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The skies are heavy with clouds, dark with the promise of rain. The air thick and soft and warm, like a damp blanket taken from the dryer 20 minutes too soon.
For now, at least, nothing is falling, so I leave my raincoat on the passenger seat and head into the store. The air has cooled with the coming of the storm, but itâs still balmy, and I can feel the sheen of sweat forming on my forehead as I lock the door. The jacket will only make that worse.
Iâm only inside for about 15 minutes, but when I leave, the skies have already torn open, and water is falling in a torrent across the parking lot. I have a lot to load into the back of my van, and no means by which to cover it, but itâs clear to me that the downpour wonât be letting up any time soon, so I steel my resolve and push my heavy-laden cart out into the rain.
As the seconds pass, me trying to shake as much water from containers and boxes as I can as I load them in, the rainfall intensifies. Water pours off the bill of my baseball cap, and Iâm drenched to the skin, my shoes soggy and limp. Finished with my task at last, I throw myself into the driverâs seat and shut the door. I have no towel, nothing with which to dry off the excess dripping moisture, so I turn on the seat heater, turn the air conditioner to lukewarm, and head out into the storm.
By the time I reach the highway, itâs coming down harder than Iâve seen in years. Iâm reminded of a time when I was a teen working a Texas summer camp, driving a 15-passenger van full of rowdy boys back to Dallas from a storm-interrupted trip to Houston, the water falling in sheets so heavy the windshield wipers were useless. Or another time, longer ago, riding in the back seat of a station wagon with my uncle after a camping trip to Bigelow Hollow, the rain so heavy it looked like we were inside a submarine.
The van is hydroplaning nearly constantly, and Iâm struck with the image of driving a puck across an air hockey table, its vectors of motion gliding in confusing and random directions. My phone, hooked into the stereo system, startles me with a loud, shrill tone as a tornado warning blasts across the screen. Every time the van begins to drift, I let off the gas until I feel the tires regain their purchase through the inches of water now blowing sideways across the road, my eyes scanning the skies for signs of a funnel cloud.
Thereâs no place for shelter. Vigilance is my only recourse.
The phone buzzes again, this time with a flash flood warning. I donât know this part of the area, donât know where the low-lying trouble spots might be in order that I can avoid them. I fidget with the radio until I find a news and weather channel, and they say the region Iâm in has already received 8-9 inches of rain. In the desert southwest, Iâd be looking for washes, especially the kind that cross the roads, but here in the Carolinas they have lakes and rivers and ponds that fill up first. I donât even know where they are, let alone when they might overflow their banks.
Iâm wary of the danger, but the green of the trees, the slate gray skies, and the cascading sheets of precipitation tell me Iâm in the only kind of place that can ever feel like home. This is my kind of country, and itâs a deeper kind of belonging than mere preference.
Scenery like this causes a singing of the blood.
AililiĂș Na Gamhna
AililiĂș na gamhna na gamhna bĂĄna (Aill-il-lu the calves,the pretty calves)
AililiĂș na gamhna na gamhna bâiad a bâfhearr liom (Aill-il-lu the calves, I loved them the best)
AililiĂș na gamhna na gamhna geala bĂĄna (Aill-il-lu the calves,the fine pretty calves)
Na gamhna maidin shamhraidh ag damhsâ ar na bĂĄnta (Dancing in the meadow on a clear summer's morning)
[1]
âS inion dâaoire mĂ© fhĂ©inig gan amhras (I'm a herdsman's daughter, sure enough)
Do bhiodh ina cĂłnaĂ cois taobh na Leamhna (Who once lived down by the banks of the Laune)
Bhà bothan agam féin ann is fuinneog i gceann dé (I had a cabin there, a window in the gable)
Fad a bhiodh an bainne âg tĂ©amh agam âse ghlaofainn ar na gamhna (While I heated the milk I called in the calves)
[CURFĂ]
[2]
Faightear dom cana is faightear dom bhuarach (Get me a can and get me a ladle)
Is faightear dom soitheach ina gcuirfead mo chuid uachtar (Get me a vessel to take all the cream)
Ceolta sĂ na cruinne bheith aâsiorchur i mâchluasa (The magic music of the world always around me)
Ba bhinne liomsa géimneach na mbó ag teacht chun buaile. (But sweeter sounding still the lowing of the cattle to the parlor)
[CURFĂ]
[3]
Rachamid ar an t-aonach âs ceannĂłimid gamhna (Let us go to the fair and buy us some calves)
Is cuirfimid ar féar iad amach ins na gleannta (Put them to grass out above in the valleys)
Iosfaidh siad an féar is barr an aitinn ghallda (They'll eat all the grass and the tufts of the strange gorse)
Is tiocfaidh siad abhaile chun an bhainne i gcĂłir an tSamhraidh. (And come home for the milk at the start of the summer)
The first time I heard real Gaelic folk music was 1998.
I was a student at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and it was the time of year when the big annual Irish festival was held in Pittsburgh. I had attended previously, but didnât feel like going that year, so I was surprised when I heard that some of friends had prevailed upon some kind of remarkable Irish singer who had been up all night with them to go to the local Eat NâPark for breakfast and then make a visit to our campus. I headed off to meet them for food, and we all went back to the university together.
The name of the singer was Iarla Ă LionĂĄird, and he specialized in the revival of traditional Gaelic folk music. I had no idea how famous he was. As about 20 of us sat together in one of the small side rooms at the J.C. Williams center, he began to sing, acapella, and I found myself strangely moved.
As he sang songs like AililiĂș Na Gamhna, above, I found myself involuntarily envisioning verdant, rainy landscapes in my mind, like a waking dream of a home Iâd never seen.
The Welsh have a word for this: Hiraeth. âA homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.â
It was the closest thing to actual magic Iâve ever experienced.
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