Life is Too Short, Make Memories Together

My wife and I were just closing out a chaotic week of being ran ragged from extremely long grueling hours, which blurred together with preceding weeks of work, kids schooling and sporting events, as well as the normal day to day evening tasks like cleaning , cooking, laundry, and so on. We love our crazy life, but even the best marathon runner would be worthless if they did not take moments to rest and feed themselves from time-to-time. Our anniversary was approaching. We had been married for 20 fantastic years and wanted to do something extra special together, a once in a lifetime experience to celebrate, but we had little to no idea where we wanted to go. My wife is an extraordinarily meticulous person with a propensity to plan every minute detail, and thoroughly enjoy it. I saw the glisten in her eye as she clasped our budget in one hand and her laptop in the other, shot me an excited grin and through a halfcocked smile she said, “now this is going to be fun.” After much back-and-forth delineation, as if this were a trial, she determined that there was no better place to celebrate our 20th anniversary than the whimsical Emerald Isle of Ireland, “after all” as my wife pointed out as a fruit of her extensive research, the 20th anniversary is the Emerald anniversary. I personally loved the idea of going somewhere other than islands nestled in the Caribbean. Don’t get me wrong, I love the heat and beaches, but we live in Florida, the land of heat and beaches. I personally was very excited for a new adventure.

It was a fantastic change of pace, to have a whole island to roam freely without the kids in toe. We rented a car, and after a brief crash-coarse on driving on the other side of the road we were on our way, off to explore the castles, oceanside sheer cliffs, and rolling green hills as far as the eye could see and perhaps even a leprechaun or two if we were lucky. The scenery was as if it were from out of a storybook. Although the glorious landscape was greener than I had ever seen, and the castles were the oldest man-made architecture I had ever encountered in person. The one thing that stood out above the rest, was the people.

As we circumnavigated the entire island in a clockwise rotation chasing the lazily setting sun. Something we couldn’t help but notice was that every city had one thing in common. In the town center was music pouring out of the front doors, of rows of restaurants and pubs. Even the streets were alive with everything from traditional Gaelic to 90s contemporary live music, and the later it got into evening the more packed and energetic it became. With a sun that refused to set on the evening until nearly midnight, it seemed as if the daylight perhaps inspired an extension to the nightly festivities. Whether it was always this way, or if the Island, the people, and the weather conspired to create a fantastic excursion in celebration of our special time together, we may never know. One thing that I do know for certain, is that we will most definitely have to go back in the future to find out.