it had been an early morning that we left nobber--getting up in the dawn that felt like it should be blue but was instead already tinged gold by the premature sun, packing up our things and brushing teeth in a hurry only to undo all that work when we made our breakfast out of pastries and coffee from a roadside station. we crept out past the cows and got in our car, a vehicle much too small to hold the five of us and our luggage, and drove towards dublin as the world woke up.
we waited in a long line of cars leading into the pier. we let our friends out on the tarmac leading towards the water. we couldn't see the water from here, and it was warm that morning--warm with a slight breeze which, surrounded by so much concrete and so many ticket offices, felt artificial. we bid our friends goodbye, relaxed in surprise at the amount of space for luggage we now had in the car, and after a brief forgetting of which side of the road we were expected to drive on, made our way towards leitrim.
in an offhand way, i was excited. we had never yet had to fend for ourselves fully on this trip. here we would be out in the back of the country, beyond the realm of street numbers or paving or even internet connection. we would be at the home my ancestors had grown up in, looking at perhaps the same fields, although with different sheep.
i had pictured mohill as a bucolic town. the irish version of midsomer murders, with pretty little houses painted in bright colors to combat the grey sky, with the green hills stretching behind. i had pictured it like all the other villages we drove through. instead we found it paved and as grey as the sky beyond it. even the grass fields which spread all around seemed to have acquired a darker, sicklier hue. apart from a statue of turlough o'carolan which had been deprived of the strings in his carved harp--if there had ever even been any--there was nothing much to see.
still i remained optimistic. we weren't staying in mohill, but far outside of it. down a road with a hairpin turn, ringed by low trees and fields of livestock, hedges blocking off our views of the houses. this much was true. there would be a farmer, i had thought, in a muted green overcoat and wellington boots, and his dog. not really someone to interact, just an addition to the landscape. and i had pictured a small house, a cottage really, a place that felt cloistered and full of history. a place with no real sharp corners, that felt--if not warm--then lived-in.
what i got was a tall house, empty of all significant furniture. the floors were made of cold stone tile fading into cold and irreparably whorled wood planks which felt somehow even colder. someone had brought in a washing machine and a drier once to put in the pantry and they stood there silently emanating cold. probably no one had ever used those washing machines.
the kitchen was a silent, yawning chasm of greying emptiness. some kitchen implements had been forgotten--probably left by other relatives who stayed here as my mother and i were, but that helped me none. each room was like the last, great and endless, letting out a dry echo of white noise like a tiny abyss. the stairs were narrow and the navigation between bedrooms impractical. i slept with a porcelain bust of the virgin mary looking warningly down at me from in front of the curtains keeping out the overzealous daylight. all over the walls were biblical images, complete with detailed summations of how those who violated these recommendations would meet a nasty end. yet somehow the words, the zeal did not scream when put up in this house. they just mumbled, quietly and without hope, knowing that they did not have a willing audience.
the house did not feel lived in. it felt like a place of great sorrow. it felt like a place that was grieving, for everyone had left it as soon as they could go and find something better. from the moment i stood in its cold pantry and wondered at the anachronism of the washing machines, the house infected me with its loneliness. the cold seeped into my temples and my chest cavity. my ancestors had lived here once. my ancestors had eaten breakfast at a table in this room, a peat fire they surely knew how to make better than we did burning in that stove. the children had stared at the threatening biblical wall ornaments. they had probably worked the land, if the neighbors' occupations were anything to go by. they had slept in bedrooms--each one with their own, eventually, after some creative architecture and an addition to the house--and brushed their teeth in this sink. they had perhaps gone into town on special occasions. they had grown up here. and they must have wished for something better. wished to not be so poor, wished for more people around. and so, when they were old enough, one by one, they all moved out. went to dublin, went to england, went to america. leaving only their aged parents to tend to the house with its echoes of being lived in. leaving them, eventually, to die in it. to leave the house cold and alone and unloved. there had been life here. a life with too much space, and that space filled with ambitions of greater things, somewhere else, but life.
now, there were insects in the sink.
i don't believe in psychic imprints. i don't believe you can know a person's story from their house. i hardly believe in anything. but i have never felt anything as cold and empty as that house. it was the feeling of an emptiness that has reconciled itself to the fact that it can never really be filled so instead it screams at those who pass, snaking tendrils around their ankles, seeping into their chests to merge with their heartbeats until i, too, felt what the house had felt like as it was abandoned and left empty without reason.
in the end, we spent as little time as we could in the house in mohill. we treated it as a glorified camping station. we ate breakfast early and got out of town to go explore. we found stories, and even friendlier sheep. but everywhere we went, i felt that there was still a small valve in my heart that pulsed with the cold, seeping emptiness of the house. i can still feel it now, when i remember the melancholy virgin mary statue, the emptiness, and the ice cold floors.
we waited in a long line of cars leading into the pier. we let our friends out on the tarmac leading towards the water. we couldn't see the water from here, and it was warm that morning--warm with a slight breeze which, surrounded by so much concrete and so many ticket offices, felt artificial. we bid our friends goodbye, relaxed in surprise at the amount of space for luggage we now had in the car, and after a brief forgetting of which side of the road we were expected to drive on, made our way towards leitrim.
in an offhand way, i was excited. we had never yet had to fend for ourselves fully on this trip. here we would be out in the back of the country, beyond the realm of street numbers or paving or even internet connection. we would be at the home my ancestors had grown up in, looking at perhaps the same fields, although with different sheep.
i had pictured mohill as a bucolic town. the irish version of midsomer murders, with pretty little houses painted in bright colors to combat the grey sky, with the green hills stretching behind. i had pictured it like all the other villages we drove through. instead we found it paved and as grey as the sky beyond it. even the grass fields which spread all around seemed to have acquired a darker, sicklier hue. apart from a statue of turlough o'carolan which had been deprived of the strings in his carved harp--if there had ever even been any--there was nothing much to see.
still i remained optimistic. we weren't staying in mohill, but far outside of it. down a road with a hairpin turn, ringed by low trees and fields of livestock, hedges blocking off our views of the houses. this much was true. there would be a farmer, i had thought, in a muted green overcoat and wellington boots, and his dog. not really someone to interact, just an addition to the landscape. and i had pictured a small house, a cottage really, a place that felt cloistered and full of history. a place with no real sharp corners, that felt--if not warm--then lived-in.
what i got was a tall house, empty of all significant furniture. the floors were made of cold stone tile fading into cold and irreparably whorled wood planks which felt somehow even colder. someone had brought in a washing machine and a drier once to put in the pantry and they stood there silently emanating cold. probably no one had ever used those washing machines.
the kitchen was a silent, yawning chasm of greying emptiness. some kitchen implements had been forgotten--probably left by other relatives who stayed here as my mother and i were, but that helped me none. each room was like the last, great and endless, letting out a dry echo of white noise like a tiny abyss. the stairs were narrow and the navigation between bedrooms impractical. i slept with a porcelain bust of the virgin mary looking warningly down at me from in front of the curtains keeping out the overzealous daylight. all over the walls were biblical images, complete with detailed summations of how those who violated these recommendations would meet a nasty end. yet somehow the words, the zeal did not scream when put up in this house. they just mumbled, quietly and without hope, knowing that they did not have a willing audience.
the house did not feel lived in. it felt like a place of great sorrow. it felt like a place that was grieving, for everyone had left it as soon as they could go and find something better. from the moment i stood in its cold pantry and wondered at the anachronism of the washing machines, the house infected me with its loneliness. the cold seeped into my temples and my chest cavity. my ancestors had lived here once. my ancestors had eaten breakfast at a table in this room, a peat fire they surely knew how to make better than we did burning in that stove. the children had stared at the threatening biblical wall ornaments. they had probably worked the land, if the neighbors' occupations were anything to go by. they had slept in bedrooms--each one with their own, eventually, after some creative architecture and an addition to the house--and brushed their teeth in this sink. they had perhaps gone into town on special occasions. they had grown up here. and they must have wished for something better. wished to not be so poor, wished for more people around. and so, when they were old enough, one by one, they all moved out. went to dublin, went to england, went to america. leaving only their aged parents to tend to the house with its echoes of being lived in. leaving them, eventually, to die in it. to leave the house cold and alone and unloved. there had been life here. a life with too much space, and that space filled with ambitions of greater things, somewhere else, but life.
now, there were insects in the sink.
i don't believe in psychic imprints. i don't believe you can know a person's story from their house. i hardly believe in anything. but i have never felt anything as cold and empty as that house. it was the feeling of an emptiness that has reconciled itself to the fact that it can never really be filled so instead it screams at those who pass, snaking tendrils around their ankles, seeping into their chests to merge with their heartbeats until i, too, felt what the house had felt like as it was abandoned and left empty without reason.
in the end, we spent as little time as we could in the house in mohill. we treated it as a glorified camping station. we ate breakfast early and got out of town to go explore. we found stories, and even friendlier sheep. but everywhere we went, i felt that there was still a small valve in my heart that pulsed with the cold, seeping emptiness of the house. i can still feel it now, when i remember the melancholy virgin mary statue, the emptiness, and the ice cold floors.
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