Days 0-1 - "I can sleep when I get home"

It was a journey of epic porportions, and it began with a glorious morning in that state in the north. Well, that's a lie, and a selfish one, at that. The journey for the beloved star of our story did indeed begin in that state a little bit south. You see, she had two wonderful children who agreed to take out time from their busy Sunday to chauffer her north. Dale and Elaine ushered their mother through the first few hundreds of many thousands of miles that their dear mother would travel on this journey.

So, Grandma arrived Sunday afternoon and spent a few days with my (Jonathan's) parents. The time, I'm sure, crawled by. And that's no insult to my parents. Just a knowledge of the excitement and anticipation that was burning deep inside Grandma. Monday night arrived, as did Libby and myself. We would spend the night and begin the next phase of the voyage early the next morning. All was going according to plan... Or was it?

Aer Lingus was an unfamiliar airline to all of us. So, how would we have known that unlike every other airline we had ever been exposed to, they had a weight limit for carry-on bags - a SEVERE weight limit. Only 13 pounds! A small suitcase can weigh 5 pounds on its own. That leaves you only 8 pounds to work with! A book, a sweater... and POOF! No more room! Forget your camera, a change of clothes, etc, etc. My mother was clever enough to look online and figure this out. Unfortunately, it was at the last second.

So, we frantically scrambled to weigh our bags. My bag: 22lbs. Libby's: 24lbs. My mother's: 21lbs. My dad's: 18lbs. No. No. No. No. But guess whose bag only weighed a triumphant 13.8lbs. That's right. Our hero was victorious once again! Grandma drifted off to sleep on the couch as everyone else panicked.

Eventually, everything was rearranged, and everything seemed to be ready, so we went to bed with the plan to be out-the-door by 7am Tuesday morning. We did great! We were actually gone by 7:45! Within an hour! Wahoo! The objective: drive to Chicago.

It was a long drive. Piled into my father's Trailblazer, drove and talked and napped and did whatever we could to make the hours drag on. Fun Fact #1: Kalamazoo is thought to be a native American word meaning... something. I forgot. maybe you can Google it and let me know. Fun Fact #2: Kalamazoo used to be known for its stoves and celery. This info is courtesy of a rest area sign in K-zoo.

We made decent time, though. Stopping every hour or two to stretch legs, we made it to the airport by about 12:30pm. Since our flight left at 4:45, we were plenty early. So early that the Aer Lingus people weren't even at the counter yet. Who would've thought that we, the Egle family, could have been THAT on-time for something?

We got checked in with no problems. Who thinks they weighed our carry-on bags? A show of hands, please? I notice that you didn't raise your hand. Good work. Security was the next fiasco. It started well as we were allowed to side-step the long security line and go straight to the x-ray machines. But that's about where the hospitality ended.

Sweet little old ladies aren't dangerous, right? Don't tell that to the Transportation Security Administration. They don't let anyone fool around. So, Grandma went though the metal detector, but obviously her walker wouldn't pass go through without setting the machine off. They took it through a special gate but then they had to have a special security person consulted to run a separate battery of tests on the dangerous walker. They even wiped it down with a little swab and used it to run tests looking for traces of who knows what... explosives? Drugs? Contraband leprechaun bait?

Poor Grandma had to stand there, just on the "secure" side of the x-ray machine for about 5 minutes without her shoes on, waiting for the resident little-old-lady-walker-expert to come run the tests. My dad tried to go wait with her, but he was quickly escorted away by a security thug who said, "I'll help her, sir." She made it through, though, as we all did. We even made it to our gate, a short distance away, again with tons of time to spare. A ton of time to spare, and a ton of hunger. It was WAY past lunch time.

The snafu with this part of the story is that all of the places to buy food were BEFORE you crossed the security check point. Argh! So, Libby and my mother went back and bought food (but of course no drinks (liquids) to bring back to the "secure" world at the gate, and I bought drinks from a little shop down the hall from our gate, while my dad kept Grandma company.

Again, Grandma's walker won us a perk: we got to board before ANYone else... even before first class! Grandma was funny, though. You would've thought we were going to Hollywood with the way she pretended to be completely and utterly dependent upon that walker, just so that people didn't think she was trying to take advantage of the system, or worse yet, to prevent being told that she wasn't allowed to take the walker on the plane because she didn't really need it.

The flight was nice. Even longer than our drive, but nice (especially since we didn't have to drive the plane). We got dinner (pretty tasty), and the seats all had personal TV screens where we could watch movies on-demand. It was tempting to sleep, but once falling asleep, I knew I may not wake again before landing, and someone had to be the tough one and tell Grandma to get up and walk around. So after dinner, and after each of two movies that I watched, I made her get up, despite some mild protests. She was a trooper, though, and walked up and down the aisles until I told it it had been enough. All that walking and I think she still ended up sleeping the most out of all of us.

We landed first in Shannon, Ireland, before heading to Dublin. We thought a few people might get off, but almost everyone on the plane did! And then we still took the HUGE nearly empty plane from Shannon to Dublin. It was nice that we didn't have to get off or anything, but it didn't seem the most efficient in terms of fuel.

Grandma watched from the window as we touched down in Dublin. I think that was when the beginning of her 2+ day smile began. It has yet to leave her face. And yet as excited as she obviously was, she was the picture of patience as we had to wait while everyone else got off the plane, as the crew opened up the hull under the plane to retrieve her walker. We went through customs and awaiting us on the other side was Tim.

It was the first time in my life that anyone has ever had a sign with my name on it in the airport, but there he was, with EGLE written in big letters on the sheet of paper. For anyone reading this who doesn't know, Tim is Helen's husband. Helen will be introduced later in the story, if you don't already know her. So consider this foreshadowing. Or suspense. Or something else dramatic.

After some quick introductions, as none of us had ever met Tim, we headed to the car rental counter to get our vehicle. As the minimum age requiremet was only 24, I got to sign up to be the driver. Neato. Driving on the left is nothing I can't handle. Or so I hoped. We waited for ages to catch a shuttle to go to the rental car lot, before finally getting our vehicle. Gracious, kind Tim let us home. That was wonderful because even though we had a GPS system, their house had no house number, and we couldn't put in their address. And there was oodles of construction... and a mysterious lack of signs...

We drove for about and hour, and it was well worth it, because it culminated in the next climax of the story for our dear hero: the reunion at Mullingar.

And here we introduce Helen. But to do that, we must intorduce John. (And forgive me if I mess up the details, but I heard this story in bits and pieces from John as Helen's father kept interruting to encourage me to drink pints of the local brew.) John, you see, is a gentleman who lived in Ohio. He happens to be Helen's uncle. One day, John decided to invite three of his Irish nieces for a little American excursion. And BAM! Somehow that resulted in Helen spending some extended time in Ohio and working at the same place Grandma worked... or something like that. Ask Grandma or Helen. They tell the story WAY better, I bet.

Anyways, Helen was last in the States in 1990. There was a wee little baby in the family then who recently finished her first year of college (good work Michaela), and by that measurement, Grandma and Helen quickly deduced that it had been 18 years since they last saw one another.

Helen, I must say, is amazing. As is her family. Her husband drove an hour to meet us at 7:30am at the airport, and then escorted us back. Helen cooked us breakfast when we arrived. Her kids are really cute (and Jenna, the youngest, thinks I'm pretty snazzy, so she must be really smart, too).

Helen is loaning us her cell phone. She bought us a SIM card for said cell phone. Her entire family is getting together next week to "meet" Grandma, but they were all so excited that about 90% of them came to meet her/us the first day we were around. Helen escorted us to the B&B where we all (with the exception of Grandma, who stayed with Helen) would be staying, AND unlocked it and showed us our rooms, since the owner was out-of-town. Helen cooked us an amazing three-course dinner that night. She bought us a book on the history of Ireland and a book FULL of spectacular pictures of historical sites within the country. Of the plethora of Irish people that I'm sure were wandering about Norwalk 20 or so years ago, Grandma sure picked a cool (and extraordinarily generous) one to befriend.

So, we napped after our late breakfast because who in the heck knew what time it was? Certainly not our bodies. And after our nap, it was time to shower and get back to Helen's for dinner. It was scrumdidillyumptious, let me tell you. And then the party started.

A stream of people started arriving and it never seemed to die down. I can't recall for the life of me the order, and I will struggle with names, but I can get most of the relations. We met three of Helen's sisters (there are 7 girls and 2 boys in her family), all of Helen's four daughters, several of Helen's nieces, Helen's parents, her Uncle John and his wife... that may be all. I was expecting the list to look a lot longer, honestly. It felt like a ton of people. Maybe it's because people here are so nice AND so boisterous that it seemed like a lot more people.

Fun Fact #1: Helen's parents have 9 children. Two are boys. Fun Fact #2: Helen's parents have 18 grandchildren. Three are boys. Fun Fact #3. Tim (Helen's husband) is one of 5 children. Three are girls. There's something in the water here in Mullingar or something.

Anyways, a splendid time was had by all.

The night ended with Tim catching a hedgehog to show us (incredulous that we hadn't ever seen one before), and then we retired at the end of a loooooonnnnngggg day. Despite the length of the day, though, whenever Grandma was asked if she was tired or needed some rest, her response was always the same: "I can sleep when I get home."

And that's the end of a looooooonnnnnggggg blog entry. Hope you've enjoyed. And even more, I hope you're on the edge of your seat, unable to wait until you find out how day two went.