days 1 and 2

Now Playing: Snow Patrol, "Chasing Cars".

March 18, 2008. Woke up alert even before my alarm went off at six o’clock. I dressed, did my devotions, ate a quick breakfast, then walked down to Europa. It was sprinkling, but to the west over Cave Hill, a rainbow shimmered against the dark clouds. I took the bus to the airport. At the airport, I waited and waited…. The plane M and S were on was delayed fifteen minutes, and of course then they had to go through customs, etc. But at last I saw them coming up the sterile corridor through the international arrivals door, and it was good to see them again, familiar. M a bit greyer, S a lot taller. We walked out to the bus stop and took the bus back to Belfast. M chatted away: all about people in Stillwater, about how the family is doing, about the things we saw out the window as we passed from green Antrim countryside to outskirts to the centre of Belfast, about people in the church, and so on. From the bus station we trundled to RH. The way seemed endless, hauling the suitcases along the rutted uneven pavement. In RH, I fixed lunch for them at about half eleven in the kitchen.

While I was fixing lunch, Daphne came in, and as we were going up the stairs after lunch, we ran into Daphne, Rachel, Catherine, and Amy, and ended up talking to them on the landing for awhile. Rachel regaled us with the account of her adventures yesterday, keeping all of us laughing; Catherine and Amy joked about going to Victoria Square, and Rachel warned them jokingly to stay away from the buttons. After they went on about their afternoon’s affairs, M, S, and I walked to Tesco to get groceries. Then I took them on a tour of Queen’s and the Gardens: down Elmwood Avenue, past the church houses, the colorful doors, The Parlor, and Elmwood Centre where the Ulster Orchestra practices; past the Student Union, across the street, past the winged war memorial and through the doors of the Lanyon Building, where the great stained glass window shone down at us with Courage, Wisdom, Alma Mater, Temperance, and Justice. Then out onto the quad, where a saucer magnolia tree and two bush-sized star magnolias were blooming with elegant poise; under the colonnade, past the library and tower, along University Square, and down facing Union College, where a wedding party was being photographed on the grand stairs out front.

Then past behind the School of Music and Seamus Heaney library, and into the grounds of the Gardens by the side gate I always take to the gym. We walked along that way. Kids were playing soccer on the green lawn, and robins sang in the trees. We walked down around up past the rose gardens, pruned back and bare, then up past the lush bed of daffodils shining like a galaxy on the south-facing slope of the hill, and into the Tropical Ravine. Quiet in there: the endless green silence of leaf on leaf, still patterns of fronds and fiddleheads against the water-stained glass ceiling, cycads and palms, bananas and guavas, bromeliads and pitcher plants growing in a riotously patterned green brocade. Down to the fish ponds where orange koi glowed like comets in the black water under the duckweed, under archways of Spanish moss, smelling the tropical scents—camellia flowering in bushes.

Then outside into the chill again, and over to the Palm House. Here we found the wing full of bulbs, pots arranged theatrically to make long straight arenas of yellow and cream climbing above magenta and pink cyclamens. S and I smelled the cyclamens, a cleanly sweet smell. We walked around in that House for awhile, looking at the strange dry weather plants, cactuses and palms. Then back outside. We walked down to the city centre, but M was tired before we reached Castlecourt or the Cathedral, so we turned and walked back up to RH. In RH, I fixed a cup of tea for M, and we sat and talked. At about six o’clock I went down to the kitchen to fix curry for tea. When I came back upstairs, both of them were asleep. M woke when I opened the door, though. They helped me bring the food upstairs, and the three of us ate in our room. When we finished, M helped with the dishes. She, S, and I were getting ready to fish the ice cream out of the freezer when Ian came in. We talked with him for awhile. After he went out, we had dessert. Then I ran down to the common room to ask Phil to borrow a DVD for S to watch. Phil accommodated us with quite a selection. S chose Ocean’s Eleven, and he, M, and I spent the evening watching that.

March 19, 2008. M and S were both asleep at eight forty-five when I woke up. I collected my Bible and journal and crept downstairs to the common room, where I sat with my back to my heater and did my devotions. God was very good this morning, and gave me peace there, even as I prayed for it, with His rich promises. Liz came into the room to vaccuum at about half nine, so I went back upstairs. S was sitting in the bay window, reading, but M was still asleep. She slept until ten o'clock. The three of us ate breakfast, then picked ourselves up and walked to the bus stop at City Hospital. We took the bus into the city centre, and from there took a double-decker bus up the Antrim Road.

The day was mostly sunny, white clouds coming down over the sky, long branching wings like swimming dragons. We drove up Shankill Road, dilapidated estates and newly remodeled flats side-by-side. The bus driver obligingly let us off right at the stop at the foot of the lane to the Belfast City Zoo. From there we walked, up the road as it zig-zagged across the face of Cave Hill, the boulders of the hill jutting against the sky above us. Crows were circling over empty air, and as we reached the top, we could look southeast across the Antrim hills, sloping down dotted with yellow furze and criss-crossed with hedges, then crowded with brown roofs of houses, to Belfast Lough. I've never been able to see so far before: the Lough lay flat and blue under the sky, with a few trawlers on it, and on the far horizon, shimmering on the edge of sight, a line of dun and blue hills--the tip of Scotland, perhaps.

We paid at the makeshift zoo entrance (the main entrance is being redone), and walked into the zoo. It was quite a nice middle-sized zoo, strung along the hillside. We walked past an enclosure where white pelicans, swans, geese, and seagulls were paddling on thick green water, and we also passed a variety of ungulates, deer and bucks grazing placidly. We could hear sea lions and found them eventually, passing a pair of spectacled bears on the way. The sea lions were being fed and making a tremendous racket while they were at it: the huge bull male yarked and barked as the keeper tried to get him to obey the whistled commands. There were at least eight sea lions in the big pool, some of them gliding through the water, others sitting on ledges at the water's edge. I always find sea lions mesmerizing: the grace, speed, and fluid power of the animals as they propel themselves through the water, the sinuous curves of their bodies echoing the liquid rhythm of the water as it parts around them.

Penguins were nearby, a colony of very funny-looking little South African penguins with their odd ear tufts, flapping through the water. Walking on, S and I spotted a pair of red pandas curled high in the branches of a tree. M insisted that they were trying to imitate parasitic growths on the tree. They certainly were sound asleep. In the next enclosure we found three or four Barbary lions, regal creatures, half-asleep in the warm sunshine. Smaller than the usual African lions, and more stocky. A little further on we came to a pen where a lion cub and an akita were living together--a sign explained that the cub had had a bad mother and so was being raised with the akita for companionship. While we watched, the two of them started to playfight, the dog nudging the cub, and the cub pawing at the lion. It was ridiculous to watch: the cub, longer from tip to tail than the dog, sprawled on its back like a silly housecat, or creeping along, belly-down, and then pouncing on the dog, while the dog shook itself good-naturedly.

Going on up the hill, we walked past a couple of monkey cages: tamarinds, gorillas, chimpanzees, all with spectacular views southeast. At the top of the hill we found several picnic tables, and since it was already half one, we decided to eat lunch. The wind at the top of the hill was crisp and cold, but we sat in the sun and ate the sandwiches we'd packed. A gloriously splendid male peacock strutted around our table, begging unashamedly. The sun rippled luxuriously over its iridescent feathers, living blues and greens, its tail swishing on the ground like a woman's silk skirts. M tossed the crumbs from her bag of crisps to it.

After lunch, we walked down the hill. We found an enclosure with pygmy marmosets inside--tiny monkeys the size of a man's fist (plus tail), clinging to the wire of their cage, sunning themselves. They made a noise like a colony of tiny birds, cheeping and chirping to each other. One of them had gotten out, and M found a keeper to ask about it--apparently, it's been loose for quite awhile, so delicate that it would require a lot of care to catch.

We saw the gorillas being fed. Their cage was nearby. They sat, strangely human, against the glass inside their house, staring sadly back at us as they munched their celery and carrots. Their long strong arms drooped over their paunchy chests.

We walked on down the hill again, retracing the way we'd been before in order to find the otters. On the way, we went past the sea lions again. Most of them were asleep at the edge of the pool, lying rolled together like brown cigars. One of them was asleep standing up on a ledge near the water. It swayed back and forth, absolutely ridiculous, its eyes shut, a smug self-satisfied smirk on its whiskered face. The sun came out, and it rocked back and forth, so sound asleep that it almost tipped over. It shuffled forward, sniffed, and swayed, all with its eyes shut. M, S, and I stood and laughed at it.

We found the otters just across the way, a pair of small Asian otters. They were tumbling and playing with each other. Down the hill we found an enclosure of prairie dogs--not very well enclosed, as it turned out; they'd burrowed most of their little knoll even outside the walls of their pen. Fat, moth-eaten, and self-confident, grazing the grass. We walked through an aviary where egrets, wood ducks, and exotic pigeons made the air positively feathery: the graceful idealized silhouettes of birds in flight, and the endless bubbling rhythms of bird calls, of egrets crying to each other and pigeons burbling contentedly.

From there we walked around in another loop to see the giraffes and elephants. They were all inside while their enclosures were being cleaned, except for one elephant, which was being trained to stand and raise its trunk. We watched for awhile. Outside the elephant house, we found a pair of meerkats, inquisitive, friendly little beasts. As we stepped into the elephant house, the combination of smells and sounds reminded me strangely vividly of Noah's ark. On the left was a long enclosure full of giraffes. Their hooves brushed and swished in a deep bed of straw on the concrete floor. They were eating, drinking, moving about, strangely graceful--reminding me of sea serpents, somehow, with their long necks. On the right was an enclosure with three elephants. One of them was drinking, slurping water out of a trough and squirting it forcefully into its mouth, then flicking up bundles of hay to eat. At the far end was an enclosure of zebras, stamping and snorting, with a small stall full of ostriches off to one side. We spent awhile in there. Somehow it was relaxing to watch the animals, themselves relaxed, as they ate and simply existed. So many of them, healthy, well-fed, looking back at us. One of the keepers was out walking around, and he stopped to chat with a couple of other keepers--we eavesdropped as he told stories about healing impossible wounds on giraffes' legs and making sure that elephants were properly paired.

It was getting late, half three, and the zoo closed at four. We walked up to see the monkeys--coatis and langurs, then down to try to find the tapir, but it was out-of-sight. So we walked down to the bus stop and took the first bus back to the city centre. We walked around a little bit in the city centre, making a stop by Tesco (the strange one that looks as though it ought to be a Victorian concert hall from the second story, but on the first story is a normal grocery store) and the cathedral. Then we took the bus back to RH.

With M's help, I fixed chicken and mashed potatoes for tea. Andy L. was in the kitchen at the same time, and he and M talked away about Sweden, where they've both been before, and about the Queen, who apparently visited Queen's University today.

M, S, and I had our tea, and afterwards we walked over to Clement's. There was the usual queue of students outside the Union, waiting to get into the bars, but we walked past the bouncers and inside. M and S did seem a bit out-of-place in the coffee shop, but it was good to be there, with the familiar smells and the familiar music. S and I had milkshakes, and M had tea, and we split a couple of cookies, and sat and talked. M talked about people at home and asked endless questions about the history of Ireland; I asked S about his sea monkeys and the prospects of having a goldfish.

When we left the coffee shop at about nine o'clock, the full moon was shining down through a thin veil of yellow cloud. We walked back to RH. S and I took showers while M checked her e-mails and chatted with Logan(on) on my laptop. Then M took a shower. S went to bed, on EMM's airmattress, under a sleeping bag and a couple of blankets. M still tiptoes about, brushing her hair.