(Image: photo of the fjord in Leenane)

Three interesting things led me to a conversation about water with my mother yesterday. Three in itself is interesting if you consider the power of three, the magic number, not to mention how us Irish are ridiculed for how we pronounce this number in this foreign language – we pronounce it Trí as it should be (That’s Irish for Three).

The First

I had been giving a storytelling workshop the day before and the stories of the rivers bubbling up from the wells, taking the goddesses, princesses, beautiful ladies to the sea to create the river came up as did how many rivers all over the world are named after women or believed to hold a goddess, revered, loved, and protected by the native people until relatively recently. In particular we had been talking of Boann of the Boyne, Sinann of the Shannon and Eithne of the Inny, all rivers in Ireland.

The Second

Water quality keeps coming up all over the news and who is to blame and how everyone’s response, from Farmer to Council, Industrial Manufacturer and Food Manufacturer, and Individual Households, is “Not I” when it is collectively “all of the above”.

The Third

I was reminding my mother that hydration is important – do as I say, not as I do. Dehydration can lead to headaches, dizziness and ultimately death so it is important to remember to drink water. We discussed how it is often a case for elderly people to end up in A&E simply from forgetting to drink water and being severely dehydrated and how our staple beverage we consume together, coffee, doesn’t help.

And so we discussed water and how it gives life and nothing living lives without it and how it is omnipresent in the air and ground and all around, how water is in us and we are in water. Then I said

“Perhaps Water is God, and God is Water, in us and all around us.”

And herself replied

“well, imagine that I had to get to this age to find out that”

and we laughed, as we do when we have profound conversations, on a daily basis, and went silent in our contemplation of water – uisce (Irish for Water).

Then she broke the silence and said

“Tis no wonder it’s called Uisce Beatha then is it?” and we laughed out loud.

(Uisce Beatha literally means Water of Life and is the Irish for Whiskey).