What the Wind Knows

by Amy Harmon

“There are some paths that inevitably lead to heartache, some acts that steal men’s souls, leaving them wandering forever after without them, trying to find what they lost,” he

I loved churches the way I loved cemeteries and books. All three were markers of humanity, of time, of life.

I’d heard once that our view of God has everything to do with those who taught us about Him. Our image of Him often reflected our image of them.

The nuns complained that religion was not a buffet from which I could select only certain dishes. I politely smiled and quietly disagreed.

Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes . . . not even that.

I enjoy that this book speaks *to* me and not down to me, that it is conquering topics oft-discussed without feeling trite, and that I can feel Ireland and Irish nationalism through the page.

And suddenly the world shifted and the light dawned, and I wondered if my grandfather had known who I was all along.

Eoin said baseball was never the same after the Dodgers left Brooklyn. But he’d always said it with a nostalgic smile, the kind of smile that said, “I’m just glad I got to be there.”

before. The bulb flashed and realization dawned. I remembered the picture I’d seen of Anne standing in a group beside Michael Collins and the picture of Thomas and Anne, the suggestion of intimacy in the line of their bodies and the angle of their gazes. Those weren’t photos of my great-grandmother at all. They were pictures of me. “Was Thomas in love with Anne?” I’d asked my grandfather. “Yes and no,” Eoin had answered. “Oh wow. There’s a story there,” I’d crowed. “Yes. There is,” he’d whispered. “A wonderful story.” And now I understood.

Death in Ireland meant a life in Ireland,

I was taught to love Ireland, but love should not be this hard. Duty, yes. But not love. Maybe that’s my answer. A man won’t suffer or sacrifice for something he doesn’t love. In the end, I suppose it all amounts to what we love the most.

But it is not the newness of her, the newness of us, that has captured me. It is the opposite. It is as if we always were and always will be, as though our love and our lives sprang from the same source and will return to that source in the end, intertwined and

indistinguishable. We are ancient. Prehistoric and predestined.

I’d often wondered, absorbed in piles of research, if the magic of history would be lost if we could go back and live it. Did we varnish the past and make heroes of average men and imagine beauty and valor where there was only dirge and desperation? Or

I didn’t think time offered clarity so much as time stripped away the emotion that colored memories.

“My grandfather told me once that happiness is an expression of gratitude. And it’s never wrong to be grateful.”

There are some paths that inevitably lead to heartache, some acts that steal men’s souls, leaving them wandering forever after without them, trying to find what they lost. There are too many lost souls in Ireland because of politics. I’m going to hold on to what’s left of mine.