Something About Love (#SOL15, Day 17)

Irish, Too (M.A. Reilly, 2015)

I

I wish I could recall Connemara with more detail. The morning we left Achill Island it was a rare sunny day and we traveled south crossing through Connemara National Park towards Galway. For most of the time we were in Ireland I wore heavy sweaters, even though it was late summer. We had been traveling for a few weeks, stopping where we wanted and having no set destinations in mind save the two days we spent in Dublin at the Shelbourne Hotel.

The hotel's on the Green. I figured it's your first time back. We'd stay someplace great.

We would later kid that we took our honeymoon prior to actually being married. That wouldn't happen until a few months later when we found ourselves in Vermont and a man named Dave married us in the front room of his home. His wife, whose name I have long forgotten, served as our witness.

But now, here, twenty-five years later, what I mostly recall about Connemara are its colors and slopes, how the valleys open before you like a gift.


II.

Towards the end of Ulysses, Molly Bloom is lying in bed next to her husband. She's recalling his proposal of marriage to her.

…he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

I remember saying to Rob that if we had done a more traditional wedding and actually invited other people, I would have wanted to send an invitation that simply said:

yes, I said yes I will Yes

III.

There's something here, in all of this that I want to say about love, but I have forgotten, perhaps it isn't too important--the things we say.  What I recall most are its colors and slopes and what opens before us like a gift.