Dreaming of Home

Dreaming of Home

Everyday, after waking up, I realized that I had been dreaming about home again. I lay staring at the ceiling for a moment or two. Then, dragging myself from the bed, I walked to the window and threw open the curtains. The wide open space of the New Mexico high desert stared back blankly at me. The cobalt blue skies, peach colored Sandia Mountains and endless waves of sagebrush and juniper stood in stark contrast to my dreamscape. For the past eight years, my first view of the day was this one. But today was different. Today, I was going home.

I grew up in Dublin in the 1970s. To understand how that shaped the person I am today, you have to understand something about Ireland at that time. It has been said by someone a lot more insightful, and perhaps more cynical than me, that the 1960s didn't reach Ireland until about 1975. So I grew up in a time of great change, where the old social norms were being challenged and cast aside. Of course, in my growing years, I didn't always understand this. I viewed Dublin through the eyes of a child. I led a fairly sheltered existence, the eldest of seven children. My parents were country people and had moved here after the birth of my first sibling, Paul. My father worked in the construction industry and construction jobs were much more plentiful here than in the backwaters of Wicklow where he was born and bred. My mother was from the West, born in County Clare and was the daughter of a farm laborer. Her father, Patrick Murray, had moved where the work was too, and had ended up settling and eventually retiring in Wicklow. This was where my parents met and where I had come into being.

Our days in Dublin were regularly punctuated by trips to the country to visit my gr...

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... We were old friends and lovers, learning that what it was to know one another again and tentatively finding our way back into each others lives. I still love Dublin, but I realize now that I love it despite itself and not because of itself. I think, perhaps, that is how it's always been.

And a strange thing happened.

I awoke one morning to find myself back in my bedroom, back in New Mexico. My wife lay sleeping beside me, lost in her own dreams. The house was quiet. I walked once more to the window and opened those curtains. The room was immediately filled with warm, brilliant sunlight. The sky was that same fantastic shade of blue and the Sandia Mountains glistened as ever in the early morning light. I gazed out across the waves of sagebrush and juniper and realized I had not dreamed of home. Looking back to where my wife lay sleeping, I realized I was home.