Tom
THIS IS ONE OF THOSE perfect, blissful evenings.
Half the parish here in my cottage. Isn’t that lovely?
Everybody is in good form, we all have enough and nothing is wrong.
An evening that I’m already seeing as a soft memory, tinted gold.
An exhalation I didn’t know I needed. Relief and sanctuary, right here in my own home, imagine.
We’ve fruit cake. We’ve bottled beer and music.
Peggy runs around with other children. Jack has let his shoulders drop.
At eleven o’clock, I will turn thirty years of age.
Without my mother and father. Without you.
But somehow, with so much more than I had before.
For a long time, I didn’t expect to see this day.
But here I am. Doesn’t everything always come around in the end?
Looking around the room, I see nothing but all of the ways that tonight is different from our first night in Ballycrea.
Then, when we had hardly a lump of turf for the fire, and we would spend our evenings listening to static on the radio because we couldn’t tune it up right, embracing any fuzzy voices that we could catch as friends.
Look now: a cottage bursting with real companions who have come to celebrate my birthday.
The Nevans, the Moores, all of the Doyles.
Con and Mic Harney, endless others. Even Dr Desmond.
All wanted and welcome. It all worked out.
Imagine that. Looking back, I feel a sweet sort of pity for that early version of myself, who was so lonely, and who was trying so hard.
Finally, I feel like I can stop trying so hard. We are settled now, we are a part of Ballycrea, just like everybody else. Not novel blow-ins from a place nobody has heard of. We make up the community. They have warmed to us.
It happened slowly. It happened all at once.
Suddenly we became a part of everything.
How strange. How special. Do you know what it is to suddenly feel at home in a place you thought you would always be a foreigner?
To feel you could throw your arms around people who once intimidated you, and tell them you love them, and that you’re glad ye met?
And to be sure that they would tell you the same thing.
How warm the room. How alive I feel. Like something has fallen into place; like something else has fallen away.
You know, I never thought I’d say it, but it feels so good to forget about Kilmarra.
To move on. Do you know what? I don’t think you’d mind me saying this, it feels so good to move on from you.
Bill calls me over; he wants a word with me outside. Why does he look so solemn?