“I haven’t been back here in fifteen years. We stopped coming when we got the house. We hadn’t time for anything else.”

There’s reminiscence in Mam’s words and in her cigarette clouds, floating around us on the open balcony. It’s the same story she always serves cold. She drinks the last of her Americano with three heaped sugars. Her hangover seems to pass sooner than usual in her eagerness to revisit the place she raised me.

“Life was so much simpler on the boat.” She’s at it again.

She’s never been able to accept her decisions. Maybe that’s why it’s taken her so long to come back. We over look the new exclusive boatyard from the new house hotel we drink from. Both are erosions of the shoreline to make way for wealthier tourists and boat hobbyists. Lough Derg, the lake we used to call home has become unrecognisable.

We set off toward the two towns of Killaloe and Ballina, connected by the 18th century thirteen arch bridge over the River Shannon. Locals sometimes argue over the areas overarching name, two tiny towns which make up one. For us, it would always be Killaloe. It wasn’t even Killaloe that held the marina our boat was docked in. That my middle name was chosen after, simply Marina. All the more proof to the locals that we weren’t from there and wouldn’t abide by roadmaps or border names or tradition.

The rain comes in fast from the snow tipped mountain in the distance. As I pull out my umbrella to shield us, she shies away. No rain or pride can stop her today. I remember the towns layout better than her. She rarely lets herself revisit any kind of nostalgia but this place informed my most formative memories. We moved home at least six more times after leaving Killaloe. Each time with a hope that the next would be our permanent home, but when you grow up in transit; you can’t suddenly force yourself to feel at home by sitting still in a four walled house. So, I think of these moves more often than I admit.

Her eyes search, looking for the library, the doctors, the supermarket, the pub she rarely could afford to enjoy. We walk up the hill and I search for Jimmy Whelan’s news-agent. His shop, albeit small, had everything I could ever want as a child and it’s the only time I remember seeing sweets or holiday toys for tourists. He probably took pity on us and charged us less. As I pass the empty shell of his shop – a place I know he wouldn’t have left without great fuss – I wish him well. We walk silently past the cordoned off Cathedral Mam wanted to stop by to show me the inside of. I can see in her shoulders she didn’t expect such losses. Everything we remember is closed or replaced by brunch cafés or boutiques. We let the rain pelt us dutifully, creating tears in the crease of our high cheeks.

We cross the bridge and stop in one its pedestrian nooks. The trucks on the road have to yield to the oncoming cars but it’s not as scary as it was when I was young. There’s no sight of hire boats or fishermen angling below the bridge or even brave teenagers jumping into the deep water off the jetties ahead. I look down the river towards Limerick city to see cranes and construction across the river’s width. I understand immediately what they’re building. A bypass. A way to skip past these towns altogether. A huge alteration to the river but a minor adjustment to commuters’ time. This river will finally be tamed. Mam pretends not to care and points over to the right canal and adjoining lock.

“I used to row you up to playschool and leave the dingy tied up here.”

She’s told me this so many times before. We have photographs of us, life jacket-less, waving as we head off for the education she fought for against my father’s indifference. She rowed the whole way up and down the river four times a day. I remember plastic bags of fruit and ravioli tins rolling along the fiberglass floor. She relished it, just the two of us conquering the tide together and excelling at her only job; being my mother. I liked going to playschool and meeting other children but I preferred home-time, to rush back, to read a new storybook to my dog Purdy in the boat’s open cockpit. She was a stray cross-bred collie; we found her wandering the boatyard and she soon became my best friend.