St. Patrick’s Day, and I’m back home from shopping for a waterproof cushion for my electrified bathtub chair. A device I now step into, push a Down button, and I’m lowered into hot bathtub water. Scrubbing the body clean, I then push Up, and I’m lifted. Even though I was worn out from strolling, looking, and not finding exactly what I want, I decide to slip on my faded and worn St. Paddy’s sweatshirt, “May the Luck of the Leprechauns be with you.”
Sinking into my lounge chair in the den, a tear drop falls as I close my eyes and think back to a time when husband Willard and I were in Ireland and our leprechaun luck almost disappeared.
Willard’s heart was happy, his Irish (bog-man--Boggan) eyes were smiling as I rode with him to a local course so he could play a round of golf with someone we had met on our flight over “The Pond.”
He unloaded his clubs, then I stepped behind the wheel of our stick-shift rental car and began driving back to the bed and breakfast where were overnighting. To say the least, Willard and I were not always the most careful folks on the planet. On a skinny one-way street, going around a sharp, sudden turn, my side mirror might have slightly scraped a truck parked close to the edge of the road.
It was an old truck, I consoled myself, and I may have barely scratched it. For the most part my husband and I usually try to do the right thing. I spotted a road sign and decided to pull over, turn around and check the truck. My attention suddenly went another way, though. The sign led to a roundabout.
I would have managed it perfectly but looking at it as I made a quick turn, the arrow I glanced at was slightly angled in the wrong direction. Mouths open in astonishment, people in cars faced me, I had turned outward instead of inward.
I quickly forgot the truck and made a quick, wide swing. But I forgot to push in the clutch and shift gears. The tires bawled, the car belched, burped and bucked. I jerked the wheel and coasted over to the side of the busy road.
A man wearing a tank top with two big red lips painted on it and riding a motorcycle did a wheelie, shook his fist and yelled something that sounded like, “Cold Ditch.”
Heart pounding, I managed to crank up again and swing down a nearby side street, falling into a line of slow moving cars and a flashing yellow light. I had joined a funeral procession.
Woe is them, but lucky me, they probably would safely lead me on through town, I thought so I followed their slow trail on a crooked, narrow street. But the road ended at the rear of a church.
Other cars pulled up behind me. Blocked, I opened the door and got out. Strolling, and visiting people went into the sanctuary. I sat on a rusty iron bench under a shade tree waiting for their “Sweet Hour” of prayer to end and began humming a few lines from an old Irish song Willard and I had sung and danced to through the years, “The pipes, the pipes were calling, From glen to glen.”
A cathedral of fluffy clouds overhead, the church doors finally swung open, and people began coming out.
An elderly couple stopped under the tree where I sat.
“A fitting tribute for Ian,” the man said.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here, but the driving is very hard,” I said in a quivery voice.
“Yes. Life is hard,” the man said. “Are you close to the deceased?”
“Not in the least,” I choked out.
“Nice to meet you, Bernice,” the lady said. “An American cousin?”
“I’m nervous.” My voice came out in ragged catches, sounding like a tearing skirt caught on a fence.
“A lovely service for your cousin,” the woman said.
“I didn’t know him.”
The lady’s face had the proper look of concern. “We have doubts. We’re all hard to understand. But he was a good man. He has gone to his reward.” She leaned against her husband. “I know she’s speaking English, but she’s awfully hard to understand.”
Her husband took her arm. “I don’t remember Ian mentioning a cousin Bernice from the States. Still, there is something about the nose.”
They walked away together, stepping in a soft, measured tread. The winding down organ played soft closing chords of the final hymn into the fading, shadowy afternoon.
“And kneel, and say,
My off-key voice broke the silence in the den as I found myself singing, “an Ave’ there for me.”
I felt like punching the chair further back and maybe drifting off to a different dreamland than the one I had just wakened from. Life is a collection of misty memories; I’d love to relive some of those soft treads above me, but some I’m glad I don’t have to.
Instead I decide to retire a few of those old moments forever, so I push the chair forward, remove and fold the Saint Paddy’s shirt, slip into a robe, and head to the garage.
I hear no organ chords or lilt of Irish laughter as I lay the Leprechaun to rest on the top shelf of an outside storeroom, but a limerick rang in my brain.
A little old couple from Jackson
Who went to Ireland to have some fun.
She missed direction
Joined a procession.
Wound up at a funeral. Said, “I’m done.”
