The taxi takes me through the middle of the city. Can I call it my city if I no longer live here? The rain does little to dampen my enthusiasm as we drive through Parnell Square, the Georgian row houses and their doors welcoming me home with loud splashes of red, yellow and green. O’Connell Street, the General Post Office with its bullet holes, a permanent reminder of the 1916 Rising. So much history crammed haphazardly into buildings and statues; my national pride grows with each jump of the fare meter.
For me, Dublin has always been a curious blend of true Irish and landed English gentry, unlikely bedfellows and, even today, the juxtaposition is evident. Five story Edwardian and Georgian mansions alongside two-up-two-downs, the sculpted gardens of St Stephen’s Green a short walk from the locks of The Grand Canal.
Trinity College captures this hybrid nature perfectly. Built on forty-seven acres in 1592, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Trinity was modeled after Oxford and Cambridge and maintains a regal stature with its architecture and internal structure of squares. It houses the thousand-year-old Book of Kells and proudly boasts of its alumni – Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and Wolfe Tone.
My four years as a student create an unbreakable tie to the building, its history and gives a soothing sense of belonging somewhere. Even then, during Dublin’s doldrums, I savored the place, the wrought iron gates and wooden doors, the cobblestones and the campanile. They stood for more. Today’s Trinity, set in the middle of the bustling capital, captures the vibrancy, urgency and optimism that is the Irish spirit.
Viewing Trinity at dusk thrills me; the gates shimmer in the dramatic lighting, the almost-white columns reach upward, the arched doorway through which Samuel Beckett himself walked. I half expect to see men in top hats, ladies in long dresses and carriages waiting to whisk them home. Or kids in baggy jeans with Frankie Says… t-shirts.
Ten years ago, Dublin was the darling of Europe, unemployment low and money flowing; it seemed everyone was experiencing an upwardly mobile life. There was unprecedented growth and building as every person in the country caught hold of the Celtic Tiger’s tail; the promise of a better life too much to resist. Many stayed attached long after it had proven itself to be more pied piper than yellow brick road.
The taxi finally leaves me at a hotel, close to my childhood home where I meet friends. There is nothing to recognize. Now owned by a multi-national hotel group, this is not the place where my mother and I came to people watch on a Sunday afternoon. It bears no resemblance to the bar where I worked for three years during college and I cannot place the photos from my debs. It is generically beautiful, yes, but do memories endure when the places that house them disappear?
I listen to four women who stayed when I left, their frustration with the current climate obvious and unsettling. I live with the illusion that nothing has changed, that I will one day call Dublin home again and I do not want that fantasy shattered.
Hindsight. It is easy to see the mistakes, the warnings, but for my friends, life is lived daily and right now it is challenging. There is disagreement amongst them and the conversation grows morose. Perhaps the upcoming election will help; has it ever?
I wonder aloud what the future might hold for my beloved city, my nation. And the response offers solace.
“We’re Irish. We’re used to being down; it suits us, gives us something to talk about in the pub, don’t you know? I think maybe we’re not well suited to being on the top of the heap; we don’t know what to do with all that money, all that power, like lipstick on a pig.”
The conversations rambles into the personal; we recount memories, recall anecdotes, we eat, we drink, we make merry. We say our goodbyes.
I lean back in another taxi driving the dark familiar streets and I am homesick. Even as I breathe in Dublin, I miss it.