My siblings and I have long given up the one-upmanship of our formative years. I, for example, rarely bring home dead squirrels anymore. My brother no longer sends our mother his W2s. Amanda gave her a few grandkids. I did my part by moving 4,200 miles away. And I think I was winning until my sister Julia announced that she was going to take my mom on a trip around Ireland.
My mother has been mentioning ‘Ireland’ to my dad for thirty or forty years until she gave up the ghost and started going on cruises with her friends. But a lifetime of mild disappointment was nothing compared to what I was facing now?
Namely, how was I going to compete with my sister taking her to Ireland? Short of finding Brigadoon and setting up the Once a Century Pub Crawl, I couldn’t. Alas, bitterness set in.
But one night I awoke in a sweat and possibly surrounded by candy wrappers. It was a moment of clarity that went like this: You live near Ireland you bugwit. This was followed by more positive insights such as: I could fly to Ireland! I could do it as a surprise! It would be fun!
My moment in the son sun.
There were two concerns.
The first – a heart attack. My mom is notoriously jumpy and conducive to scares. Not just conducive, but with a predisposition that a doctor should look at. We once sat at a table together for an hour before I scared her into vaulting milk all over her shirt by asking what time it was.
So, in order to avoid employing Dublin’s emergency services, we decided to do it in a pub, with me sitting and waiting, and her seeing me. This would hopefully avoid any shock that we’d have to awkwardly explain at a viewing.
The second – my dad. My dad’s inability to keep a secret or retain information without blabbing it to all who hear is famous within our family. In fact, it’s famous outside of our family. Word has it that in one of his past lives in the revolution era colonies, he was hogtied days before Paul Revere’s ride. Another early life was sent into Brittany as decoy on June 5, 1944.
And so I arrived, I walked to a pub, got a Power’s Gold Label, asked the bartender where the Hairy Lemon was. He pointed me about 40 yards down the road and I drank the liquor with joy. Once inside the Lemon I Guinnessed myself and took up a small table by the door. They came in, my mom flipped (no medical issues), and my sister and I cheersed a job well done.
The following day happened to be her birthday (33rd) and we embarked on a great weekend of Irish history, archaeology, beer, food, and rugby. This is all despite the pub crawl my sister and I did on Friday, whose venues grow dimmer and dimmer the later they were visited. Somewhere in there was a Five Guys visit. A door code for a bathroom that I’ll always remember (0502). And the night was capped off at the restaurant of the hotel, which, my sister assured me was during the day a charming Irish pub/restaurant. This assurance came because at night it was lit and had the otherwise ambience of a vampire orgy. Everyone was much better looking than us and somehow younger by several hundred decades.
When the red light went on and the dancing began we made our escape. Our left half our pints on the table mocking us as we ran. In the morning, as promised, we dropped into the restaurant and were greeted by a sweet-smiled young lady with blonde hair. She airily directed us towards a table and took our order. Under her breath, I could have sworn she said “you didn’t finish your drinks last night.”
We left this rendezvous out when filling my mother in on events, mainly because we were afraid to implicate her. Who knows what rules bind the Irish Vampire. It didn’t matter. Had we been bit by vampires, at least we’d have been in Ireland – the land of the jovial and friendly and inviting. That evening, exhausted by walking and touring, we stopped at a place for seafood chowder and brown soda bread. The barmen and women told us funny stories, bantered with us, and snapped jokes at us. By the time we were turning on the rugby, we were ready to drift off. And I wish I had before the end.
