Bog of Memory

While visiting Abbeyleix bogs, something stirred deep within me, as if I’d been whisked away to Punjab, Pakistan, to my mother’s hometown, where I was suddenly six years old again, perched by a tree-ringed lake with aunts and uncles from my bedtime stories… It’s unsettling how places, a scent, or texture can pull you into spaces you’ve never inhabited, yet somehow know by the heart, just like the bogs held secrets, my mind couldn’t grasp but my spirit recognized instantly, coming home to a place that existed only in stories, in my mother’s voice.