Plain brown wrapper

It has been blustery since yesterday, great gusts that sneak in unsealed windows and blow open the hatch to the attic. And yet the towering oaks and chestnuts around us remain largely intact, and only a few leaves have made drifts of gold and brown by the side of the road. Trees here grow in thick stands, and the people of the land know that these stands both provide shelter and protect the soil.

The way of life here is different, some would say backwards. There's plenty of business opportunity, but I doubt people would avail themselves of it. If you need something, you need to let someone know: they'll chat with someone else (I swear Main Street looks like something from a Hollywood musical, with people stopping and chatting every 20 feet), and before you know it, someone will hear about something that just may be what you were looking for. Imagine a place where people identify their needs and then seek it out, instead of the marketing machine telling them what they want.

Our hilltop neighbor told us of the tale of finding their extraordinary home. Scouring listings in the paper and on the Internet, despairing of finding something beautiful where they could raise their family, they told their tale of woe to another school parent. On her way home, the classmate's mother noticed that someone was moving out. She stopped her car (yes, in the middle of the road), and asked the fellow what was happening to the house (yes, it is acceptable for total strangers to ask such questions) and learned that he was planning to rent it, but what with this and that, hadn't got around to it. Well, she says, let me put you in touch with this nice family that's looking for just such a place.

For the average American, coming around a sharp turn on a one-and-a-half lane road to find a car blocking it and folks chatting would be cause for becoming angry, rolling down the window and yelling at people in a not terribly civilized fashion to move their ____. But this is the way this country works, and most (not all, sigh) folks realize that it could well be an exchange like the one that found or will find them their job, their car, their house or even the love of their life. Or butter.

When we drop off Little One at his rural school, there are always a few parking lot conversations. The first few days, when Darling Husband was with, he bonded with the men folk, comparing things like cell phone reception (discovered the two places with the best reception at school), the best ways to get from here to there (learned of an excellent route over the hills and picked up an occasional rider); I concentrated on the domestic: where might I find good vegetables, butter, meat, maybe even some yarn. I learned that our little town has a health food store, which just happens to be run by another parent at the school, and that she's happy to order any product your heart desires (case of soy milk, please!); that there's an organic farm stand south of school (yup, another parent); that there's a pink building up north of Eadestown where there's a nice couple that sell yarn; that that there's another organic farm stand with meats (not another parent, but one parent knew of it); and that if I waited around at pickup time for the dairy farmer's wife, I might be able to score some fresh butter.

And here it is in my hands, heavy, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. A parking lot chat, transformed into a block of real, fresh, very local butter (from 15 minutes away).

It is an unspoken contract between neighbors that the trees will not be cut or damaged, say to unblock a view or such frivolity. We, as the trees, rely on each other to withstand the strong winds.

In the bag

When I first followed my heart to Germany, all these many years ago, I encountered my future husband's first scorn when I went shopping for the first time. No, I had not bought the wrong cheese or overspent my budget. Nope, I had said, "Ja" when offered a bag. He explained that that plastic bag had set me back 20 Pfennig (less than 10 cents at the time). In response to my dumbfounded look, he explained that plastic bags were expensive to manufacture and polluted terribly, and they were only for thoughtless people who had forgotten to bring their own bags like everyone should.

I was quickly indoctrinated, and had problems when I returned to the states three years later, and showed up at the supermarket with my cheerful wicker basket. Cashiers gathered around to admire this oddity, even stranger than the Birkenstock crowd's ugly canvas or burlap sacks.

While I was in Germany this summer, I read online that the city of Seattle recently introduced a 20-cent tax on plastic grocery bags. Uproar ensued, people resent being told what to do, it's a nanny state, I have a right to a plastic bag, they scream.

The irony is not lost on me: for I had brought shopping bags with me to Europe. They are everywhere in my life: in the trunk of my car, by the front door, and yes, in my suitcase when I venture away from home. Here in Ireland, I actually had to buy garbage bags, as I have yet to receive a single plastic bag during my many shopping excursions.

Here, bringing your own bags is the norm. This past weekend, a man was at the checkout stand next to us at the supermarket. The clerk was not alone in clucking as she sold him four plastic bags. It is the first time I have seen anyone buy bags in the four weeks I have been here.

Darling Husband took out the garbage last night (in one of our purchased biodegradable bags), and came back in with his first dumpster treasure: a new sturdy shopping bag from Tesco Ireland. I shall add it to my collection of purple co-op bags from home.

Bambi

On the windy-twisty road to Little One's rural school this morning, there was a deer in the road. It was lying on the asphalt, struggling to get up, panicked brown eyes begging me to not run it over. I wasn't sure how badly it was hurt, but it was clearly suffering. The adult voice in me told me that I should put it out of its suffering, and if I'd been a true country woman with a gun rack in the back of my rental car, I suppose I could have done just that, and bagged dinner in the process.

If this were home, there wouldn't be a deer in the road, because they've all been run out or run over long since. But if, for the sake of argument, there was one, I would call animal control, because it's dangerous to take care of these things yourself: wild animals, disease, you don't know where it's been, etc. We are a nation of people abdicating our authority to institutions. Not so the Irish.

I think the Irish would simply laugh at me, and tell me to call someone to put it out of its misery, cut it up and put it in the freeze, how often does dinner just land on your plate? They would not recoil in horror at the thought of dealing with a wild animal. Indeed one of our new neighbors, a self-proclaimed semi-retired Doctor (who seems to paint and walk his dog around the lake more than work), asked if we'd like to help him work his way through some venison he received last fall; the new season is upon us, and he needs to make room in the freeze. Yup, the butcher's window on Main Street (honestly, it's called that) has a new hand-painted poster that proclaims that they now have fresh venison.

When I drove back, after promising Little One that I would find out about Animal Control, the deer was gone. A friend reports that some folks who knew what to do had moved it to the side of the road. Whether it then left of its own accord, or became someone's supper, I have no way of knowing.