border
When you grow up beside a border, it takes on its own persona. In childhood, mine felt vaguely threatening, omnipotent, God like. This border, 65 years old in the year of my birth, was still spoken about in whispers. As I got older, and things got somewhat safer, the God took form. And like any faith, I moved from childhood acceptance to questioning. Why is it there, but not here? Why is the geographical north of the island in the political south? What have I been missing?
In teenage years in tiny, overstuffed cars, my friends and I began to flirt. Nighttime drives to beaches closer than any of us thought possible. This border enabled skinny dips and craic, even the night we were stopped by an Gardai.
As an adult, I like to think I see this border for what it is. Not omnipotent, not even omnipresent. Its lines were made by men in locked rooms - men who had never set foot on these lands. So now, we have the absurdities of straight roads which cross the border over and back, over and back, over and back, leaving drivers bemused and discombobulated1. Where exactly am I? The border marked these days only by the changing speed signs from imperial to metric.
When you grow up beside a border it can't help but shape you and how you see the world. I remember vividly feeling deeply at home in Cyprus, somewhere my nan was drawn to before more men and more locked rooms drew more lines on maps.