I call this one The Bells of Dublin. I've posted it here before. It may be my favorite moment I've ever had in Ireland. (Well ... hard to choose. There's the American Pie night. And Glendalough-at-midnight .) But this ... this was one of those beautiful moments when poetry and prose, reality and myth blended - right before my eyes.
The Bells of Dublin
"When the clock strikes midnight, we have to go outside and hear the bells of Dublin!"
This is shouted at me in the chaos of Sean O'Casey's, a smoke-filled pub off O'Connell Street, on the eve of the millennium.
By this point, I have danced a jig with a jolly toothless 70-year-old man. I have belted "Sweet Caroline" at the top of my lungs with the other crazies. I have flirted intensely and single-mindedly with a big meaty Irish bloke named Tom for the entire night. He tells me the story of Cuchaillain, touching my arm occasionally. I have no idea where Ann Marie has gone. She and Ciaran have disappeared. The snippy bartender insults me out of nowhere, due to some vaguely anti-American sentiment; insults me so sharply it is as though he has punched me in the stomach. An involuntary flood of tears. Tom offers to beat him up for me, in the same friendly tone he used when offering to buy me another Guinness. "Want me to take care of 'im for ya?"
Tom and I discuss the economic rejuvenation Ireland is experiencing and the problems such rejuvenation brings to Irish society. For the first time, people are not fleeing from Ireland, but flocking to Ireland.
He says to me, easy, familiar now after hours of craic, “Well, for so long, it’s only been about us. And our problems. Us alone.”
I’m tipsy, loving the flirting dance. I say, in an extremely obnoxious know-it-all manner, “Well, you guys are an island culture. Island cultures are always self-obsessed.” Teasing him.
Tom flashes me a look, taken aback. “Self-obsessed? What do ya’ mean by that?” he demands, cigarette in mouth, whipping out a lighter which happens to be printed with 10 Irish coats of arms.
I point at the lighter. Silently. Exhibit A. He bursts into laughter, and we then laugh hysterically for five minutes, staggering about, clutching at one another.
I have not paid for one drink.
When the countdown to 2000 is complete, ten men hug me at once. They all seem to be named Sean, Brian, or Liam. One hug is so violent that a Guinness splashes into my face. Tom kisses me anyway. Tasting the beer on my mouth. Laughing down at me.
And then, as one, we clamor out onto the dark side street to hear the church bells ring. I stand on the sidewalk, shivering, a satellite view in my head of people all over the world celebrating in different ways. Dancers on the beach in Papua, New Guinea. Brits obsessing about their Millennium Dome. New Yorkers clustered in Times Square losing their collective minds. Fireworks over Sydney harbor. In Ireland, we huddle in the alley, freezing, waiting for the bells of Dublin to start ringing.
Staggered up and down the cobblestones, like black paper cut-outs, are numerous tall Irish men, standing separately from one another, wearing long trench coats. They are all on their cell-phones. They begin dialing before the twelve chimes have struck. I then hear each one saying, in counterpoint with each other, in counterpoint with the bells, "Mum! Mum! It's Sean/Brian/Liam! Happy New Year, Mum! Is Da there? Put him on! Da! Happy New Year, Da!"
Calling their Mums and Das at the dawn of the new millennium, each and every one of them.