Errands in the morning took me to a leisure center at Lady Gregory’s Hotel where I can do water aerobics and swim on the weekend. I bought a pair of wool socks..purple with pink toes, heels and ankles for 1 euro at a thrift store. I’m desperate for warm feet in the cottage. Grocery shopping is a challenge. You must, I say MUST bring your own bags or buy ones for 79 cents so people are shopping and putting things into their bags that they ultimately will empty at the cashier. Offerings are limited and mostly Irish produced, which if you have never had Irish butter or cheese, then the cheapness of the price but the goodness of the product outweighs not having choices…there is no choice, buy the Irish. I was headed to the library, but it is only open 2 or 3 hours four days a week and I did not want to wait in town for 3 hours. I returned to the cottage to make a peanut butter sandwich with the rhubarb jam Kate had made for my arrival. I sit at the door and look at the big tree, the flowers, the birds, the flies….lots of flies in Ireland. I marvel at how the never ending wind allows the trees and flowers to grow and prosper. The wind never stills. During the day the constant whoosh fills the room; the tree limbs and leaves move; shadows of these trees flicker across the driveway; there is constant movement.

The cows are in a lower pasture and do not come to the fence to stare at me through the window. Birds dot the pasture and scavenge the grass. In the distance I see the ruins of a castle. This is an old, rural area of Ireland where the kings and Normans fought and the British tried to control through religion. One man, Michael Collins was from Cork and is part of the history of all of the southern counties and his death sparked the beginning of the civil war in the early 1920s. Ireland is rich with its stories and the people who fought for unification. As I listen to the wind, I can almost hear the stories loud then soft, violent then tender.