Liscannor, Ireland: rest, rainbows, and rejuvenation.

Liscannor. A tiny town on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. There’s Lahinch across the horseshoe bay, with white houses pebbled along the hazy kelly hills. I ask a local how to pronounce it.

“To the English, it’s pronounced Lis-CANN-or. To the Irish, it’s Liscannoooor,” she says with a ghostly purse of the lips and a brogue roll of the tongue.

Night.

Travelers, weary from a month on the road, we settle into a cozy beach cottage and light a fire in the black stove. A previous dash to the country store has rewarded us with a crisp wine, and we clink our glasses. As the room warms, we peel off our layers of coats and scarves and finally sweaters, our socked toes curling to the heat as we bask in the embers.

Afternoon.

A strategically placed Irish novella beckons from a bay window—first him, then me, and then we chat about secrets hidden between delicious words.

A tumult hurls rain sideways, loud as breaking glass. The lap blanket gets pulled to the chin with a smile.

A season in a day here, soon the sun gleams and glistens, turning grass the famous emerald, and gray stone to a true gold. And, yes, a rainbow, its full arch so clear that if we each run to a side, we swear we’ll be soaked in its paint.

In the past, the village folk got together and created a park with lovely stone benches. Not facing each other, but each facing the sea. There is no sitting across for such a view—Ireland is for holding hands and silence and stirring of souls.

The Atlantic is a raging, smashing, crushing giant bull, stomping and snorting, tossing the spray straight up with such a mighty blow, that the water is momentarily suspended there, afraid to come down again. And soon, with a season in a day, it whispers and laps and shimmers gently to lovers and sleeping babies over smoothed rocks and boulders, and seabirds can tiptoe on its shores once more.

Morning.

He is now making breakfast—our last before we leave. And I am on a stone bench, pondering, then simply being. The stone is chilly through my jeans. And it’s time to go. The sun filters glowing ribbons down on me, whispering stay. But that’s the beauty of Ireland. You never really leave, once you’ve been here.

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