A few weeks ago, my parents came to town to whisk me away to the wild, wild west. We traveled to the small town of Clifden, the home of my dad’s cousins which is geographically adjacent to Cleggan, the birthplace of my grandfather. Our experience there was exactly what one would expect from a tiny town in rural Ireland: mystical, foreign, and yet so inviting and familiar. (Example of what this means: over the course of two consecutive morning runs through town, I had seen more sheep than people. I think I had seen two sheep.)

On Friday night, we arrived at our hotel, which, coincidentally, happened to also be the center of the town’s social and community life. Both the hotel pool and workout room were the only ones in town, complete with yoga classes and swimming lessons for the local youth. Upon arrival at the Station House (I highly recommend staying here if you ever find yourself in Clifden) we were immediately and warmly greeted by Susan (a cousin-in-law I believe. Truly, I’m not quite sure how I’m related to these people, but I’m rather unconcerned with the intricacies of nomenclature in this particular instance. We are family and that’s all that really matters.) We were also greeted by Fiona, who was the other woman working at reception at that time and who kind of felt like family by the end of the weekend as well.

After dropping our suitcases in our room (filled with fresh fruit and chocolate – thank you family connections), we went down to dinner in the hotel restaurant. Not long after we started our meal, Bridie arrived. Bridie is my dad’s cousin who, until this point in my life, was this intriguing and enigmatic Irish character in many of my dad’s stories and I was eager to finally meet her. She showed up in a flurry, repeatedly refusing my mom’s offers of food and drink (but eating every bite and even licking the plate after finally succumbing to mom’s insistence). We spent the evening exchanging stories and catching up on the events of the last 24 years since my parents had last visited the area.

Bridie is everything you would expect from a stereotypical older Irish woman: giggly yet authoritative, self-assured to the point of my occasional frustration, constantly trying to feed you, borderline-concerningly casual when speaking about death, and seemingly omniscient with regards to the town gossip. For example when our waiter (who may or may not have also been the town handyman, bartender across the street, and hotel receptionist – see Oscar Núñez’s character from the movie The Proposal for an accurate comparison) approached, she knew exactly who he was and who his father was before he could even utter a word. Not only did she know every single person we walked or drove by, but she knew their entire family and life story.

The next day when she got in our rental car to drive us around to see the area, it quickly became very evident that our automatic car was quite an adjustment from the manual vehicle she was used to. Sudden stops and jerks filled all of us with the kind of laughter that comes as a natural reaction when your life flashes before your eyes and there is a very preventable solution to your potential inevitable death but you really can’t do anything about it.

Other than the treacherous driving, the weekend was filled with comfort and bliss. We visited the homes of three different cousins, sipped tea, discussed American politics (much to my chagrin), recounted stories, and, in one case, watched as a one-horned sheep and a small calf who were best friends ran around a cow who was recovering from a C-section, all while I held a hen in my arms and my mom held said hen’s freshly-laid eggs. Let's just say this experience isn’t something you can get on any Paddywagon tour bus.

Mass on Sunday morning was equally as expectation-fulfilling and wonderful. We arrived five minutes after the hour, along with the entire town. And we left 45 minutes after the hour, behind the entire town. The whole congregation seemingly raced each other through the prayers, which resulted in a rather delightfully off-key cacophony that is so uniquely and genuinely Irish Catholic. After mass, we traveled to visit Bridie’s daughter Sinead (obviously pronounced shih-NAED) at her home for tea and biscuits (a beautiful cultural concept that should make its way to Nashville ASAP).

Both Sinead and her house were beautiful and open and welcoming. Through conversations with her and the rest of my family, I learned a lot about local Irish government (she was originally denied permission to build her house because her parents’ house had enough bedrooms and bathrooms to house her. She is 30 years old.), the Western rural culture (let’s just say my definition of “bustling” is fundamentally different than Bridie’s), and the intricacies of being a self-employed accountant (not something specifically Irish or rural, just Sinead’s chosen career path). The afternoon was filled with laughter and reminiscing as Sinead, filled with bewilderment, asked why we would ever let her mother drive our rental car. I could not give her an answer.

I was sad to leave the comfort and familiarity of this small town I had never previously visited and these people I had never previously met, but it was imperative that we head back to Dublin in order to protect ourselves against the impending BIG storm formally known as “Hurricane Ophelia”: the national catastrophe that knocked over a bicycle, a moped, a storefront advertisement, and left the entire city (save for the whiskey shop and a handful of pubs) closed all day long.

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