Morning in Maynooth was another word for gray. Until living there, I never knew it came in so many shades: the bark on the trees the color of granite, the streets like wet ash, the sky a leaden blanket. During my year studying at the liberal arts college there, I spent much of my time in a two-story row house, the first house on Convent Lane. I sometimes contemplated the irony of that name as John snored softly next to me. Even though I had been raised Catholic, the excitement and intensity I felt being with him left no room for guilt. Our affair had begun unexpectedly, and sometimes I still felt a slight thrill of surprise at seeing him in the bed.

Now, a four-lane highway passes through Maynooth, but when I studied there in 1988 it was a village, with one main street that was just another stretch on the "Dublin-Galway Road." At one point, Maynooth had been one of the spiritual centers of Europe, with its large seminary. But in the late 1970s a secular "arts block" was added to the college, and the town was inundated with less religiously minded students. Every morning, the train deposited a swarm of them, wearing black Doc Martins and toting sage-colored canvas backpacks. Just as many more, like John, lived in accommodations in town.

If not for the college, Maynooth might well have withered. Instead, there was an appealing bustle to Main Street and a great deal of activity at the Quinnsworth supermarket, around the corner from Convent Lane -- especially on auction day, when we occasionally heard cattle lowing from the market behind it.

My last morning in Ireland, I was up early and restless in the single bed. Rather than wake John, I slid out the end, threw on a T-shirt and socks and went down to the kitchen. Because I was leaving, everything around me was weighted with significance. A bluish light filtered in the window, and I paused on the stairs, imagining John and his friends sitting in the chairs, cans of Foster's in their hands, a halo of smoke wreathing their heads. They were singing "Where Do You Go to My Lovely?" and taking turns making up verses. I sat in a scratchy green chair, remembering the late-night after-bar gatherings that would now go on without me.

I didn't feel ready to go. I was afraid of losing this person I'd become, this person singing songs and drinking lager in the living room. But I had to go, had to return to my small, Catholic college in the Midwest. Many years would pass before I realized that a part of me was saved by leaving.

It's a fairy tale every girl knows: The prince sweeps you off your feet, and you want to be with him so badly you would -- and sometimes have to -- sacrifice too much.

The wind was blowing the day I met John, which in itself was nothing special. Wind fills my memories from the year I spent studying in Ireland, whipping my hair around my face, shaking windows. The sound of it in my ears, deafening me, is as real and constant as the vivid, green grass.

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