Controlling Myself in Ireland

Ah travel, the thrill of new places and faces, the strange twang of English words twisted with accents that render them unrecognizable to the American ear, the savory surprises of foreign food, the heart-lifting vistas new to these old eyes, and, of course, the stress of constant twenty-four hour, unrelenting contact with your beloved companion.

That much togetherness puts a strain on even the most tolerant and loving of relationships. No matter where you go, there you are, and oh look, honey, we brought all our emotional baggage along. All our pesky husband and wife trigger buttons were dragged across the ocean and landmass so we wouldn’t feel lost in an alien land. Yet, with so much that is unfamiliar, it’s good to know that no matter where you go, some things stay the same, it’s having them amplified that’s difficult. Even if hubby and I were mild-mannered personalities, our emotional triggers can be consistently relied upon (and after twenty five years doing dramatic theatre, we do not qualify as drama free). We may be in Ireland among a green landscape so rich and lush that it brings tears to our eyes, but it still takes only a fraction of a second for him to piss me off royally.

And the feeling is mutual, apparently. (How dare he think me less than perfect!) Let me give you a for instance. My husband loves to announce to total strangers that I am a nervous traveler. This while I’m reading calmly at the airport gate while he rails and sweats over some half-imagined slight from the car rental company. Why he thinks that these exhausted fellow travelers, who no doubt lead full and diverting lives of their own, would find this information pertinent or even interesting is a mystery to me. He goes on to enlighten them that this is because I’m a control freak. Then I go back to my Rex Stout novel and he taps madly at his phone where he is mapping landmarks such as large rocks or random graffiti that will help our cab driver locate our apartment in a Dublin neighborhood that has been familiar to locals for over six centuries.

But never mind, we both love a new adventure, the two of us have traveled extensively, both alone in our pre-each-other lives and with each other during our sixteen years of together-bliss. It seems to escape him that I have lived in exotic locals for months on end while shooting some movie or show, or just off to experience the big ol’ world without any one to tell me what to do or where to go. Say what you will about having a partner in life—which, don’t get me wrong, I prefer because it is him—it can be truly fabulous to answer to no one and do exactly what you want to do all damn day long.

Of course, come evening, nothing compares to having someone to share your discoveries with, especially if you don’t have internet, which we don’t here. Social media is the modern equivalent of telling stories and passing packs of pictures fresh from the Fotomat around the dinner table. Ah, the smell of chemical developer wafting from the paper envelopes when you unfold the flap, the way the prints stuck together, the fun of trying to remember, two weeks after the flight home, where in hell that pile of ancient rocks was exactly. Good times.

Togetherness is a beautiful thing. Until it’s time to drive on the left. We always make sure both of us are covered to drive the rental car, and after my husband manspains the difficulties and I remind him that I grew up with a house on St. Croix, where we drove on the left, and a month in Scotland where I had the most fun parallel parking on a steep hillside that I’ve ever had, (they brought their pints out of the pub to watch me, that’s how entertaining I was) we set out, with him driving and me navigating. This being our first sojourn out of Dublin, I had to allow that even on the generously wide motorway, switching from having the steering wheel on the left to having it on the right, combined with unfamiliar traffic signs while driving a strange rental car, takes a good bit of getting used to. But after a while I had to keep pointing out that hubby was pretty much keeping the left wheels of the car on the yellow lane line, though you would have thought that the rhythmic thump thump thump of the warning bumps would have offered some clue. About the forth time, his nerves snapped and he called me a control freak. So I tried to sit on my hands and shut the f up. It kind of worked…for a few minutes at a time. I do hate to be controlled.

Then we hit the country roads where the roads are as narrow as the leg room in economy class, the hedges rise like the walls of a prison yard on both sides of the lanes, the speed limits are only safe for the delusional, and the possibility of rounding a blind curve only to be confronted with some form of gigantic farm machinery moving at a whopping 15 kilometers are 100 percent. It’s tight here, I mean, inches on either side of the car for both lanes, and that’s when there are two lanes. For some reason, even when we were the only vehicle on the road, hubby felt the need to keep the left rear view window (inches off my left shoulder where I sat in the passenger seat) in the hedges and I constantly flinched as blackberry vines and holly bushes smacked against my window. Once or twice I actually cried out when the tire almost went off the asphalt into a narrow drainage ditch, and while I did not blame him at all for getting nervous when a car, or far worse a lorry, would appear in the oncoming lane, I thought that slamming on the breaks was a bit of an overreaction. Tempted as I was to ask if he thought stopping the car would actually make it narrower, I resisted, but I couldn’t help the involuntary ‘ooof’ noise that escaped me as the seatbelt caught and forced the air from my body. At this point I was accused of ‘freaking out’ and he snapped out “Do you want to drive?”

Now, those of you who have remained married more than a year will know that to answer ‘yes’ at this point would have been the equivalent of contacting a divorce lawyer. Insulting your husband’s driving or letting him know you feel endangered is an absolute no-no. So I said, no, but maybe you are a bit close on the left, and possibly, being mostly human, it was impossible to not react at all when I feel that bodily danger is imminent, to which he answered with a rising hysteria that he was kind of busy trying not to get into a head on collision, which was hard to argue. But he followed that with the accusation that I was over-reacting, which I could have argued all damn day as soon as the seat belt unlocked and I could inhale enough to form words.

We arrived at our destination and were delighted charmed and enthralled. This, the first of three rental houses on this trip of six weeks is placed in a nature reserve with sweeping views of sheep covered hills, deep, verdant forests and skies that Gainsborough might have painted. Inside there is a plethora of beautiful art, first edition books, enamel stoves in every room, and outside are gardens designed to delight and discover. We were so pleased that all the stress fell away and the joy of our destination threw a blanket of forgetfulness over the stress of the journey. Husband took me in his arms and we uttered little spontaneous exclamations of awe at every new discovery.

And it was all worth it. I love my husband, our relationship, our life, our adventures, and the promise of more joy together. Sure, there will always be those rough spots, some friction, and the thoughtless word or twelve, but overall, I’m glad to be where I am.

No matter where you go, there you are.

You can’t control everything while you’re there.

Not even ourselves.

Time to drive into town and post this blog.

Now where did he hide those keys?

Shari from the Emerald Isle. August 10^th, 2018