Four Years at the Mount

Sophomore year

We Are Once in a Lifetime

Carolyn Shields

(10/2011) I leaned back in my airplane chair after a cruddy nap as the lights of Dublin stood out in the 4 a.m sky. "Okay, I can do this. Ha-ha, holy cow, I can do this…" A few hours earlier, somewhere over the Atlantic, I paused in reading the money section of Rick Steves’ European travel book for the hundredth time and could half feel all the prayers from back home accompanying me. Hours before that I was kissing my parents goodbye in the airport, giddy with excitement. The night before I felt ridiculously nauseated. One week before I was being splattered by my friend’s car, stuck in mud. A month ago? Booking hotels like no other. This past summer? Working for those euros. Last year trying not to fall asleep in my class…

Isn’t it funny how every moment of our lives adds up to something? I’m lying here on my bunk bed in my apartment in Dublin, and I’m thinking I’ve worked so hard to get here. It’s all added up to this. But what will THIS add up to? Becoming the woman God made me to be? Finding true love in the Scottish highlands? Navigating a Parisian train station without a chaperone? Or simply being able to feed myself? (Added next day: I ate an apple with peanut butter for dinner).

So we have right now. We have choices. Mine brought me to Dublin, to this beautiful city with its parks where flowers are still in full bloom and where children take their first careful steps in Merrion Square. Where Celtic music is heard all down Grafton Street and where hair dryers have a tendency to blow fuses. And these next three articles will take you here too…

It was about 6 a.m when Emily and I got to our apartment. It’s right off Grafton Street, and anyone who knows anything about Dublin knows that Grafton is Ireland’s busiest high-fashion street. We stood on our terrace and squealed like girls, jumping up and down. "We’re in Ireland! We’re in Ireland!"

Fast forward three hours when Emily was zonked out on the bed and I was sprawled like a noodle on the couch. That afternoon we walked through Grafton Street, avoiding the throngs of people the best we could, trying to absorb everything…the mannequins displaying European fashions behind sheets of glass, the street vendors selling bouquets of flowers, the crazy rush of a city in general…The last 48 hours was a blurred whirlwind of action.

David, Emily, and I sighed in relief while walking through St. Stephen’s Park. Crisp yellow leaves were on the ground, and resting on a park bench we watched two swans duck beneath the clear surface of the lake. The Irish "walk fast, talk fast, and drink fast" but every other aspect of their life is slower paced, like the couples strolling beneath the hundred-year-old trees at St. Stephen’s or the three old men drinking Guinness at the Duke’s, the first pub we went to.

It’s crazy to think we can conquer Dublin in just three months. Add Ireland on to that. Oh, and Edinborough, London, Vienna, Brussels, and, you know, Paris…But already my horizons are broadening with only 48 hours on Carolyn’s Becoming Culturally and Financially Aware of Her Milieus Timetable. Such as? Grocery shopping for myself for the first time in a place where the dollar sign isn’t on any no recognizable brand of chips, excuse me, "crisps." It’s "grand," as in fine, but not "savage" (or great) like I thought it would be. I still want to shop for a "jumper" though(I mean sweater). This slang isn’t much "crack," as in fun, when we can barely handle the accents.

But conquer it we will! First the slang, then this city with its crazy streets and drivers, then Europe. Also the world. Might as well think big.

But reality is kicking us already. Ha-ha, that grocery trip really got to us I guess. So David, Emily, and I got together this afternoon to talk money.

"Looks like peanut butter and jelly for the next three months," Emily said.

"After O’Neills tonight," I said from the couch, computer on my lap and our Excel budget sheet pulled up. "Gotta have a Guinness."

"And are we still on for the opera in Vienna?" David asked.

Ha-ha, so. This life is grand, and I mean "grand" in the non-Irish sense. I still go through each day wondering why God gave it to me. Kind of like how Michael says "Why me?" in "Princess Diaries," but he says it because he found a princess. My goal in life is to pray like it’s a drug. God’s three answers to our prayers are, "Yes," "Not yet," and "I have something better in mind." And, yes, I stole that off of the internet, but it’s worth sharing. I can easily find myself awed by God’s beauty, but I don’t always thank him for sharing it, so I really do not know why I have been given this life. Two hours ago I was in a pub drinking Guinness (ok, ok…more like sipping it), sheltered by wooden walls with stained glass windows. It’s hard to imagine that life gets any more beautiful.

Before I left, I was telling my friend how I’m worried about leaving because my life can’t really get any more beautiful, and I felt like leaving for Ireland would only keep my life the same or make it less great. And look! Here I am, sitting on my bunk bed, still laughing with Emily about that random Irish man we met on the street who talked to us for AN HOUR AND A HALF. They weren’t kidding about the Irish telling stories. Talk about details. Down to the euro his cousin paid for a lampshade.

Switchfoot sings, "Breathe it in. The highs and lows. We call it living…There are miracles there in your eyes. It’s no accident we’re here tonight. We are once in a lifetime."

Read other articles by Caroline Shields