, over Easter or just after school had finished for the summer. The flight was long, 10 hours, and I was never much good at sleeping on loud and trembling airborne containers. But I never really minded, for I’d never felt at any other time that absolute happiness, that floating surreal sort of feeling, that was to be felt upon stepping off of the plane into the blaze of heat at LAX International Airport, and to see the faces of my grandma and grandpa in the flesh – not through Skype, not Facebook, not in the photos of the albums my grandma would print for me at the end of every trip. There is something magical about that feeling, and I don’t doubt that I will feel it again.

When I reflect on my Californian days, I see them as almost dreamlike, through the eyes of a child – as they were recorded in my head. And it was dreamlike; what other Irish kid got to spend 3 weeks under the American sun, being spoiled with love and candy and valuable life experiences as I was? Trips to Disneyland, to San Francisco and San Diego, to the Hollywood Hills to see the (in)famous sign up close; my grandparents, my only set, wanted to give me everything. I was their “first favourite grandchild”, as my grandpa would fondly tell me (with three others to follow in the shapes of my 2 cousins and younger brother).

My grandpa had served in the army in his youth, and had a good sense of what was right and what was wrong, and he dedicated some time to instilling his values into me (mostly for the sake of my mother, so that her daughter wouldn’t be quite as unbearably cheeky upon returning home to Ireland).

My grandmother cultivated in me her love for music and art, and creativity. Everything I’ve been taught and gifted by them, I still hold dearly to my heart. Everything that happened within the walls of that one-storey house, all the love and laughter and tears, I feel it all when I stand barefoot on sun heated pavement, or when I smell the sweet-scented dust of my grandma’s knitting room in a place unexpected, or when I drink a carton of chocolate milk that tastes just like the Hershey’s brand I would share with my grandpa in his kitchen years ago.

It really does feel like I’ve been to two different worlds: the dreamworld of California, and my Irish reality. It used to be that the second I stepped in through the doors of my own home in Louth, the image of their faces would vanish from my mind almost instantly, like it was just a dream, and I would be reduced to tears in my frustration of trying to hold on, and recollect. And now, I do visit California in my dreams, and I hold those dreams just as dear to my heart as I do my memories.

The last time I ever visited California (in reality) was when I was 14 years old. We stayed from mid-July to mid-August, and my grandpa’s health was declining rapidly; the chemotherapy made him weak, but his heart never once wavered from its love for my mother, brother and I. He likely knew it was the last time that he would see his Irish grandchildren. I wouldn’t let myself believe it – and he didn’t want me to either, telling me that we would see each other again. He died the next spring.

My mother attended the funeral and cared for him in his last month as I was preparing to sit my Junior Certificate Examinations. She read out a poem at his service, in both his honour and mine, as requested by me. I chose ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’ by Robert Frost, as I knew in my heart that my grandpa was gold and everybody else knew it too, and that he himself knew he couldn’t stay, being the gold that he was.

And so, our gold did not stay, my grandma moved to Arizona to where her son lives in the mountains (where my grandpa would have loved to live could the strength of his lungs withstand the high elevation) and our trips to California ceased to exist.

Nothing gold can stay – but as the poem implies, it can be renewed. Our trips to California have renewed themselves into trips to Arizona now, where the old feeling is similar, but different. My grandpa has gone, but all that he has taught me has stayed in my heart. He lives in California still, a place in my soul that I visit from time to time when I crave to travel. I carry it with me always, and I know someday that I will return. It is a part of who I am.

California has shaped me and taught me what it means to recognize true gold when it is present. Not only did it allow me to know my grandparents, but it introduced me to my mom, who she used to be, not the American woman living in Ireland but an American woman at home. I have many stories of hers told by old friends now in their 50s and 60s, reflecting on the times of their youth in the 80s and 90s of California.

I feel that California allowed me to experience something much bigger and grander than my own life, to meet a whole new type of person (and believe me, the American stranger is very different to the typical ‘howaya?’ stranger of Ireland). And, it allowed me to learn so much more about things I was certain I already knew.

So, I want to travel. And I will. I’ll go to China, to Japan, to Alaska, Africa, Belgium, France, and Germany, and everywhere else on this planet that calls to me. And after all that, I will travel to the west coast of the USA, and I’ll step onto hot pavement in my bare feet, and I’ll smell roses tended to by somebody else’s grandma, and I’ll sip a new type of chocolate milk because maybe at that time Hershey’s won’t make it anymore. And it will be different – it won’t be the same ‘gold’ as I saw through my younger-self’s eyes, but I think, that in a flood of memories rushing back to me, real and unreal, in the surreality of it all, I will feel at home.

 Fírinne McIntyre is a first year languages student at Trinity College Dublin.

15 comments:

  1. You brought me on a journey Fírinne.

    Thank you, a touching and well crafted piece.

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  2. Henry Joy - there is a changing of the guard!!

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  3. This is a very nice piece of writing but there is something sad (for me) in it. In the not too distant future travelling will not be what it used to be, certainly around Europe. There will be something very similar about all European cities. They will be less unique, less cultured, less european. Dublin will be a satellite city of Africa very soon. If you said that only 20 years ago people would think you were completely insane. London is not London anymore and Paris is losing its magnificent Frenchness. Sweden is in big trouble and parts of Italy are wrecked. The unique is being replaced by the muticultural blandness and vulgarity so favored by the oligarchs. Once vibrant cultures are being replaced by globalist sameness. Who ever would have thought that all this would happen in the blink of an eye? The globalists are destroying culture and those trying to defend their identity and culture are deemed fascists now. 

    I'm glad I saw a bit of real 'diversity' in my younger days travelling. The propagandists for diversity here are destroying genuine diversity. Ireland has approximately one thousandth, yes one thousandth, of the worlds population, with a unique culture that has been to hell and back, and now this generation, who never had it so easy, are going to piss it all away. What will the tourists make of Ireland in 10-20 years? They wont be thinking they are somewhere unique or special, thats for sure. We will be a multicultural shit hole with large ghettoeised towns and cities and very few living close to the land. Read the government's Plan 2040 and don't say you were never told. 

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  4. Fírinne you have travelled far already on your journey through life,and Im of the opinion you will travel even further ,see lots of thing as Dylan said and talk with peasants poets princes and kings,but remember a chara it,s a journey not a destination and enjoy every minute of it ,

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  6. I have felt that sensation Firinne. I will never forget the first time touching down at Kennedy, before crossing the Triborough Bridge and heading up the Major Deegan to the Bronx. It is a part of my soul now. There is no place on this earth like the United States. I’d definitely encourage a visit to Nashville, Tennessee — an amazing place I visited last October.

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  7. Travel often and travel far Firinne. I've been in some very far-flung places, bitten by spiders, surprised by leeches and chased by an angry antelope which I somehow failed to see despite it's enormity. I've felt the searing, baking heat of the Gibson Desert followed by being utterly astonished by the canopy of stars when night fell. It's truly an awe-inspiring moment when you look up and see the rest of the Milky Way snaking off into infinity, and the petty politics of Man fades into the abyss of time.

    Enjoy your adventures...but always keep in touch with your parents as they'll be worried sick!

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  8. Apart from one of the Nationalists Ireland who tried to hijack the piece and use it for something wholly unrelated, the comments were very appreciated.

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    Replies
    1. I'm making valid points. My home town is unrecognisable now. Completely and utterly unrecognisable. It is not an Irish city anymore. Should Bord Failte stop marketing Dublin as an Irish city now - as its clearly not? Also, would you be happy to see young Irish women travelling to Scandinavia on their own? Would you consider it racist/fascist to warn them of the danger they are putting themselves in? My generation could hitch around Europe. I feel so sorry for young people now.

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  9. I hope she does continue to write - she'll soon upstage her auld fella

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  10. AM no harm in that. One thing I found very admirable about both your kids - they reflect the good values and integrity of their parents.

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  11. Excellent writing. Travelling is an incredible privilege, and is also quite humbling, as you note in the final paragraph. Being all too aware that things change superficially enough to seem different is an important one to maintain. You begin to see how people, no matter where they are around the globe, are just like the people you know at home, but filtered through differing cultures and experiences.

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  12. I hope you continue to write as well, Firinne. You clearly have the genesfor it! Best of luck in everything you decide to do.

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  13. Firinne,
    Definitely a chip of the old block! They say say ' A picture is worth a thousand words'. Not so when those words are penned by one who possesses the McIntyre descriptive gene.
    In 40 years, if you should look back at this piece, you will get the feeling that it was written by someone else - a person you don't recognise. You will be surprised to find that the young You had a kind of unassuming wisdom, one which unfortunately wanes with the passing of time.

    Mike

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