10/1/2002
By Alice Carey
Finally Going home: An Irish-American recounts an eye-opening first trip as a young girl with her mother to the Emerald Isle.
On the Mauretania dawn arrives at around 4:30 in the morning. So on the day we were scheduled to land in Ireland, Mammie and I crept out of bed at 4, put on our arrival outfits and scampered upstairs to the main deck to see the dawn on the hills of Ireland.
"Mammie, it's a fine day."
And it is. A dreamy, gray-apple-green day, made sweeter with the knowledge that it could just as easily be a dark, dank, rainy one. In the chilly dawn, stewards are walking around with trays of steaming hot cups of tea, mixed with milk and sugar. In the distance is the rocky Kerry coast. I can barely make it out.