Falling in love with fall... it doesn't have to suck

          It’s that time of year again: fall, or as I like to call it: “the time for drinking a half bottle of wine and singing along to Joni Mitchell for hours”. It’s true that I do not accept the end of my precious summer season with as much grace as I should. Since I am one of those people who perpetually runs cold, in my mind, fall is the beginning of cold toes and fingers, dry skin, increased allergies, and shorter days; a time for another oppressive New England winter glaring at us over the horizon. And as I have said before, it’s not that fall is the worst season. It’s just that it’s like the track that comes on after your favorite track of the album. The sound of even the intro of the next song, though a perfectly decent song, can be grating because it means your favorite song is over.

          Sure, I try very hard to let myself be seduced by foliage, by all things pumpkin flavored, apple cider donuts, new scarves and sweaters, Oktoberfest parties, and excuses to drink more hot tea, but when it comes down to it, I am not an autumn person. I am convinced that while Thanksgiving is probably the greatest holiday of the calendar year (because it revolves entirely around eating and family), it was probably invented to keep us all from killing ourselves once the remaining leaves have fallen off the trees and it’s dark at 5:30 pm. I alarmed a co-worker the other day when I referred to fall as that “symbolic death just before winter hibernation.” She agreed with me that it’s not her favorite season, but she just hadn’t heard it put quite that way before.

          To add to this, living in Boston in the fall means everyone watches football every weekend. I did not grow up doing this. My family watches tennis and college basketball exclusively. (Let's be real though: I also have never watched a spectator sport of my own volition.) Football games in particular though, are mind-numbing to me, not to mention long-winded. I feel like every time I make a concerted effort to look at the screen during a game, someone is being evaluated for an injury. (If this isn’t a deterrent enough from playing such a game, I don’t know what is.) Even Tom Brady, while nice to look at, just becomes one of the many imperceptible dots running back and forth in seeming anarchy on TV. I must admit that the very sound of a football game in the background automatically makes me want to retreat and slink into another room.

          Football is certainly not the cause of my dread at the return of fall. It only exacerbated a sentiment that always existed. As a kid, I can't say I remember absolutely loving fall, but I did look forward to Halloween and I did like jumping into a pile of leaves. I didn't have the allergies I have now though. After Halloween was over, in the midst of shorter days, I usually consoled myself with the fact that I had my birthday to look forward to in November, and while I still look forward to birthdays, in a few years/decades, that may not still be the case. Yes, I am a disgrace to people born in the fall. I desperately need an attitude adjustment when it comes to this annual season change.

          So, the husband tries to watch every Sunday game possible during this season, but with our busy schedules, that's not terribly many. This year, I have discovered that if I choose not to shut myself in the office/music room and weep while listening to Joni Mitchell during football, (although the ritual can be quite cathartic at least once a year), I can actually be extremely productive during said hours of the week! I can practice, read, cook, or write all while basking in the glow of pumpkin-scented candlelight. And if we go somewhere to watch football with friends, there is usually at least one delicious dip to be had and good company to enjoy. My autumnal mind frame is a work in progress, but the prospect of buffalo chicken dip with friends is comforting.

Another type of Top 5

My immediate family has sort have been “adopted” as extended relations by a group of three wonderful sisters who all used to babysit for me.  Two of the sisters even live next door to each other in a bustling “Compound”, full of kids who are more like siblings than cousins, running back and forth from one yard to the next.  It is sort of a crazy place, also often referred to as “the vortex”, because I spend a few hours there and the next thing I know, I’ve had no less than three meals and several glasses of wine and my “aunt” is trying to throw an old nightgown at me and convince me that I should sleep on the pullout couch, as though I were still 10 years old and still inclined toward sleepovers.  “I’ll make a big brunch before we all head to the festival on the green tomorrow!”  Recently, my mother was leaving the Compound, (a rare and difficult feat), saying how nice it is to be honorary members of their family.  The response: “I’m sorry Jo-Anna, but you’ve been demoted.  You are family.”

These honorary cousins have this great game.  It’s an ongoing thing called “Top 5”.  Everyone is constantly compiling and revising their list of Top 5 things that they hate.  The only rule is that you can’t include anything obvious in your personal list.  For example, you can’t use “mean people” as a top 5, because everyone hates mean people.  Also, vindictiveness is not the point of this game.  Something on a Top 5 list has to have a charming level of obscurity.  The lists have been evolving with revisions for years. 

My own personal Top 5 include:

1. Oranges: see also,the smell/flavor thereof

2. Those plastic straw wrappers that are found on juice boxes (They stick to everything!)

3. Rapid channel-changing

4. The word “chutney”

5. This one seems to be ever-changing for everyone, but for right now, we’ll go with “Sweet jello dishes on savory plates of food”

Here, for your entertainment, a random sampling of some great all-time Top 5’s from the family:

1. Turkeys

2. Men in jean shorts

3. Birds in general

4. De-greasing pizza with napkins (greasiness being part of the inherent essence of pizza)

5. Hot fruit

6. “Murses” (man purses)

7. Weathermen

8. Obligatory group clapping

9. Automatic toilet flushers in public restrooms followed by non-automatic sinks

10. Kites (“What’s the point?”)

Feel free to share your Top 5!

Top 5 Things I learned weddin' plannin'

@ Leah LaRiccia Photography 2013

          You learn a lot of things planning a wedding, not the least of which is that weddings are expensive and stressful. That little sticker detail the bride and groom put on the hotel favor bags? Those stickers alone probably cost 50 bucks, not to mention the time and thought that went into choosing such an incredibly forgettable detail.

          If you are like me, planning something as grand as a 200 plus person wedding is more proof that despite everyone’s impression of you as a “laid-back” personality, you are actually the sort of person who lies awake at night thinking about the grammar of the menu card or whether you should cite poets on the translation page of the cocktail hour opera concert, (yes, that is a thing that happened at our wedding). I also would sometimes lie awake at night in anticipation, wondering how our wedding became a thing so closely resembling a variety show/three-ring circus. When I went looking at wedding venues with my dad and one coordinator showed me some photo albums, I couldn’t help but analyze (aloud) how the one photographer’s photos were too precious, while another’s were too perfunctory. My dad was, needless to say, embarrassed, and had to explain to the woman helping us that I am an “artist”, and therefore very picky. The picky thing— this is true. On more than one occasion, I have said “I wish I didn’t care about thus and so…”, because yes, that would have certainly made my life easier…

          So here I am, several months after saying our “I-do’s” and here are, in no particular order, some things I have learned about the wedding planning process. I am no expert on the whole marriage thing yet, but here are some reflections on the journey that made me a "Sadie, Sadie, married lady". (~my girl Babs in Funny Girl, of course.)

          1. It’s not cool to bore your friends with mundane details about the wedding all the time. With this statement, do not misunderstand me. It's not cool, but I did it anyway. B and I had a particularly long engagement for several reasons and I’m sure this contributed a lot to that special brand of stupidity I will call “wedding brain”. Your mind is on hyper-drive and all: Should we hire a jazz trio? Will the hydrangeas wilt too quickly? Should "Love like this remix" by Crooklyn Clan make the 'must play list'? (The answer to that one is yes.) Often times before social events, I set out specifically to “not-talk” about wedding stuff, only to find that I would end up being asked about it by some unsuspecting acquaintance who had no idea the wedding rabbit-hole we were all about to fall into. If I could do this over, I would have had a stock line, like one of my good friends who would say during her own wedding planning time: “If it’s okay, I’d love to talk about something else.”

          2. In a related vein, have sympathy for brides. That bride is getting a lot of opinions thrown at her and when she may seem super-opinionated at times, it could just be in that way that she is trying to assert what she wants when the whole thing has spiraled far beyond her vision the day. Have I mentioned the three-ring circus thing yet? This also goes for the groom of course. Have patience for his wedding brain too. My own groom frankly deserves a medal for the stress of the two weeks surrounding the wedding alone.

          3. Of all the details to obsess over, a good photographer is actually important. Since photos are one of the few things you get to keep, a good photographer, whose style you like and who makes you feel comfortable, will make the imperfections look beautiful too. When looking back at our wedding photos , they really do tell the story of our day because of the talented Leah LaRiccia and her second shooter, Shawn. Let me first describe the day. It was the record coldest Memorial Day weekend in Connecticut in years. It rained all day, and I mean poured, with the exception of five minutes. When the sun came out briefly during the salad course, one of my bridesmaids grabbed the photographers and B and I went outside for an impromptu shoot in the gorgeous, post-rain early evening light.

@ Leah LaRiccia Photography 2013

          After the wedding day, so many guests saw the outside photos and asked “When did you guys sneak off together?” I had the same reaction when I saw the candid shots Leah had taken of us during cocktail hour. I only realized after the proofs came in that she had surreptitiously captured B and I from the balcony above as we listened to our friend Sam sing “Heimliche Aufforderung” by Richard Strauss.

@ Leah LaRiccia Photography 2013

          This photo is a wonderful portrayal of a moment I remember quite vividly, when B and I drew closer together amidst all the bustle of cocktail hour. It says so much, not just about the beauty of the song and the poetry, but about how moved we were by all of our friends who put in the work to sing so beautifully throughout the entire day. The amazing part about this is that “Heimliche Aufforderung” or "Secret Invitation" is about a couple who sneak off to the garden together during a busy party, which we got to do later. We weren’t asked to promote Leah La Riccia’s work here, but she and Shawn were just our favorite vendors with whom we worked that day.

          4. Take some time on the day of to just look around the room at all the people who are there to celebrate with you. You may not see some of these people again for years. I’ll always be glad I took several moments to take in the way all those special people came together that day of that year. In the same vein, take some time to just look at your spouse. B and I were lucky enough to have the car ride over from the church to the country club, (an unforgettable moment in which he detailed exactly how many beers his friends had plied him with at the hotel bar the night before), but we also had five minutes to ourselves by the dessert table while everyone was on the dance floor, no photographer, no videographer. I’ll always remember that happily.

          5. That whole “my husband” thing will feel strange and wonderful. To me, I guess I didn’t realize it until I used the expression, but it always seemed like “husband” was a term that was earned over several years of marriage, not the instant you say those vows. I still remember the ring exchange, when the priest said to B in an instructional whisper; “Now, take your wife’s hand”. It had happened! It had happened just in that few minute span!

@ Leah LaRiccia Photography 2013

          Our first dance on that rainy day in May was “Come rain or come shine” for a particularly poetic punch line. The year and a half long engagement also served to contribute to my sense of relief more than my sense of sadness at the wedding's ending. In the end, it was all just as magical and beautiful as we had hoped and it had most to do with our friends and family— the work of our wonderful bridal party, the gorgeous musical contributions of our friends, the heart felt readings and speeches, the travel efforts of so many guests, and all our new firsts as a couple. Also, it was a wicked good pahty.

Photos @ Leah LaRiccia Photography 2013

“I sure hate bacon”… said no one ever.

    (April 3, 2013)

          We hosted our first major family holiday this weekend. The fiancé and I had opera rehearsal the day before and after Easter, so somehow I thought hosting 12 people for the day would be easier than driving back and forth to Connecticut. My parents, future in-laws and cousins all went for the idea and in fact, seemed excited. For one thing, my cousins are local and have a one year old who hates being in the car, so they thought forty minutes of screaming preferable to two and a half hours to Connecticut. There was a big part of me that felt the whole thing was sort of silly; like B and I were just playing house and that it was sort of laughable; the formality of such a holiday, not to mention the fact that we are actually adults.

          I had this desire to do something different for an entrée over our usual ham, so I took a note from the Jews and made brisket… only I wrapped it in bacon. I woke up at 8am on a Sunday. If you know me, you know that the only thing that usually wakes me before 11am on a weekend morning is the occasional church singing gig, so to have woken up to prep and slow cook a piece of meat was a feat unto itself. I was moving at a pretty good clip, inspired by the smells of the red wine and bay leaf marinade roasting in the oven. It was only at about 10am that the tearing of the ends of green beans became zombie-like. A friend texted to wish me a happy Easter and I told her: “Wish me luck that I don’t burn myself, burn dinner, or give everyone food poisoning.” Two out of three ain’t bad.

          I should preface this by saying that I had already burned myself the morning before. I have a new and magical curling iron that makes me feel super glamorous and I had been periodically just slightly burning the tip of my forehead which was mostly covered by my hair. Saturday morning, however, while absentmindedly reaching for something mid-curl, I burned my neck something awful. And it probably wouldn’t even be that bad if I didn’t have the kind of neck skin that turns bright red when touched. (I have a special kind of paleness ancient aristocrats would have coveted.) So I was not only in pain, but it was the first real day of a long-awaited spring and I was off to a rehearsal where my fiancé had already been for an hour, with a giant red mark strongly resembling a hickey. But don’t worry, I’m not the kind of classy person who can be discreet about such a thing. If anyone got close to my right side I had to loudly exclaim that that mark on my neck was a burn and NOT A HICKEY. My hair looked fabulous though.

          So Sunday progressed and I managed to not burn the brisket. Everyone contributed something from beautiful flowers to delicious food, (Pysansky eggs, pierogies, kielbasa, and sauerkraut included, what kind of Ukrainians do you think we are?) To the best of my knowledge, no one suffered any food poisoning. I managed to only burn myself once out of the many times I pulled the brisket from the oven, (which would have been fine if my dad hadn’t absentmindedly grabbed my arm for story-telling emphasis more than once.) All in all, it was a good day. The baby, (and her family) recovered from a harrowing scream-fest of a drive across town, we improvised with seating, took a walk, and as with most Easter holidays before it, my five year old cousin and I ate our weight in candy.

          With the exception of not having a meat platter yet, we found that we are more like real adults than we thought.

Dirty Thirty

(April 1st, 2013)

          So I turned the big dirty thirty in November. Was I ready for it? I can’t be sure. The damn thing crept up on me so gradually that I only seem to be able to reflect on it now. I have read that research shows that this birthday can be a much more traumatizing event for men than for women and the reasoning seems fairly logical to me.

          For men in our culture, not unlike for women, it can represent a proverbial notch in their timeline which is supposed to point to their accomplishments— like they should have a good job and should be thinking about settling down. But I think for men, in our increasingly youth-obsessed, commitment-phobic culture, (and if you haven’t noticed it, you haven’t seen a comedy with Vince Vaughn made in the past ten years) it can be seen as an expected end to all their wild times with the drudgery of suburbia soon to follow. And so, even though it is more acceptable to push the settling-down piece of life further back with the generations, the anxiety on the subject seems to increase in the wake of the transition.

          For women of our generation I think it’s a little different. From a completely shallow point of view, I think thirty is a good milestone for a woman’s confidence. I think my mother was at her most beautiful around her third decade, and that thirty looks good on most women. Certainly, I feel more comfortable and confident with my appearance than I ever did in high school. I’m not saying I was some deformed freak then (although close). It’s just that we all seem to have just met our adult selves in our late teens and early twenties and I, like many, am much more accustomed with my looks at this age, accepting of my flaws, and comfortable with my style. So in this way, I feel being a late bloomer has served me well. I’m also very lucky to have descended from a long line of late bloomers. I suspect and hope that this correlates in some way to this longevity gene I seem to have coming at me from both sides. My grandmother’s grandfather in the Ukraine lived to 101, and I had grandparents, and great aunts and uncles on both sides who lived to their late 90’s. Having grown up surrounded by many who considered eighty to be young, thirty is like an embryo still.

          I’d say the big change for me is professional I suppose. I can completely relate to one sentiment of a teacher of mine in junior high. She said she couldn’t wait to turn thirty— that she felt she would finally get the respect she deserved and she would stop being treated like a child and referred to as a “girl”. I can completely relate to this sentiment. Professionally, I feel like I can sing more of the repertoire I want to because I’m not a baby in the singing world any longer. I have felt some of the expected changes to the timbre of my voice in the past few years and more importantly, have the confidence finally to try some different repertoire choices. Having a slightly more varied aria package, for auditions, for example, shows some confidence at age thirty. If I had presented the same set of arias for an audition at twenty-two, it was more likely to show willful ignorance. Ironically, at this age my zest for having an international travelling opera career has greatly diminished— actually it’s pretty much disintegrated.

          There are several reasons behind this. For one, I’m pretty happy with my current life. I live in a great city, surrounded by great friends, have a wonderful fiancé, and I’m not too far from home and family. I work during the day and have a good salary without always having to constantly hustle for the rest of my life to make ends meet. I have gained a lot of entrepreneurial skills as a freelance singer, but at my core, I am not a hustler. I think very few people actually are. So even if all the hard work and sacrifice paid off, which is statistically no guarantee at all, I still don’t want to give up so much of what I already have. I don’t have a desire to sacrifice an active social life to sit in hotel rooms ten months out of the year in various cities performing opera. This is this side of opera they tell you about, but I, like many I suspect, was too blinded by the stars in my eyes to realize the reality of it. It’s not uncommon for me to run into classical singers who re-evaluate career paths as we start to fall out of the “young artist” category. I asked a friend recently if she thought I had become complacent about my singing career because I am getting married. She said: “Nah, you’ve been talking like this for a long time.”

          To a certain extent, I wonder why I didn’t accept that I wouldn’t have a different kind of career earlier— one that didn’t involve a lot of travel for auditions and gigs and where I sang a lot more in local opera and in more oratorio and concert work. Truth be told, if I could make a living singing recitals, I would. Not every Classical singer feels that way. I just love art song that much. But a travelling art song career is even harder to obtain than an opera career, and the latter is usually a prerequisite for the former. In some ways, I just did the thing that everyone who loves opera and singing around me was doing. It isn’t that I couldn’t accept that I didn’t want/couldn’t have a successful travelling career. I realized years ago that in many ways, I am not built for a traveling opera career and it alone is not enough for me, but I was having fun doing it. I still am having fun singing opera. I get to sing some of the world's most beautiful music with wonderful colleagues. I think and hope that for me, age thirty is going to mark a time in my life when I become more creative with my passions. I have dreams of traveling more, (for pleasure, not work), and of being a champion of the arts in my city in ways I didn’t think of before. Perhaps that means finding more writing venues. Maybe it means starting an art song salon. Right now, I’m working fulltime, performing in an opera, and finishing wedding planning. If I can find time to do my taxes in the next 2 weeks, I will be convinced of my ability to do anything.

Fooooood

          Tonight, there is a baby shower after work, and I’m looking forward to it because, aside from it being one of those lovely, happy, social occasions, it also means that I don’t have to make dinner. This is not to say that in my house, I am always the one to do so— far from it. We both take turns. This is just one of those nights when Brendan is teaching later in the evening and the task would be left to me. So I brought some cheese and a baguette as contribution to this potluck shower, and in exchange I will be fed for the evening with not so much as one greasy frying pan to contend with.

         One of my friends said to me recently, “You always have the best cheese at your house.” I told her that this may have been one of the greatest compliments of my life. I love to go to a local place, try cheese samples, and arrange a variety of sharp, blue, nutty, and soft cheeses. I guess it makes me feel very Parisian or something. Life without cheese and chocolate in particular would not be okay. Often people say to me, "Oh, I don't have a sweet tooth. I like salty things". I never understand this because I crave salty things too. I like salty things, sweet things, sour things and hot things. I just like all the things. I certainly feel a strong passion for eating food, but less so about cooking. I love to talk about flavors and try new dishes in restaurants. I also like occasionally cooking for friends, but the idea of feeling obligated to cook every night simply to feed myself is exhausting. And I live with Captain Hypoglycemic, so we like to keep him fed before he gets "hangry". When we improvise cooking something for myself or just the two of us, we always seem to be missing one ingredient and accumulate a small mountain of dirty pots and pans. And with our schedules we’re often not eating until 8:30 or 9:00, when I am hungry around 5:30 (Yes, I am an old person). We are lucky that we both like dinner salads quite a lot. One of my friends recently reminded me that I really used to enjoy cooking in college. Maybe it was the novelty of being able to serve it to several others every night. As the daughter of two caterers, however, my relationship with the culinary arts seems a complicated one. I learned basic cooking skills at an early age but in our fast-paced contemporary lifestyle, who can even keep up with all the ambitious expectations of the new age foodie?

          One big factor for me and I suspect, for much of my generation these days is societal pressure and expectations concerning health. With nutritional research ever-changing, and confusing statistics abounding, extra control issues are popping up all over the country. Food suddenly needs to simultaneously be non-fattening, all natural, organic, local, grass fed, gluten-free, hormone-free, cage-free, dairy-free, paleo friendly, environmentally friendly—you name it and the list of fears goes on and on. If you can just make it at home, that would solve a multitude of problems with food, right? As a result of what should be a simplifying approach, there is a new cropping up of serious, let’s call them, upper middle class domestics.

          I know that we are living in a nation with an obesity problem and we eat too many processed and high fructose corn syrup laden foods. I am all about eating whole foods, like those of our grandparents, but it can all go too far. In our efforts to get back to basics in food, there is this new homespun, homemade, grassroots trend that I find full of unrealistic expectations, at least for my lifestyle. I suspect that this, like most pretentious, guilt-inducing crazes these days, finds its’ epicenter in Brooklyn. There was a hysterical blog I read recently parodying current foodie fears and obsessions. The fictional protagonist in this particular whole food struggle narrative, distrusting a number of food groups, ended up eating nothing but rabbit, (raised in the home of course), kale, and vitamin D supplements, only to end up with massive kidney stones. The irony here is that the comments section was filled with questions, (mostly from Brooklyn residents), about how to successfully raise rabbits. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for people who work fulltime and have families to take all these extra steps toward putting a meal on the table.

         This is not to say that if you enjoy and have time for activities like raising your own animals and making your own detergent, sunscreen, mustard etc., that you shouldn’t feel free to go do so with reckless abandon. I personally, feel no such inclinations. My old roommate declared excitedly one day that “we” should make our own butter! She is a very good baker, and enjoys the process and the results very much, but I had to inform her that I had no interest. The butter they sell in the store suits me just fine.

          Baking is another realm in which I have very little interest in venturing into deeply. There are several reasons for this. The first is that I do not need to develop a habit that is calorically extravagant when usually a small piece of chocolate will do the trick for me. I like cookies as much as the next gal, but cookie batter is an evil I am not able to resist and I end up eating my way through the entire process. As far as cake is concerned, for most of my childhood, there was a perpetual stream of leftover wedding cake sitting in both the fridge and the freezer at home. I am talking classic 80’s and 90’s Italian bakery cake, slathered in bulky layers of congealed sugary frosting. As a result, I have such disgust and disdain for bakery cake, that we won’t even serve cake at our wedding. Anyone who has half a tastebud knows that cakes made from a box are far superior to all other cakes anyway. My grandmother made beautiful Ukrainian breads, lemon meringue pies, and rice puddings from scratch all her life. When my cousin requested her special birthday cake for her baby shower, everyone made a big fuss over “Grandma’s special cake”. When someone at the shower asked her the secret, Grandma replied; “Duncan Hines: Butter Recipe Golden”. It remains my family’s cake mix of choice. Cakes are for special occasions anyway. I say, live a little and consume some preservatives. Cake mix is just fine by me since the act of baking itself doesn’t suit my personality anyway. I am decent at making pie crusts and I like pie enough, but once the thing is thrown in the oven, I can’t futz with it. And futzing is a must for me.

          This brings me to my final topic. For someone who doesn’t enjoy cooking very much, I am very quick to boss others around in the kitchen. Just as I have very strong opinions about design aesthetics in the home, so too, I feel strongly about food sanitation, preparation, and presentation. My parents’ have imparted much of their wisdom regarding these components. I actually have a friend who texts me with questions of how long he can leave a particular food in the fridge or at room temperature before it is inedible. If I cannot reply reliably, I will call my mother and ask. So, I am one of those obnoxious kitchen hoverers, who, even when not asked to help, demands that meat doesn’t get overcooked and that the knife for the raw chicken doesn’t come anywhere near the vegetables. I'll also loudly condemn any items with any ingredients I can't pronounce, so I'm really just as bad as any conflicted Brooklynite. Not that I do anything particularly productive in this process, mind you.  I see myself in a supervisory role. 

          One time the fiancé’s friends called and invited him to dinner. He asked them if I could come along because we were both free that night. They said I could, but only if I promised not to help cook. “She gets too bossy.” I couldn’t even be mad. I know how ridiculous I can get after all. We all appreciated the special irony that the only woman in the group was to stay out of the kitchen.

"Work is the curse of the drinking class" ~Oscar Wilde

A few weeks ago, two friends, my fiancée, and I had the amazing opportunity to be tourists in Ireland with the additional bonus of experiencing an Irish wedding.  Trust me, it is an experience.  I must say that while I was excited to see a new landscape and couldn’t wait to see my dear friend Kate on the occasion of her wedding, my past experiences in the UK had me prepared for bland, fattening food and dreary, depressing weather.  I was really pleasantly surprised by how flavorful every dish we ordered was.  We had robust stews served with hearty brown bread, fresh smoked salmon, garlic and white wine mussels, Bailey’s cheesecake, and plenty of Guinness.  Compared with the entirely white, lukewarm plates devoid of flavor I had continually been served as an exchange student in England, I was delighted.  Considering the reputation of their climate, we had pretty great weather, with the exception of two days- the worst being a monsoon-like situation in Dublin.  That day, we just found a lot of excuses to head into shops and cafes for hot chocolate. 

Hot chocolate is not the beverage of choice in Dublin, mind you.  I was personally struck by how apparent the Irish stereotype was in this city.  At night, the Temple Bar area in Dublin is like Bourbon St or the strip in Vegas.  It’s the hen and stag party central of the UK and with the city center being quite small, it is extremely congested with drunken partiers. Then we’d see people stumbling around drunk at 2:00 in the afternoon in the streets of Dublin— seemingly functional members of society otherwise.  We took a tour of the Jameson factory and our guide once said: “At this point in the distillery process, the alcohol is 80 proof, and tastes extremely foul, but for my money you can’t beat it.  You’re drunk instantly for 40 minutes and hungover an hour later.”  Maybe I am getting to be an old, stodgy American, but that didn’t actually sound fun to me.  I suppose I should give the city of Dublin the benefit of the doubt, because we were there over a weekend.

Our first night’s stay in the Dublin hostel was an adventure unto itself.  The only space available for that particular night was in a co-ed dorm for twelve.  Brendan was on a later flight, so Christina, Rachele, and I were on our own that night and then were scheduled to stay at Kate and Peter’s apartment the second night.  Having stayed in four or five hostels before in Europe and having had no problems, I figured we’d be fine.  We met a handful of gentlemen with whom we’d be sharing a room when we tried to catch a short afternoon snooze.  We’d gotten only about 3 hours sleep on the red-eye.  They were very cordial when we asked if they would please be quiet at four in the afternoon.  We figured we’d better stay out late that night, in preparation for the wedding, but also to give our dorm mates ample partying time.  Surely, they would be in shortly after 2:30 or so.  How naïve we were. 

Our hostel's vending machine

When we arrived back at the room, there were several people asleep, and no sooner did I get into bed than the man in the bed next to me started to snore… loudly.  He flipped over, and I considered myself saved.  Falling asleep in an unfamiliar bed is an arduous task for me, but I was bleary-eyed enough from the flight to be up to it.  Approximately, every half hour following though, another loud drunk Irishmen would roll into the room and talk loudly for an hour.  Every one of them had a mouth he couldn’t kiss his grandmother with, (and trust me, I’m no prude.  We were told later that one word in particular doesn’t hold the stigma it does in America).  Most of them had actually lost their room keys and just banged on the door until their friends let them in.  The one guy came in crying that his friends had left him and then continued to loudly extol that it didn’t matter because his cheeseburger would be the best he’d ever eaten and would save his night.  He then chewed it very loudly while continuing “Ode to his Cheeseburger” for another half hour until he finally fell asleep mid-bite, aspirating cheeseburger with every breath.  It was shortly after two men started throwing punches at one another above Rachele’s bunk that Rachele and a friendly and sleepy Scottish man in the corner insisted repeatedly that they please be quiet.  I approximate that this was around 5 or 6am.

And then they woke up at 8am, and all started chatting again.  I know it was 8am because I asked Christina what time it was and one of them said: “There’s more than one of you?” (I assume he meant that there was more than one joy-killing America woman in the room.)  “YES!” we all yelled; “There are three of us”.  It was about an hour later, when the chatting hadn’t ceased, when I suggested with no too few profanities, that they find another space among the many common rooms of the hostel, in which to chat.  When this didn’t work, I shouted: “Why can’t you sleep until 11:00 like other drunks?!”

One of them did apologize when he left, but when I also found that they had eaten my precious Galaxy Ripple chocolate bar, we took the bottle of whiskey they’d left, checked out, and hit the road.  We enjoyed a blissful, night of peaceful sleep at Kate and Peter’s that night. 

Furbo Beach- Spiddal, Galway

Our next stop was Galway and I highly recommend it.  Galway City is a great university town and its surroundings are wild and beautiful.  We tried an “Air bed and Breakfast” stay for the first time and our hostess was lovely and animated and wanted to show us all around her town outside the city.  She took us on a local tour of abandoned stone homes.  We would reach a structure where the entire room was the size of our apartment’s living room, and she would say: “The family that left here in 1920 had ten kids and all twelve of them slept right here.”  Travel is often a good jolt to one’s perspective.

Cliffs of Moher

Brendan deserves a shout-out for navigating the narrow and windy roads, in a stick shift, with this left hand, on the opposite side of the road.  Those of us with minimal standard vehicle experience had to bow out of that one.  The drive to the Cliffs of Moher was pretty eventful, and shall we say, stomach tossing, but the view was spectacular and unlike anything you’d see on the east coast.  We also found a pub in a nearby town that Brendan and his family had visited when he was fourteen.  We had to call his parents on our prepaid mobile to be reminded of the name of the place, but we were happy we did.  My cousin who’d spent a semester in Dublin said that all you had to do in Ireland was see the Cliffs of Moher, catch some great live Irish music, and befriend the locals, who are all admittedly, extremely friendly.  This brings us to our next stop on our travels: The Wedding.

We had been warned by the bride that at Irish weddings, they close down the bar at 3am… to restock.  She even said she chose a castle with a lot of couches “so the Americans could rest”.  And so, we trained all week to stay up and party, as if for a decathlon.  As a friend from Galway, now living in Boston put it: “Yes, a decathlon is a good analogy.  There’s the beer round, the whiskey round… Ok, there are only two rounds, but you have to do them at least five times each.”  The ceremony began at 2:30 in the afternoon.  When I went to bed at 4:30am the party was still going. 

The Bride and Groom

First of all, Kate and Peter have a beautiful love story and I would be remiss if I didn’t tell it.  Kate, originally from California, was in her second year of grad school with us at NEC when she was at a bar in South Boston for St. Patrick’s Day.  She literally bumped into a handsome Irishman and the love of her life there.  Peter pursued her that night, telling her that even though he lived in Dublin, people meet for a reason and that that’s what phones and email are for.  So it was after about 3 or 4 get-togethers in Boston, California, and Dublin, that she told us she was going to move over there to be with him.  Her logic made sense.  She didn’t have plans after grad school, she was burnt out with singing, and she thought she would take a chance.  I cried, but then that’s not unusual for me.  I was worried for her.  She said; “If he turns out to be an asshole, I’ll come home.”  That was five years ago and she hasn’t regretted her leap of faith.  Peter has turned out to be every bit as amazing as she deserves.

Back to the wedding itself, the castle hotel in Sligo where it took place was stupidly beautiful.  It was once-in-a-lifetime, can’t-believe-how-idyllic-this-is beautiful.  Kate told us the church for the ceremony was a small gray stone church on a corner, and we must have passed about four gray stone churches on the road there, (along with plenty of cows and sheep butts).  After the beautiful Mass, it was back to the castle for cocktail hour.  Then, there was a slowly served, but decadent dinner.  “Oh, more potatoes?  But I have potatoes on my plate already,” seemed very funny to the Irish when I said it.   There were several toasts, including a rather emotional one from the groom.  He made a connection to Kate’s Irish great-grandmother and how Kate was now, in a sense home after her family had sought and found a better life.  Then the Irish band played, followed by traditional Irish dance led by children and the teacher from a local school.  And then at about 11:30, the DJ arrived to set up.  At 12:00 they served sandwiches and tea and coffee.  This is a key step in the process for recharge.  We are told that if this does not happen, the wedding will be remembered for ten and twenty years to come as that damned wedding with no sandwiches.  What we realized later in the evening, is that while we were dancing for the first two hours of the DJ’s timeslot, the Irish were resting in between, and so they were able to dance until he stopped at 3:30, while most of the Americans were more or less prone on the couches.

 

And then, the “Sing-song” began in the bar.  Apparently this is a thing.  There's no piano or anything.  Everyone just belts out the old Irish tunes.  Sometimes there were solos, but mostly it was just a group effort until everyone forgot all the words.  Peter’s dad has an ardent love of country western music so there was randomly a good deal of Patsy Cline and Hank Williams thrown in there.  Peter’s dad was also yelling at everyone who was not singing. This is my kind of after-party.  Too bad I started falling asleep in the middle of it.  I nearly wept when Brendan told me the next morning that it was 10:00 and checkout was at 11:00.  The partying continued for several days after back in Dublin, but we were headed in a different direction. 

Next it was off to Limerick County where Christina’s godmother, Joan lives. Upon our arrival, Joan had ordered us fresh fish and chips and she and her quick-witted sisters entertained us for the evening.  The next day we visited nearby cities.  Adare was a lovely, albeit touristy old village full of thatched cottages.  At this point I could barely walk I was so tired, and I was often blinded by my own involuntary tears of exhaustion.  (You may be noticing a theme here.)  Then we headed to Limerick where there was a River Festival going on.  The appeal of legally drinking outdoors in public places never gets old for Americans.

Joan also lives next door to a complex of “Travelers”.  That’s right.  Irish gypsies now essentially own the town of Rathkeale where she grew up.  They have these enormous stone mansions with gates and padlocks, where they keep all their things, and when they are in town, they park their trailers outside of them, where they continue to live.  We even visited a Travelers’ cemetery, because we were told we would see nothing like it elsewhere.  Every elaborately carved gravestone was decorated to the nines with balloons, plastic flowers, handwritten messages, and even baskets of champagne and chocolate.  We were intrigued to see that so many of them had passed in their 30’s and 40’s because of all the inbreeding.  Ever since spending a semester in Rome, (and performing in the opera Carmen), I’ve been fascinated with gypsy culture and how they have remained an “other” for so long.  Apparently today, it is in large part due to the massive amounts of drug money they make.

Our last night there, Joan said we had to get outside for a walk because the Irish air is particularly fresh and we certainly agreed.  I’ll remember the greenness of the hills and the smell of the peat in the air, hopefully as clearly as I will remember our night in that Dublin hostel. 



Token sheep butt shot