I am back a full week from Ireland and feel very lucky to have gotten in under the wire of being blocked for five hours at the airport. I walked through without any hitch. The sign on the local church informed me it was not luck but that I was blessed.

I was carrying back to USA an old watercolor painting I had painted of my parents in the nineties. It was of them being sweet to each other and I managed to loose it somewhere at the Dulles Airport. I did not want to bend it, so I was carrying it separate in a pink plastic bag. I emailed the airport about it but it did not make it into lost property. I am not expecting to find it again.

Loosing the painting is symbolic of letting go of my parents in some deep way. It felt like a distancing of some kind, a letting go of the past. It comes with some tears but also grateful for having had Ireland as my motherland. I appreciated the warmth and the good food prepared for me in the home place. I wish I had carved out more time to be there in the midlands of Ireland, this time around.  

I do feel blessed to be back, wanting to kiss the ground in Virginia. They laughed at me at work saying that if I kissed the ground in Dulles surely I would pick up the virus. I am a little longer in America than in Ireland at this point in my life.

Many beautiful things happened in Ireland, meeting family, a reunion and visiting two sites, one holy and one secular.  I also unexpectedly ran into two people I had known over forty years ago, with whom I had shared a “yoga” house, for a few years. Brendan and Shiobhan hugged me soundly and Brendan told me he still meditates. 

I visited Glendalough, the “glen of the two lakes.” It is a monastic site complete with two round towers. Saint Kevin was the monk that created a special stone bed on the side of the mountain, overlooking the upper lake. I wanted to visit the bed but it was not too clear how I might do that, and walking a lot is not an option for me now. 

I had to be content with focusing on the river that ran three feet deep and came from the lake and ran along by the road at times. I separated myself from the family for a bit citing inability to walk any further and went off the road and down to the mossy bank and dropped down into the water. This river was cold like the ones in Virginia I visit but was bearable. 

I held on to a tree but was not dragged in any way and said my prayers and hopefully let go of my sins with the help of Saint Kevin. I sat on a cold wet mossy rock to get my breath and redress. This was a spa treatment of a different type.

Since I came back I was reading that Saint Kevin was followed by a lovely, lonely maiden to his cave.  He was so mad at her, it is reported in a ballad, that he flung her into the lake. The Moore ballad said she was shocked at his reaction to her as was I. It also said she was drowned in the lake.

As our little car went over Wicklow Gap toward Glendalough, it was rainy and sunshiney at the same time. As I looked out my window into the Valley below, a beautiful rainbow stretched out before me like the hand of God. It left an impression on me of the colors of blue and violet. It was a fleeting moment, as we rushed along between hedges blocking my view intermittently into the Valley.

Back home in Virginia, I am greeted by lovely weather. It is the week of the solstice, where our part of the earth tilts toward the sun again. I went to the river in Rawley Springs and enjoyed the water. I got in a number of times as well as climbing up a steep incline to where the great rectangular rocks hang. It was quiet and sunny and the rocks were warm. 

Climbing up can be hard. I acquired two walking sticks, left there by other climbers, which helped a lot. I was at a loss as to where to put my car key and put the ring in my mouth to hold on to it. This proved very unreliable and I saw my key fall and start rolling straight down toward the river. 

I was blessed again, as it stopped just within reach, stopped by a l little hemlock sappling. After that I caught it in the strap of my sandal and secured the end of the key under another strap. My hands were free and I was bent on finding the upper path, which was a good bit safer and less steep. 

First time I got into the water I went up to my waist. The second time I went in up to my neck and finally I dove in on the third go around to get my hair and head under. Getting into water always has the feeling of baptism. I also dropped into the water  thirteen times, up and down quickly. I think I learned that that was a practice in some eastern religion. I copy where I can in the hopes of my soul being cleaned up some more in this life. 

I am cleaning up my house and rearranging things in the hope that this outer cleaning, spring cleaning, will bring me into someplace new, some inner place so I can see the seven chakras within as well as ride along on the rainbow colors that we all have emanating in all kind of directions from within ourselves, right under our own noses. Love from Rose.