Beach in Co. Donegal - Nicola Caso
My colleague, Nicola Caso, spent some time in County Donegal in northwestern Ireland last summer and brought home a photo album which has made me quite homesick.
Growing up, I spent nearly ever summer in Donegal and consider it my “heart home” in Ireland. We stayed within sight of Ireland’s most northerly point, Malin Head, and it was a wonderful refuge from the violence that plagued Belfast’s streets as I was growing up.
Do you have a “heart home” that is different from where you were born and/or grew up?
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Oh, I have spent alot of my life daydreaming and missing my “heart home”. I’ve been away since I was 21 or so.
It is of course a geographical place, West Virginia, but it also holds every memory of my young life, old friends, school, the little parish where I grew up. I haven’t been able to go back very often. I still have some family and friends there, but it is more than that. When I have returned, as we arrive by car or air , I sigh instantly and feel a difference in me that I cannot explain. I am home. It is where I fit. Simple as that.
M.
We have travelled many places, and we had a lovely home on a lovely street in Los Gatos, CA from 1982 to 2008. But I am a dreamer. We only spent a few days there, but the shores of Lough Corrib in County Galway are a mystical place to me. I held on to the hope for a number of years of retiring along this lake. One heavenly place there is Inchagoill Island in the middle of the lake, where St. Patrick took refuge and where there is a small obelisk shaped headstone of St. Patrick’s nephew and the roofless stone walls of a small church he and his fellow apostles built. A couple of nights at Ashford Castle did not hurt my feelings for the area.
I forgot to say that I imagine that heaven looks something like the area around Lough Corrib.
Marg,
I have exactly the same feeling when I pull into Syracuse, NY where I lived for 18 years. I fit there better than anywhere else on the planet. Pity Loyola Press doesn’t want to operate from there…
Paul
Eric,
Lough Corrib is, indeed, beautiful but being a flinty Northerner, I prefer the more austere grandeur of Donegal.
A few nights at Ashford Castle? Hmm. No budget travel for the likes of you!
Paul
Ashford Castle – It was two nights and made possible by the $50 a night B&Bs we stayed in for the rest of the trip.
My “Heart-Home” came to me via music. Born and bread in Denmark, I have always had a longing for other horizons and have travelled a lot.
I became familiar with the lovely music and lyrics by a Scottish superband, and that music made me curious to get to know more about everything Scottish.
There was especially one name that kept coming back to me and that was “Isle of Skye”. I listened to the music, read everything I could find about that place and eventually, I had the opportunity to go there and see for myself.
I had developed a huge love for that island, and trying to describe my feelings and emotions when I first sat foot there is almost impossible.
At long last I was there and from the very first moment, I just knew that that place is where I belong to.. my special place on Earth… a feeling of finally having found home.
It is said that Skye does something to people. That once you have been there you will forever wish to come back, and that when you leave the island you will leave your heart behind you as well and that nothing will ever be the same again. And so it is…..
Skye is my “Heart-Home” and will be forever. I am even going to relocate there within a couple of years. I still love the music.
Toolah,
Far be it from me to question anyone’s heart home but some say that when God finished creating Ireland, God still had a little beauty left to give out so he scattered a few places in Scotland and Wales with it.
I’ve never been to Skye, but will now seek for the opportunity to get there.
Paul
Eric,
You are right to defend yourself and I am wrong to have teased you. It’s a very Irish fault – we only tease people of whom we are fond. Mea culpa.
Paul
Paul,
I did not take any offense. I just wanted it to be clear places like Ashford Castle are not within our normal lifestyle. It was a once in a lifetime special. And it had a down side. We went to Ireland to mingle with Irish people. At Ashford Castle the guests all seemed to be very rich Americans.
Eric