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Leaning into the Wind
I'm standing at the edge of the rest of the world, leaning over the Cliffs of Moher like a flying squirrel mid-glide. A hood pulled tight around my head, eyes watering from currents as strong as my desire to ride them. Leaning into the wind — not backing away from it — tempting the gusts holding my body against gravity with my 20-year-old life.
I remember French-braiding my hair that morning, eating blood sausage and scrambled eggs for breakfast at the only lodging with an open room in that part of the sparsely populated countryside. The Irish diaspora thinned out by famine and drink, hard times, and the longing to be anywhere but here.
I recall that day on the cliffs almost two decades later. It’s similarly blustery, and I’m curled up on my couch, wrapped in wool blankets made not in Ireland but India. A world away from that day and that land.
“Shut-ins” is what the nuns who ran the Catholic grade school I attended called the infirm and the elderly, the people who can’t leave their homes. We spent our art classes creating cards for them in the theme of whatever holiday was closest. The message, copied onto construction paper from the chalkboard in a descending scrawl, was always the same: Get well soon. I hope you feel better. Merry/Happy Holiday.
I wonder if the recipients of these cards propped the drawings of deflated shamrocks and stick-figure Santas atop their standard-issue dressers and thought of the children who drew them.
If they scoffed at the absurdity of a child consoling them about the pains of life?
If they thought, these aged oracles, these masters of human suffering, of all the sorrows yet to befall us?
If they thought of all the gusts of wind that would knock us over in time? The ones people send cards for and the ones they don’t. The ones that, before we know better — or forget that we do — we lean into, eyes closed, arms spread, at the edge of the world, still imagining we can fly.
Credits
Accompanying music: forteresse by Jean Michel Blais
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rachaelmaier.substack.com
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By Rachael MaierI'm standing at the edge of the rest of the world, leaning over the Cliffs of Moher like a flying squirrel mid-glide. A hood pulled tight around my head, eyes watering from currents as strong as my desire to ride them. Leaning into the wind — not backing away from it — tempting the gusts holding my body against gravity with my 20-year-old life.
I remember French-braiding my hair that morning, eating blood sausage and scrambled eggs for breakfast at the only lodging with an open room in that part of the sparsely populated countryside. The Irish diaspora thinned out by famine and drink, hard times, and the longing to be anywhere but here.
I recall that day on the cliffs almost two decades later. It’s similarly blustery, and I’m curled up on my couch, wrapped in wool blankets made not in Ireland but India. A world away from that day and that land.
“Shut-ins” is what the nuns who ran the Catholic grade school I attended called the infirm and the elderly, the people who can’t leave their homes. We spent our art classes creating cards for them in the theme of whatever holiday was closest. The message, copied onto construction paper from the chalkboard in a descending scrawl, was always the same: Get well soon. I hope you feel better. Merry/Happy Holiday.
I wonder if the recipients of these cards propped the drawings of deflated shamrocks and stick-figure Santas atop their standard-issue dressers and thought of the children who drew them.
If they scoffed at the absurdity of a child consoling them about the pains of life?
If they thought, these aged oracles, these masters of human suffering, of all the sorrows yet to befall us?
If they thought of all the gusts of wind that would knock us over in time? The ones people send cards for and the ones they don’t. The ones that, before we know better — or forget that we do — we lean into, eyes closed, arms spread, at the edge of the world, still imagining we can fly.
Credits
Accompanying music: forteresse by Jean Michel Blais
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rachaelmaier.substack.com