Auntie Bridie chose to teach children and all those who were in her immediate vicinity with the stick and carrot method.  Alas, the carrots were reserved strictly for the horses.  She was a powerful influence on the young Bridget who bore her name and at times her wrath.  Truth is she scared the bejabbers out of Bridget with her prudish disposition and staunch superior ways. Bridget believed that all teachers possessed these qualities, “must be a requirement for the job,” she had concluded many years ago.  Auntie Bridie often spoke of Bridget to her mother, “that one will never amount to anything, sure, there’s too much nonsense in her head.”  Even now, Bridget vividly recalls the sour taste of her Aunt’s disappointment in her.  For unlike the old dear the child had always been more of a dreamer.  I wish she hadn’t been such a frosty-faced crust ...may God rest her soul! Okay, I didn’t meet her standards but surely we are made to higher specifications than mere mortal ones.  Anyway, she told her self turning in the cabin seat and pulling up on the edge of the in-flight blanket, my tongue may not be as sharp as herself’s but my pencil sure as heck is!

        The five Flynn children were immune to the taunts of this stern matriarch.  They took their lead from their own dear mother Cait.  After all Cait had married a dreamer and a gentle rogue in Paddy Flynn.  He had a touch of the devil in him alright but with the charm of an angel.  When he sang a tune he plucked the heart right out of a person and entranced the very birds in the trees.  Back then Bridget imagined that those summers would last forever.  On the farm and by the ocean they played until the cows came home.  Bridget wondered if at any time during that era a tiny fragment of the United States had broken off, dissolved in the water and floated towards her in the vast Atlantic Ocean in which she played as a child.  Maybe it had been absorbed by her skin in Bundoran Bay and lay dormant inside her body.  Years later, after her divorce, it was activated like a homing beacon drawing her to shelter from her storm.

     Once more Bridget's thoughts settled on Patrick.  He was the oldest and gifted with their father Paddy’s wicked sense of humor.  His simple wit had them all in regular fits of laughter.  The boys were the musicians of the family, Patrick and Matthew played guitar and Joseph played keyboards.  The girls were taught Irish Dancing.  Back in the old days Bridget felt it to be much more of an obligatory chore than a poetic expression.  She almost had to have her arms tied to her side in the disciplines of the Irish Step.  Her free spirit longed to float and flutter in the freedom of a Celtic fiddle.  Caitlin, her wee sister, was a pretty little blond and a cute wee thing but she had a touch of the devil in her also.  She was always ready with the threat “I’m telling on you!”  She could even slant her eyes and mouth the words from across the room exercising her power over the three older ones. Consequently Bridget developed a protective quality to her nature and chose solitude as a place to freely exhibit her innermost feelings.  Once safe, in her secret place, she vowed to keep her dreams and her visions to her self.   Cait dressed her girls the same just in case Bridget wandered off and got lost, as she usually did.  Cait could hold out Caitlin in a crowd and say, “Have you seen one like this but with dark hair?”

        Back then the air was clean, the future was bright, and the bonds of love in that family would never be broken.  Those long summer evenings in Donegal reverberated with music from the kitchen and from the parlor.   One minute fiddles and horns delivered structures to the ears as delicate as lace, then in the next the old house rocked with the full ruckus of a ceilidh band reminiscent of and as rambunctious as the old bull at a gate! Bridget and Caitlin Flynn with a scattering of first and second cousins scurried to keep up with the tempo being set by the old folks.  They stamped and tapped their little hearts out in a pulsating display of their heritage on the bare wooden floorboards of the upstairs parlor.

        Soon, those familiar sounds and senses of a Donegal summer faded away as this huge silver bird, a Boeing 747, touched down at Shannon, Ireland. Sleepy travelers disembarked like mesmerized soldiers from the belly of the great Trojan Horse as Bridget looked out through the small cabin window.  The sun was rising as fast as the desires in her heart.  Not long now; only one more stop in Dublin then onward to Glasgow where her second brother Joe would greet her.  Then I'll know for sure, please God don’t let it be real, she prayed. Twenty hours into her journey and weary from it she traveled on. The flight from Dublin to Glasgow took a much lower altitude and was flown in a smaller plane than the one on the transatlantic leg.  Consequently, the turbulence sometimes caused the plane to duck and dive all over the sky.  Frequent fliers on this flight affectionately named it the “vomit comet!”  In the pit of her stomach Bridget knew why.  Another hour passed before she saw her homeland stretched out below her; a rugged ridge of bonnie purple mountains that rose and fell from sea to shiny sea. Scotland ...my home...my own folk ...I’m safe now. The words formed in her head then wrapped around her warming her Celtic soul.