One recent Sunday I walked into a coffee shop near the pier at Machaire Rabhartaigh with the beloved at my side. We were looking for a light snack and noticed colourful woollen hats for sale. And since the day was so windy we decided to buy one each.
I suggested yellow.
“It suits you,” I insisted.
“Okay,” she replied; “and what about you?”
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“I’ll take another yellow,” I declared.
“But that’s the two of us in the same colour,” she said. “Not very imaginative.”
However it so happened that Easter Sunday was our anniversary. We had been married 30 years and so I concluded that at that stage in our life we were entitled to wear anything we wanted.
“If you were in a large crowd at a football match,” I said, “or near the main stage at Electric Picnic and we got separated, I would be able to find you just by looking out over the ocean of heads and seeing that yellow hat. And furthermore,” I continued, “A lot of Buddhist Lamas wear yellow robes; and sometimes they wear yellow hats shaped like slices of lemon.”
“These are woollen hats,” she pointed out. “What have they got to do with Buddhism?”
“I’m just saying it’s an auspicious colour. We could say we wear yellow in honour of the Buddha,” I suggested. “We could even start a new brand; The Leitrim School of Yellow Hats. And I could give workshops on indigenous methods of Irish meditation.”
“I didn’t know that there were any indigenous methods of meditation in Ireland,” she commented.
“There certainly is!” I retorted, “it’s called Dozing!”
We both smiled, shared an almond croissant, drank our coffee in silence and gazed out at the waves that monks once grappled with, in leather boats, when they came and went from Tory Island in the age of Colmcille.
Then we set out across the flat apron of sand beneath the wild Atlantic sky and walked a long time without speaking.
Walking across a beach where the wind limits conversation to hand signals is a good metaphor for marriage. It’s a shared solitude. A journey where each one becomes the custodian of the other’s dreams. A kind of rapture in the wind as the roaring waves make a music that has no meaning beyond it’s own sublime now-ness.
It’s not so much that you find the beloved; it’s more that the beloved has found you
When I was young I thought that love was a serious thing; like the longing for beauty at the door of every dancehall. Like whispering a girl’s name at the mirror in adolescence or writing her address on small envelopes or falling asleep beneath the scent of her scarf.
Love was always the lure of another universe. Something transcendent that manifested in the intimacy of another persons’ body. Love was something I longed for so desperately that I blundered for years as a young man.
I bought gifts for girls I worshipped. I bought a necklace for one. And for another I bought a jewellery box. With yet another I went to a flashy restaurant in a taxi when I was a student and spent £70 on dinner, which at the time was two months’ rent money.
And I always failed by talking too much or being too serious; never appreciating anyone until it was too late and we were standing in some airport saying farewell. Being too serious and lacking a sense of humour was my downfall; as if love could be explained or understood.
But at 30 I suddenly became aware of that moment beneath the moon that poets speak of; when the shadows move and you get the first glimpse of the beloved, and you know that this is how your life will continue forever and that you are not in control. It’s not so much that you find the beloved; it’s more that the beloved has found you.
And then does love reveal itself as nothing remotely rational. It’s a childish thing; like dancing on the shoreline or jumping into the wind.
After the walk we stopped off at the Chúirt Hotel in Gaoth Dobhair for lunch. The food was superb and the diningroom buzzed. Children ran between tables and old women on sticks wobbled in to sit with their middle-aged sons or daughters.
I was exhausted from walking and said very little. Although the trek had been exhilarating, with the sea and sky so blue; as the old people say, “we were blessed with the weather”.
Not to mention two lovely yellow hats sitting on the back seat of the car outside. Who could ask for more?