I don’t know the exact location, so I can tell from the picture in my head that it’s Donegal. Inishowen, perhaps, or perhaps somewhere near my father’s hometown of Gweedore.I was 5 or 6 years old and drove “crossing the border” this particular Sunday
Whenever I reimagine it, my heart’s eye is one of the days that defines Irish summer. Family photos have set it in my memory.
As the flask fills quickly, the sandwich is filled, and the orange squash is diluted, the sky in Delhi turns azure blue. Now that I’ve left the house far behind on the other side of the rough foil, there’s more and more gray to make it feel like it’s there. As soon as the distant blue sky was a distant memory, clouds were caught and when we spread the floor covering on the beach, the heavens opened and we were forced to run for the cover.
Oh yeah, summer in Ireland. Even if you fast forward for decades, it’s the same. The only predictable thing about Irish summer weather is its unpredictability. How else would you explain that one day last week you were sitting under a parasol on the terrace, but two days ago you returned from a morning walk soaked into your skin? She took off her wet clothes, dried her with a dog towel, shivered over the gray sky, and immediately turned on the heating.
Remember your childhood, they say, and you only remember the sunny summer. For real? In Ireland?
For me, those summer memories are the days of Donegal, which was hit by wind and rain. I’m sitting on a well-dressed beach. Of my mother telling her father where to put the windbreaker. When fishing from the rocks of Danseverik harbor, jump back to avoid the waves as the wind blows and the sea thunders towards the shore. It’s Irish summer.
It hits the Atlantic Ocean on the Portstewart Strand, with gray clouds overhead, and the ocean is so cold that it’s breathtaking. I’m touring around Kelly, a wiper dancing to Jim Reeves on the radio. Or, I rode the Gap of Dunlo on a horse and wore a turtleneck sweater that day. In August. It’s Irish summer.
And that’s what makes it magical. Indeed, what would we do anyway if we had a long, hot and sunny day? You will complain about the heat, sleeplessness, the price of garden furniture, and the noise of teenagers in the park. How, well, it’s just too hot and there’s nothing just as nice about a few clouds and occasional downpour.
I remember sitting outside with a friend a few years ago on the afternoon of July in the summer. That day, as her flowerpot blew across the patio, she suddenly lifted her face towards the wind. “The breeze isn’t nice,” she said. “It’s fresh.”
Summer in Ireland is not the sunshine. It’s for Greeks, Spaniards, and Italians. There are different summers, full of diversity and surprises. In the summer, when rain-studded memories are created, we carry it happily for the rest of our lives.