When winter comes we’ll live in a tigin, a house that stays in one place. When I complain that my life is too mixed up, Daddy points to the swallows, arrowing back and forth in the sky. “Megan,” he says, “the swallows are Travelers like we are. They are here all summer, and then like us they fly away when winter comes.” Do the swallows like it here or where they go in the winter? I think of a swallow shut up in a school, beating its wings against the window. For longer than anyone can remember our folks have wandered the roads of Ireland. When Daddy was a boy he lived in a barrel wagon drawn by a horse. I’d like that better than our old caravan that breaks down all the time. The garda tells us to move along. The buffers laugh at us and call us tinkers. “Tinkers” is a name they give us because we Travelers used to go from village to village to repair tin kettles and buckets. Like me, Daddy is happiest on the road. You know all about the place where you are, but what’s ahead can be anything you want it to be, so there’s never any bad in it.
