Leaving Dublin, heading for the airport, 5:00 AM, we found ourselves for just a second on Grafton Street in November. Young people in costume walked slowly, barefoot, weaving their unsteady ways to wherever home happens to be. Reality sinks in.
Kavanagh’s Queen of Hearts is merciless. Without getting too sappy about it, I feel some cracks in my own heart upon leaving. Five days is hardly enough to know a country and its people, yet it all seems so familiar. Like a favorite pair of boots.
The journey home was a slugfest, as a person would expect. Perhaps the biggest shock of the whole trip was our arrival at JFK airport. Parts of the causeway where under repair with plaster dust and drywall screws left strewn on the walkway. The escalator was shut down. A big pile of fuzzy trash covered half the bottom step. I don’t have a keen sense of smell but the people around me commented on the reek of an open sewer. The TSA workers were openly hostile.
Irish pride is deep to the bone. As a people they don’t take themselves too seriously, and they do so with unrivaled fierceness. I found myself wishing to feel some Yankee pride on my return, but there was a deadness to the people who worked the terminal lines. Smiles unreturned from hollow eyes. The irony is that we were at Kennedy airport, a name that has demi-god status among the Irish. And not an ounce of pride or conviction to be found.
Maybe I’m just tired and that’s why things look this way. But if America wants to make a good first impression on visitors from around the world, perhaps we could start by at least sweeping up the trash.
