Look Again………….Rather Than Looking Back !

I recently retraced childhood steps near my mother’s birthplace in Co Sligo. I expected that to be a sentimental journey………….in effect, ‘looking back’, what I found when instead I ‘looked again’ was quite unexpected………………

I didn’t just see again things I had seen as a child, the ‘me’ that revisited had changed in the interim…………. and how I experienced the people, the language and the landscape was refreshingly and surprisingly different.

One day we visited Streedagh beach a place I had been to many times before, and as we walked along it, I noticed ‘rocks’ sticking out of the sand………..only these were not rocks but the remains of a galleon from the Spanish Armada which was wrecked there in a storm in 1588. Now I was paying attention, now I was interested, now I was filled with wonder…………..clearly it had been there when I was there in 1960s & 1970s……….and filtered out as my attention was on other things !

My husband Pat on the prow of a Spanish Galleon !

Also near my mother’s home is Drumcliff, the resting place of the poet WB Yeats and I found this quote from him which summed up my trip and my learning:

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

I wonder what more is out there………………?