It’s raining this morning, not a hard rain but more of a drizzle. The weather reminds me of Ireland and the almost daily rain last October. When I think of Ireland (which is often) I remember the people. The impression I got was that they are busy, hurrying to go here or there. Especially in Dublin.
We on the bus tour got up early every morning, but not earlier than the people who lived there. I remember looking out the window of the inn in Dublin early each morning and seeing the sidewalks already full of people hurrying to their jobs or the stores or somewhere. Women pushed prams with babies inside, men with papers under their arms, just lots of people and they all had some place to go and were intent on getting there.
In one of the bustling towns (this wasn’t Dublin) it was raining, as usual, and as I stopped to look at the shops from the safety of my umbrella, for some reason one of the Irish women stopped too, under her umbrella, and started talking. She lived on a farm but had come to town on holiday. She was a blond, smiling, middle-aged woman, friendly and talkative. (I love to hear the Irish talk; there is no other brogue quite so melodious.) Did I get her address so I could find out more about her? No. I didn’t even think of it. I wonder about her story, her hopes and dreams, her daily life on a farm.
Then, there was the man walking along the sidewalk. He was tall and thin, wore a slouch hat and smoked a pipe. He could easily have fit into the nineteenth century. I wondered about him, his story. But he was only a face in the crowd, a stranger on the street and I was on the bus and everyone was in a hurry.
People are walking books. We all have a story. Let me re-phrase. We are a story, not just one story but many and not just one genre but a lot of them!
There’s a lovely place in Ireland called Inniscarra, the island of friends. As well as being busy, the Irish people are friendly and helpful, courteous too. And I love the name of that island. If we faces in the crowd really got to know each other, I think we’d mostly all be friends and it would be fun to hear those many stories.
http://www.amazon.com/Blanche-Day-Manos/e/B0090018EI/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
http://pen-l.com/Mystery.html
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