This is a long, long, long and winding tale of a government, a virus and me. As with all stories, plot twists abound, driven by pathos, frustration and, ultimately, redemption. Our heroine tries to bear up under it all, sometimes with grace and sometimes lacking grace entirely, occasionally coerced into screaming like a banshee, and then trying desperately to center and calm the mind. Let me tell you, desperation is not a fit state for a calm mind! How she cursed those gurus who know ways of contentment. She would find herself trying to be reasonable and rational: surely this woman with a 50-year driving record will be able to take to the road in Ireland easily. Surely.

Oh, how silly and unreasonable she was!

And did I mention this is a long tale?

Dear reader, where to begin? Now, I’m about to come clean with you in ways that are not entirely comfortable for me. So bearing that in mind, I suppose we begin with the fender bender of 2018. It was a dark and stormy night in New England at the end of November. The first snowfall of the winter was just winding down, and the streets were greasy with slush. I was parallel parking my car when, seemingly of its own volition, it slid into the fender of the vehicle parked in front of the space. My car wasn’t damaged, but her car’s fender was dented. I was appalled.

I had not filed a claim on my insurance in many, many years. This woman’s car needed repairing. Surely, I reasoned, that is why I’ve been paying the damned premiums month after month. This was faulty reasoning. If I ever knew the cardinal rule of car insurance, I’d clearly forgotten it. To wit: they get your money and you never file a claim. Ah, hindsight.

And just so you know, I did get that speeding ticket when I was rushing to get to my now-32-year-old daughter’s fifth-grade band concert. And yes, maybe I forgot to get the car inspected for a while – okay, a long while – when I was stopped that once. But I have gone whole decades with a clean driving record.

Now I come to Ireland in June, 2020, and I learn the unvarnished truth. Ireland has no driving license reciprocity with the United States. I had to start from scratch as if I was a nervous 16-year-old. Yes, all my mature readers, read it and weep. I had to take a written test at a testing center, I had to take driving lessons with an approved instructor and I had to take a driving test. And under the dictates of the Irish government, I allegedly had to do all this in one year.

Throw your mind back to June, 2020. There was a bit of a glitch in that plan. There was a minor thing called a lockdown, and then another, and another as Ireland dealt with close to the worst outbreak of COVID-19 in Europe. I could not go to a testing center to take my written test. They were all closed. And every time I tried, guess what? They were all closed. Meanwhile, on the insurance front, I learned the Irish industry had a) a three-year claims-free requirement and b), even if a) wasn’t an issue, you could get insured on your American license, but to the tune of 2x-3x what your rank-and-file Irish driver would pay. I was told by two different agents not to even bother trying to get insurance on a car until November, 2021. When I use that banshee metaphor? I pretty much mean it.

But wait, there’s more!

It was not until July, 2021, a full year after I arrived, that I was able to take the written test. And I was only able to do that not because the test centers opened but because Ireland decided to join the 21^st century and offer an online test – previously not an option, if you can imagine. So that alleged year of driving on my American license was allegedly up. I rented a car from time to time –$2 a day in June, 2020 during COVID and $100 a day in May, 2022, the last time I rented. (You can see how much I took to heart the one-year edict. Take your lockdowns and shove it, I murmured demurely.) I passed the written test easily, and soon received my learner’s permit. Remember those? Egads! And here’s another little Irish twist (of the knife). Under Irish law, my learner’s permit superseded my American license. Meaning that for the past year it has been illegal for me to get behind the wheel of a car without a licensed driver in the passenger seat – which I never have because I live alone. Needless to say, I have not followed this law to the letter or even at all; but it has given me many reasons to pause for thought when I actually have driven those rental cars solo. (I was still too chicken to buy a car yet.)

An interlude here to praise Bus Eireann, the country’s bus system. It sometimes gets a bad rap because it doesn’t run in every hamlet in Ireland. But it has been my savior. From my own particular small hamlet, four buses a day run to the small city of Ennis, which has all your basic creature needs, and three buses a day head back. A bonus: I travel for free because I’m old. I’ve been able to do my shopping (“messages,” as they call it here; don’t ask me why), go to hair appointments, go to the movies, live a pretty full life interspersed with bumming rides from friends. One of the positive plot twists of this story is that I have had to give up being shy or too independent about asking for help.  

Where was I? Oh yes. But wait, there’s even more!

We’ve come to the part of the story that, if you can believe it, is the most frustrating of all. How is that possible, you might ask? Read on!

Because there are so many Americans living in Ireland – all of whom, like me, have to go through this same arcane process – the Dail (legislative body) passed a law not too many years ago to aid us. Your Irish 16-year-old has to take 12 lessons with an instructor; but we Americans only have to take six lessons if we can prove we’ve been a licensed driver for two years. No problem! As I took my approved lessons with my approved instructor last summer, I sent away to the State of Maine for my three-year driving record. Now in Maine, licenses are issued every four years and that’s reflected on the license itself. In my case, the license was issued in October, 2019. The document I receive had my driving license information at the top and the three-year record below. Within days, I sent it to the Irish government.

And then I waited, and I waited, and I heard nothing. Finally, I contacted them. They denied my application. Why? Because the license was issued in October, 2019, so in their minds I had not been driving for the required two years! They didn’t even look at the driving record below. Nor, apparently, did they care. I pointed this out, and I could hear the shrug at the other end of the line. Sacre bleu! Merdre! Shit!

I sent away for my lifetime driving record from Maine, that clearly shows I started to drive in 1970. Would this suit? No, apparently that wouldn’t suit either. I asked to speak to supervisors who were never available and never called me back.  By this time, it’s way past October, 2021 – that sacred two-year driving license window – but I really think I was such a pain in the keester that they had dug their heels in.

I was ready to give up and take the other six frigging lessons. I called the instructor and set up my first appointment. But in a final desperate act, I sent an email to the director of the Road Safety Authority and to my representative in the Dail. I laid out my tale of woe, but by this time didn’t expect much.

Lo and behold! Within a week, I heard from someone at the RSA. The director had actually read my email and asked her to look into it. I sent in my documentation again. She said she would pass it on to the relevant authorities with a note from her. Sure, I said to my myself, I just bet you will. But the nudge actually worked! I soon received the 6-lesson waiver I expected in September, 2021 in January, 2022. You can’t make this up.

I applied to take the driving test, but I still didn’t have a car and had to borrow the one belonging to my old instructor – for a €100 fee. Now, the Irish driving test is known for being killer. There are so many things you have to remember, so many maneuvers you have to make flawlessly (while of course driving on the left side of the road), all of which would be great if I had had a car with which to practice. Sadly, this was not my fate. Sadly, I failed the test in February. Speaking of coming clean in ways that are not entirely comfortable… Yet more angst, yet more reckoning, yet more wringing of hands.

Dear readers, it had reached the point where I said to myself I either have to get a car or I have to leave Ireland. I did not reach this conclusion lightly. I love Ireland. I love the people, I love the music, I love the majesty. But did Ireland love me? Such are the places your mind goes when you’re desperately trying to center it. Had the fates, or the sidhe (the fairies) or the gods deserted me entirely? Was I meant to go back to the States (where I was legal!)? Was I just too damned old for this nonsense? Okay, okay, I finally said, once more for the ould sod, illegality be damned. So in early June, I bought a 2018 Toyota Yaris. My three-year claims-free driving record had been met, and believe it or not, in another bizarre Irish twist, insurance companies here will insure someone who has only a learner’s permit (at a fraction of the cost of someone who has a valid American license).  I applied to take the driving test again, and for the next six weeks I practiced, and practiced, and practiced some more. It hurt my head!

We have finally reached the end of my harrowing tale. On July 21, two years after moving here, I passed my test. Last week, I received my driving license. It’s over. Now I am not only a citizen of Ireland, I am a licensed driver here – with reciprocity that extends to all the other European Union countries, should I ever be so inclined. I have to say, it feels great. I’ve already embarked on a road trip, and there will be many more in my future now. I can go anywhere, anytime I want and I am not beholden to a bus schedule or a friend. Ah, the freedom of the road! I sense a car ferry ride from Wexford or Belfast to the UK in my future — and perhaps even a road trip to mainland Europe.

The moral of the story? Never underestimate the insanity of bureaucracy, maybe? Don’t move to another country during a global pandemic? Or maybe, just simply, don’t desperately try to calm and center the mind. A temper tantrum from a screaming banshee is just as satisfying…