The Trip to Ireland That Never Happened

How a broken ankle, a milk carton of shamrocks, and a bird that raised the dead made me a novelist.

By J. Paddy Spaight

I never intended to become a novelist. Oh, I’d always enjoyed writing, but sitting down and producing an entire novel? That was something other people did. People who wore tweed jackets, smoked pipes, and used words like protagonist in everyday conversation. Not me. As it turned out, all I needed to become a novelist was an inheritance, a trip to Ireland, a broken ankle, and a bird with a rather unusual talent. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start with my Aunt Paula.

My aunt was a nun, a member of the Sisters of Charity, and a woman who always dreamed of visiting Ireland. Although she never made the journey, she maintained a close connection with our Irish relatives, particularly her cousin, Mary Spaight King. Every year, as St. Patrick’s Day approached, something rather remarkable would arrive in the mail for Aunt Paula. A milk carton. Not filled with milk, mind you. Filled with fresh shamrocks, carefully gathered from Mary’s garden in Ireland and sent across the Atlantic. Imagine that. While the rest of us were wearing green neckties and plastic shamrock pins, Aunt Paula was receiving the genuine article, straight from Irish soil.

Those little green plants were more than a holiday decoration. They represented a connection to the country my aunt longed to visit and the family she knew across the ocean. As the years passed, Mary’s grandson became acquainted with Aunt Paula, and the two began corresponding. The connection between our American and Irish branches of the family continued.

Then, about five years ago, Aunt Paula died. Among the photographs, birthday cards, and religious items she left behind was something neither my brother nor I had expected. We each received an inheritance of more than $8,000. My brother shared part of his inheritance with his children. I had something else in mind. I was going to Ireland.

Not simply to admire the green countryside, explore ancient castles, or listen to the wonderful Irish accents. I wanted to visit the cottage where my grandfather had been born. I wanted to see the place where my family had lived before crossing the Atlantic and beginning a new life in America. And, in a way, I wanted to make the journey Aunt Paula had always dreamed of making. So Billie, my wife, and I began planning our trip. We were going to Ireland! Well, that was the plan. Unfortunately, life had another itinerary in mind.

Around that time, Billie’s best friend died, and we traveled to Ohio to attend her funeral. But we never got to see the service. As we entered the darkened church, Billie tripped on a step and fell, breaking bones in her ankle. Instead of attending a funeral, we found ourselves at a hospital, where surgeons repaired her injured bone with titanium screws. Our trip to Ireland was postponed indefinitely.

Now, I should explain something about Billie. She’s the sort of person who worries about everybody else, even when she’s the one lying in bed with an ankle held together by pieces of titanium. As she recovered, she began feeling guilty about our canceled vacation. I told her not to worry. Ireland wasn’t going anywhere. The cottage would still be there. Our relatives would still be there. And I was reasonably certain nobody was planning to move the entire country while we weren’t looking. But I could tell she was disappointed.

So I came up with an idea. If Billie couldn’t go to Ireland, Ireland would come to Billie. I decided to teach myself how to create a blog. Mind you, I didn’t know much about building blogs at the time, but I figured it couldn’t be much harder than assembling a piece of furniture without reading the instructions. I was wrong, of course. Nevertheless, I persevered, and before long, I had constructed a website devoted to something rather unusual: our imaginary vacation to Ireland.

Each day, I wrote another installment describing what Billie and I had supposedly done during our travels. I included photographs, mentioned relatives we planned to visit, and described our fictional adventures as though we were actually there. We weren’t, of course. Billie was recovering at home, and I was sitting at a computer inventing an Irish vacation. But something unexpected began happening. People started reading the blog. Better yet, they began complimenting my writing. And Billie? She commented on every single post. Every one. She was proud of what I was doing, and she made certain I knew it.

Now, compliments are wonderful things. They can make a person feel ten feet tall, even when he’s sitting in front of a computer wearing slippers. But these compliments did something more. They awakened a part of me I’d nearly forgotten existed. I loved to write. Not just the imaginary Irish travel stories. Everything. I began writing essays, observations, humorous pieces, and descriptions of ordinary objects that probably didn’t deserve the attention I was giving them. I even wrote about an old silverware drawer. Yes, a silverware drawer. And I enjoyed every minute of it. I couldn’t stop writing. It was as though someone had opened a door that had been closed for years, and suddenly, all these words were rushing out.

Eventually, I began entertaining a rather ambitious thought. What if I wrote a novel? Not a blog post. Not an essay. An actual novel. I mentioned the idea to Billie, who thought it was marvelous. So there we were, sitting around the bedroom, tossing ideas back and forth, trying to come up with something worth writing about. And that’s when Billie suggested something that would change everything.

“What about a bird that can bring dead people back to life?”

Now, I don’t know what inspired that particular suggestion. Most people, when asked for an idea for a novel, might suggest a romance, a murder mystery, or a story about a family overcoming adversity. My wife suggested a bird that resurrected corpses. I married an interesting woman. As I recall, I was the one who suggested that the dead people might return as zombies. And just like that, we had the beginnings of a story: a strange bird, dead people returning to life, and a funeral home.

The more we discussed it, the more possibilities I began to see. Before long, I was writing what would become my first novel, Shadow’s Prisoners. Five months later, the book was available on Amazon. I had become a published novelist. And to think it all began because Billie broke her ankle. Now, before anyone gets the wrong idea, I certainly wouldn’t recommend breaking an ankle as a method of encouraging your spouse to pursue a literary career. There are easier ways. But sometimes life takes us down roads we never intended to travel.

And speaking of traveling, there’s still the matter of Ireland. Did Billie and I ever make that trip? You bet we did. Twice, in fact. And those visits turned out to be everything I’d hoped for. We met Mary’s grandson, continuing the family connection that had begun with Aunt Paula’s correspondence. We also met relatives who traveled from England specifically to see us.

One of those relatives was my cousin Noreen. When we met, I noticed tears in her eyes. Later, she explained why. I reminded her of her father, my granduncle Stephen Spaight. Imagine traveling thousands of miles to meet relatives you’ve never known, only to discover that your face reminds someone of a loved one from another generation. It’s a moment I haven’t forgotten.

But perhaps the most meaningful experience of all came when Billie and I visited the cottage where my grandfather was born. There it was. The ancestral home I’d dreamed of seeing. And outside the cottage stood a bench. Not just any bench. It was the very same bench where my great-grandfather had once sat with his son—my grandfather. And now, generations later, Billie and I were sitting on it. We even had our photograph taken.

I wish I could adequately describe what that moment meant to me. Here I was, an American whose family had left Ireland generations earlier, sitting outside the home where my grandfather had entered the world. For a moment, the years separating us didn’t seem quite so great. The cottage was still there. The bench was still there. And, thanks in part to Aunt Paula, so was I.

I’ve often thought about the curious chain of events that brought everything together. Aunt Paula dreamed of visiting Ireland but never made the journey. Every St. Patrick’s Day, her cousin Mary sent her fresh shamrocks from an Irish garden, keeping their family connection alive. Years later, Aunt Paula left me an inheritance that made it possible to plan my own trip. Then Billie broke her leg. Our vacation was postponed. I created an imaginary trip to cheer her up. People complimented my writing. Billie encouraged me. And together, we came up with an idea about a bird that could bring dead people back to life. Five months later, I was a novelist. And eventually, we went to Ireland anyway. Twice.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Billie hadn’t fallen in that Ohio church. Would we simply have gone to Ireland, visited our relatives, taken photographs, and returned home with wonderful memories? Would I ever have written Shadow’s Prisoners? Would I have written any of my books? I haven’t the slightest idea. But I do know this: Aunt Paula gave me the opportunity to discover my family’s past. Billie gave me the encouragement to discover my future.

And somewhere between a milk carton of shamrocks, a broken ankle, an imaginary vacation, and a bird that raised the dead, I became an author.

Funny how life works, isn’t it?