A family drawn together

Subject: A family drawn together.

It's always interesting looking back. The experiences you had, simple occurrences which stick in your memory not so much for there spectacular impact but the connectivity with a human emotion.
I have my maps of Ireland spread out before me and I'm examining the roads which took us one day at the back end of March into the archipelago of land and water which make up the western shore of Ireland. The map (an old fashioned paper job) has in my memories eye, the journeys we made and the people we made those journeys with.
The map takes on a different perspective as it draws the names of the villages and the roads that link them into some sort of order. What had been a journey through the sparse and relatively wild countryside, a series of snap shots of houses and and gorse now become the pathway which we used to buy our groceries or visit the pub.
The people, who as I write, live there going about their lives just as they did when we were with them, brought the experience to life. This was no incidental jolly but a gathering of family from all over the world to celebrate a wedding which the local Irish were keen to represent as a welcome for the bride into the larger Irish family.
The Irish make much of family and the coming together of the extended Irish family at the occurrence of a wedding or a wake. This apparent pleasure for the opportunity to gather together and celebrate or commiserate is instinctive and reflects the pride in their parochialism, their tribal affinity their enjoyment of being together.
We in the urbanisation of our society have become insular and far less reactive to the call of brotherhood or sisterhood.
The wedding a mixture of Irish and internationalised South Africans was to my eyes a large gathering,190 guests but the following week, a wholly Irish affair was to include 400 guests.
Thinking back, I was the only Englishman there and given the history of the area (which I covered in another blog) the genuine warmth from all the locals concerned was not in any way diluted by my inclusion.  The possible contamination by the inclusion of a member of that most despised group "perfidious Albion" was allowed to fly under the cloak of family !!
I hadn't seen the family I married into all those years ago, for years but it was a warm spontaneous and I feel genuine reunion as we played catch up from those riotous days and memories of living in South Africa.
No matter what people, most of whom have never been there but have preconceived ideas of life in the days of Apartheid think, for me the inclusiveness of the South African towards me was truly memorable. I have never felt more together within a society than then and the good times came flooding back as we reminisced.
The map reminds me of a breakfast here or a trip there. It reminds me of independence slogans on the wall of the pub or, in another drinking den, the near hysteria of a shrill, 'pipe cleaner thin girl', praising Martin McGuinniss whilst damming him in the same breath for the pain he had brought her family. It was not the time I decided to announce my ethnicity nor my political persuasion.

The chatter of the house maid in the hotel was delightful, particularly in her enthusiasm for her country and especially the area we were in Belmullet. She reflected the insularity that the fiord like separation of coastal inlets developed between the communities, only a few miles apart as the crow flies yet a different universe as regard kith and kin, she from Belmullet whilst we had stayed in Achill. She was a delight with her chatter and the pride she had for her area. She was also generous to the English for, in her opinion, providing an escape route for work and prosperity for many of her fellow countrymen who had emigrated to England.

She was so talkative I wonder how she got through her round of bed making but her generosity of nature shone through and I thought she was a gem.
It was only a few but memorable days but too soon we were saying our farewells as each car filled with its individual family, some off to see more of Ireland others going on to Europe before jetting off to their own continent. Will this be the last gathering.
The bride, Wendy had taken two years planning the wedding, getting everyone together and we all owed her a vote of thanks. But as brothers and sisters cousins and nieces hugged farewell one saw the downside of going global, families communicating by Facebook but missing that instinctual familiarity of being physically close and walking life's eventful road together.