Home Is: (fill in the blank)

Those of you who know a bit about the travels of this writer also know that for more than thirty-five years home was called the University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana.  But before that, home was in the Green Mountains of Vermont: we lived in a small farming community outside of the Queen City, Burlington, and just a few miles down the road from where the legendary Snowflake Bentley did his work in Underhill.  

In 2016, my wife and I packed up our "home" – that is, what little we hung onto after selling our house, our cars, and having an estate sale – and moved to a place I never would've considered years before: a small rectory attached to a small church in the teeming capital city of Ireland.  Dublin 2, on St. Stephen's Green.  That little pocket, tucked between Iveagh Gardens and the Green, became our home for the next five years.  

And in 2021, I retired from Our Lady's University, and we moved to yet another place to call home: Black Mountain, North Carolina.  That is where this meditation is now being written.

Under the mantle of each of our homes is a piece that has been with us throughout our married journey together.  The plaque says, as Gaelige (in Irish): "N'il aon teintéan mar do theintéan fein."  The translation: "There is no fireside (turf fire) like your own fireside."  

It's an important saying to keep close to the heart. The comfort of a fireside can exist in many places, and they are not necessarily wedded to the locale that we originally called "home."  We take our firesides with us: those places of room-comfort, of nesting, of looking out at the world from within a four-walled womb.  

All of this is present to me now, because in 24 hours, we will travel back to the Republic of Ireland after four years away. Two weddings a month apart, two colleagues getting married at the same church in Dublin (Newman University Church, where we were stationed), and in between the chance to say hello (and good-bye) to friends we hadn't seen since the dawn of the pandemic.

Ireland was home for us, for five years.  But even beyond that, there were dozens upon dozens of host towns and families that opened the door to us.  What kind of a reunion will we encounter?  Will the cobblestones, our beautiful little church, the shops and pubs, still feel like "home"?  

Stay tuned as I turn to these questions over the coming weeks!