HOMECOMING

HOMECOMING

But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow ’Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow

Oh, Danny boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so

The flickering flames of the fireplace, the only light illuminating the room, combined with the sweet scent of the turf, welcoming me home. The firelight, in the dimness of the cottage, casts its glow upon the outline of the old woman, wreathed in her black shawl, as she rocks back and forth, humming quietly to herself. She senses my presence.

“Is that you, Batty?”

“No, mother, ’tis I, Danny”.

A moment of silence as my words sink in. A gasp of disbelief.

“Danny? My darling boy. Is it really you?

“It is, mother. I’m home”.

She rises from the shadows and comes towards me, her hands reaching out to touch my face; to be sure that she isn’t dreaming.

The tears flow from her eyes as she folds herself into my manly embrace. My own tears fall upon her wee head.

“Oh, Danny. You’ve grown so big and strong, so you have. I’d hardly recognise you. Oh, Danny boy”.

She clings to me and I absorb all of her; nuzzling my face in her familiar, unchanged smell: fresh milk, hay, fire smoke; the smell of my childhood.

“Sure, I never thought I would see you again. I never believed you’d come back safe from America”.

‘I’m back, mother, and I’m never going away again”.

The painful remembrance of that awful day of parting, five years before, flood my brain. How my heart was shattered. But I swiftly cast these thoughts aside. I take my mother’s face in my hands and hold it to the light of the fire; still beautiful though aged, the silver greyness of her hair peeping through the blackness of her shawl.

“Come, mother”, I say. “Sit yourself down again. I’ll put the kettle on and set the table and we can eat and talk”.

“No, no, Danny. ’tis I’ll look after you”.

She protests, just as I knew she would, but I guide her gently back into the old rocking chair.

“Now, mother, I am home and I mean to look after you. You’ll never need to lift a finger again for I have made a lot of money”.

I fill the kettle from the fresh water pail and hang it over the fire on the iron hook. I look around the room; nothing has changed: the dresser in the corner, the old wooden settle topped with aged copies of the Kerryman and Old Moore’s Almanacs, the tea chest filled with sods of turf, the farmhouse table covered in the oil cloth. All of these things-just as I had remembered them so many, many times.

“How about a nice boiled egg and a bit of soda bread, mother?”

She beams at me in the darkness.

“I have big plans for this place. First of all, tomorrow, I will put our names down for the electric light...”

“Sure, but that costs money”, she protests, exactly as I knew that she would.

Ignoring this, I continue.

“A partition here and, on the other side, a kitchen. A kitchen with a gas stove and a sink with running water. Can you picture that, mother? No more going to the well for us”.

“A gas stove, Danny? But, sure, we have no gas and we have the fire after all”.

“A fire is for warming us, mother; not for cooking. We can get gas bottles. Once you use it, you’ll never want to use the fire again. But listen, best of all, just here, I’m going to build an extension...”

“But we don’t need an extension, Danny. We have plenty of room, sure we do”.

I laugh. So many times I have pictured these predictable protestations.

“The extension is for a bathroom, mother. I’ll apply for us to be connected to the town water”.

“Oh my, Danny, it’ll cost a fortune, so it will”.

‘And I have a fortune, mother. And I mean to give you the best of everything”.

“It’ll be like a palace”.

“Aye, and you’ll be its queen!”

We sit at the table and eat the eggs, so tasty, unlike the eggs I had grown used to in Boston.

“The hens are laying well then, mother”.

“Oh yes, fresh eggs every day”.

I hear the lowing of cows outside and look at her questioningly.

“It’s Batty O’Brien. They’re too much for me these days but I couldn’t bear to sell the cows in case...in case you were to come home. He milks them and keeps the creamery money. He brings me in a jug of fresh milk every evening”.

“I’ll just go on out, mother, and let Batty know that, from tomorrow, we’ll be taking care of our own cows again”.

I step out of the cottage and Batty, rolling out a milk churn from the cow shed, looks up and sees me. If he’s startled or disappointed, he does not show it.

“Dan”.

“Bat”.

“You’ll be doing the milking, I suppose”.

“I will”.

“Grand, so”.

Nothing more needs to be said. He has had a good run in my absence.

I walk on past the cowshed and into the farmyard. The hay shed is full to the rafters. I breathe in the fragrance of the newly harvested hay. So many evocative aromas that I have missed. My heart feels fit to burst. Down to the lower field and the corrugated iron roof of the turf store, also filled to the brim. Neighbours have been good to my mother.

I come to the pigsty that my father had built, standing solid but abandoned, stray leaves blowing in the food troughs. Tomorrow, when I return from the creamery, I will purchase six piglets and start raising them.

Finally, I pass on to the family burial plot, the sole headstone sticking up through the ground: Patrick , my father; dead these five years. I am long over my Catholic upbringing and any devotion to kneeling and praying; my time in America has seen to that. But, as a sign of respect, I stand and whisper a brief salutation. He had too much of a liking for his drink to have earned my devotion.

I turn back and gaze out across the patchwork quilt of emerald fields; the beauty of Carantuohill, the tallest mountain in all of Ireland, in the distance, but so clear that I feel I could reach out and touch it. The twilight perfume of the turf from many farmhouse fires filling the air with its beauty, remind me that I am truly home; the smell of Ireland.

Thus, I have dreamed. At night as I lay alone in my lodging house bed, during my waking hours as I toiled on the construction sites of Boston in all weathers. Always, this same, imagined return.

Now, as I turn the big brass key in the lock, my nostrils are assailed by the whiff of damp and decay, no fire to light the room, no person sitting in the shadows, the rocking chair stationery, still and shrouded in dust.

I walk out into the farmyard, weeds sprouting everywhere, the door of the cowshed hanging limply from one hinge, the hay shed empty, the turf store vacant, I walk down past the crumbling walls of the pigsty and halt at the sight of my father’s headstone, alongside it the freshly dug grave, no headstone yet, of my dear, departed mother.

Too long have I lingered in Boston, always striving to earn just a wee bit more, just a few hundred dollars extra so that I could do all the things I had dreamt of on my return to Ireland; to make my mother proud. Too late have I come home.

Forsaking my newfound impiety, I kneel in the sodden grass, a lump in my throat, tears streaming from my eyes, and I pray and tell her how much I love her.

And, all my grave will warmer, sweeter be

For you will bend and tell me that you love me And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me