Okay, so I've had a major block lately. I haven't written anything in ages! I don't include e-mails as writing because God knows I can ramble on with the best of them. Not always significant content. I could blame it all on it being Dec. and Christmas coming up, but that wouldn't be true. I've just had a block lately. Thanks to Bri, I think the creative juices are flowing again. Or so I hope.... So, without further ado, I give you, Thanksgiving, Funerals and Earthquakes!
THANKSGIVING
Thanksgiving in Ireland... it's kind of a moot concept. No one celebrates Thanksgiving anywhere else in the world, other than in the states. People in Europe are always going on about how overweight Americans are. If they really want to know why, they should partake in Thanksgiving. We gorge ourselves on Thanksgiving, then a month later, we do it all over again for Christmas. Come on, tradition is tradition!
Most Americans even have more than one Thanksgiving dinner in a day. You have the immediate family, then if you are married or dating someone, you have their family's Thanksgiving dinner, and if you or your partner come from a 'broken' home, you have the mom and partner Thanksgiving, then the dad and partner Thanksgiving. Or, like in my family, the dad's side of the family Thanksgiving, then the departed mom's side of the family Thanksgiving a couple days later. It's a science really. You learn to put a little bit of everything on your plate everywhere you go. Because you know you're going to have to hit 3 or 4 places in one day and it would be rude not to eat anything at any one of them. Then you save room somewhere in your stomach for the next place that you know has your favourite pie or your favourite dressing. Thanksgiving is tricky!
I've always kind of hated the holiday season. I'm not sure why? Yet, since moving to Ireland, I found I couldn't stand not celebrating the fourth of July or Thanksgiving. Last year, my mother in law, bless her, made Thanksgiving dinner for me. My contribution, Sweet Potato Casserole, my Uncle Tom's recipe. It was my first time making it, so it didn't quite turn out as nice as his, but it was still nice. The only problem was: I was the only one who would eat it. My in laws didn't seem too impressed with Thanksgiving. Too much food apparently. My husband had already been broken into Thanksgiving when we were still living in the states. He had an idea of what to expect.
I wasn't going to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. Then the thoughts of my family in the states all getting together without me and enjoying great food became too much for me. I decided to invite my friend Celine and her b/f Seamus over for their first Thanksgiving dinner. I kind of cheated, I bought cooked chickens and pies from the store and made the rest myself. But hey, it was still good and there was plenty of food. Celine is still going on about her first Thanksgiving to people weeks after. It makes me feel special that I have introduced four people in Ireland to their first Thanksgiving dinner. Next year, I just may have a theme... I'll dress up like a Native American and they can all dress up like pilgrims!
Funerals
Sadly, last week Trev's aunt Maggie died. She had a massive heart attack on the Sat. and died in the hospital on the Mon. It was all pretty sudden and all very sad. She was mother to 9 grown children, 10 really, but she lost her first child. Maggie seemed to know she was going to go when the time came because she told her daughter Catherine not to let them leave her alone in the church overnight. She said she didn't want to be alone in there. Trev explained to me that when you die in the hospital, they leave your body alone in the hospital's church overnight. Maggie didn't want to be alone in there.
We didn't go to Maggie's wake. Although, I found it interesting that they still observe very old traditions at the wakes here. I have never been to a wake, but I have been reading up on them. My mother in law told me a little bit about Maggie's wake. Apparently, the wake should be at the deceased person's house, but Maggie took in everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. People, animals, stuff. If someone didn't have a place to go, Maggie took them in. If Maggie found a stray animal, she'd take it in. If something was going for nothing or next to nothing, Maggie would take it in! The woman had a heart of gold. Which also meant, there was no room in her house for the coffin. So, they had the wake at her daughter Catherine's house.
The appropriate thing to bring at a wake here is alcohol. So, there was loads of alcohol. The mirrors are to be covered with white sheets. No one could tell me the reason for this, so I tried to look into it. The only reason I could find for this was so that the people couldn't see the pain in their faces. The clocks are supposed to be stopped in respect for the dead, but I don't know if they were at her wake or not. The mourners come and visit and chat with each other after viewing the body, then drink. Apparently the wake isn't the time to cry, just reminisce. Someone has to stay near the body throughout the wake and throughout the night. The body is never left alone. This person was Catherine, Maggie's daughter. The point of this is the tradition's namesake, 'wake', to make sure the person doesn't wake in the night. To make sure they are gone. Then the body goes to the church.
This was second time I had been to a funeral mass, but the first time I hadn't been there for the beginning of it. Everyone waits outside of the church for the body to come. The hearst pulls up and the pallbearers help take the coffin out. The priest blesses the coffin, then the mourners form a queue behind the coffin and they all proceed into the church. The funeral mass is said, then the queue forms again behind the coffin as it is taken out of the church and put back into the hearst to go to the burial. Everyone gets in their cars and follows the hearst to the burial.
This particular graveyard where Maggie was buried, I had been to before. It's where most people from Conary and surrounding areas are buried. The first time I had been there, it was cold, windy and lashing rain. This time was no different. The graveside mass and interring of the body is always short because everyone is freezing and soaked to the knickers! An umbrella never helps much because usually when you open it, the wind is so strong it blows it inside out.
Afterward, you go to the pub, to get warm, to get drink, to chat and to get some food. The family invited us all to Fitzgeralds in Avoca. Although a few people went to Finn's in Conary. The sentiments were all the same. How terrible of a day it was, how you weren't even able to stand around at the graveyard and chat with the weather like it was. How 'Happy is the bride the sun shines on and happy is the corpse that the rain rains on.'
Funerals here in Ireland are very different to me, I'm not quite used to all the customs and traditions. Any funeral I had ever been to in the states didn't really seem to have any particular customs or traditions. I love that the Irish have so much respect for tradition, and I love how they know how to celebrate a new life, a marriage, and a life that's passed. God rest your soul Maggie.
Earthquakes
I have a sleep disorder, always have, probably always will. I have the hardest time going to sleep. Usually, I take Melatonin, a natural sleep aid. Our brains produce melatonin to help us sleep, some people's brains, like my own, don't produce enough. Melatonin pills just help me get more melatonin so I can sleep and they aren't addictive at all. Unfortunately, for some reason, they don't have Melatonin in Europe! So, I rely on my sisters to send me melatonin from the states. Currently, I am out of melatonin, the pills and in my brain. I have been for a couple of months now. Stephanie, my sister, wonderful as she is, tried to find melatonin to send to me, but couldn't find it and sent me sleeping pills instead. I try to use them as little as possible so I don't depend on them. When I take the sleeping pills, I have weird dreams and I'm kind of out of it if and when I wake up. Last night I took a sleeping pill. You're all wondering how this is relative to earthquakes... it's all relative baby, it's all relative.
I was sleeping away, dreaming my weird dreams I dream on the sleeping pills when I heard a very loud boom and felt the bedroom shake. I looked at the clock, it was 3:33 am. It really scared and confused me at first. But it didn't wake Trev up, so I figured it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I hadn't a clue what it was and I was too tired to get up and try to find out. So, I drifted back into sleep again, pondering what the noise could have been. A noise so loud and so close to shake the room. I have always wanted to know what an earthquake felt like and that sleeping pill induced thought had occurred to me... Maybe I had just felt an earthquake, maybe I had finally experienced what an earthquake was like. If I had, it wasn't very big...
I was still wondering about what had happened when I rolled out of bed at 10:30. I did my usual routine, put my contacts in, brushed my teeth, made the bed, pulled the curtains back. Came downstairs, put on deoderant, fed the fish, got the cats food bowls ready, open the curtains, let the cats in and fed them. Nothing too strange, other than the top of the kitty litter box is in the middle of the garden and the plastic in and out flap is a few feet away from the top of it... Weird? Plus, most of the socks that I had on the clothes horse in the garden had fallen off. I figured it was the wind as far as the socks were concerned, but still thought it was a bit odd that the top of the kitty litter box was in the middle of the garden and the plastic flap had come out? I fixed it, but still the mystery baffled me.
I got a text from Trev a few hours ago, it said, 'There was a 2.8 earthquake off the coast of Wicklow, did you feel anything?' Apparently the news didn't say when it had happened and since he's working in Dunboyne in Dublin, he must have assumed it had happened recently since he wouldn't have felt it there. I was going to text him, then decided to phone him. 'Yeah, I did feel that earthquake! It happened this morning while we were in bed. I was wondering what it was! It shook the room and everything, didn't you feel it?' 'No.' I swear that man will sleep through anything!
So, now I can say, I was in an earthquake! A safe small one, but significant enough to shake the house and scare the crap out of me while in a sleeping pill induced sleep! I may take a few sleeping pills tonight if this little earthquake's big brother decides to make himself known. Oh Ireland, you never cease to amaze me!
