Rite of Passage

It'll be a minute before I post a proper entry as we have guests visiting, but I will quickly share one thing today. For the last three years what's kept me up at night — among other things — has been worrying about driving in Ireland—on the left side of the road, jet lagged at first, possibly after having a pint. The roads where we're staying are one-lane wide, so if there's an on-coming car, one has to back up to the nearest pullout to allow for the other to come through. The first ten or twelve times this happened, the other car immediately flashed its high beams to indicate to me that THEY would be the ones to back up. For a while, I thought there was something about our rental car that telegraphed "AMERICANS DRIVING," but haven't got any proof or evidence of this yet. So yesterday, a Sprinter van and I approached each other and I flashed MY high beams FIRST. I knew I didn't have to back up too much because I'd just passed a pullout and felt up to the task. So with two hands, I put the car in reverse (super difficult to do!) and zig zagged my way back to the pullout. The van, driven by three 20-something women all up front, drove on through and we all simultaneously exchanged thumbs up and HUGE LAUGHS. They knew, as did I, that this was my rite of passage. Quite literally.