“Mam, we should­ buy him ice cream.” My teenage daughter, Larney, points out the I-127 bus window at the old man holding up an unfavorable sign about gay people. “He doesn’t look very happy.”
     “No, he doesn’t,” I say, drawing her attention away, as the bus slows for a traffic light, on the approach to Dublin’s center from our home in Naas. “And yet so much blue sky for miles.”
     A few seats ahead, my wife, Nuruu, sits, but hasn’t taken notice, no one really has, much too focused on cellphones. If she had, she’d remind us both that this man is only temporarily wandering: having lost his kut, his connection to Tengri, he’s forgotten he’s free and full of love. “Give him time,” she’d say, adding that we’re all equal under the great big sky, something she’d learned living the nomadic life as a child in Mongolia.
     We can’t keep living in fear of what other people will think.
     The words are spoken by a sparkly-voiced woman a few seats behind me; I try to shift, nonchalantly, to see the speaker. Unable to locate her, it makes me aware that plenty around me might be unsettled by the demonstration, or even mentally rerouting a way out of the city, or to a new destination, to avoid this one area.
     I begin to do the same, rethinking the order of our planned Saturday in the city: first for the opening of my new exhibit at the National Museum, an homage to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, a very old manuscript, thought to be a record of the legendary kings of Ireland. It traces the migration of people from Greece and Egypt, into ancient Alba (or Scotland) and then Ireland, as each generation gave fealty to the ‘sun and moon, sea and land,’ to protect it. After, we planned on a takeout picnic on Stephen’s Green, then shopping, and maybe a stop at the Golden Cat tattoo parlor, just to look—Larney or Nuruu wouldn’t fight me to skip ahead to this first!
     But it’s not easy.
     A younger voice chimes in this time — auntie and niece, I imagine — now listening deeper to see what advice the auntie might give, understanding what it’s like to be on the balance bar between living your truth or living in fear of the opinions of others. It makes me miss the company of my relatives, especially my gran, living in Aberdeen, and the easy way she made a cup of tea a party on the rainiest of days; she had a gift for making the heaviness of life go away before we’d reach the end of the pot.
     Well, shouldn’t be too difficult to tell me what you’re passionate about — what do you want to do with your life?
     Surprise comes, realizing the conversation has really been about career or dreams, and not the man demonstrating. It causes me to wonder if I’d read his sign correctly. Leaning over Larney, right cheek pressing to the cool glass, to get a quick glimpse, it might simply have read: homeless. 
     Strange, I think, though it sometimes happens: assuming the worst, trained to expect bigoted interference even on sunny days. Fixing my summer scarf and top, I tune my attention back to the niece’s reply, to learn what choices she’s made about her life-direction. It seems easier than to confront being wrong, that there might’ve been no sign, no mob sieging our good day, no need to change courses.
     I have no clue! — everything I want to do seems crowded already.
     The auntie agrees with a despondent sigh — then, a long blaze of silence, filled by the flooding volume of the engine and traffic noise and the unspecific movement of people. Just when it seems the end of the conversation, the auntie pipes up.
     Well, sure, it might seem crowded from the outside. But up close, doing what you love to do, there’s only you! So, what do you like to do, even when you’re sad and feeling overrun?
     I search myself for an answer, as if it’s me she’s speaking to, then turn my attention to Larney, as she flips the topographical map of Co. Wexford around, reading it like it’s a popular novel. One day she hopes to find an ancient city, tucked away on some remote hillside, like the ones she grew up hearing about. Her interest in artifacts, maps, and ancient history took root at a young age, having two parents who shuttled her around museums, or backpacked with her on expeditions. As a family, we dug at the earth together, and still do. But now, I wondered was it her first choice —
     I ask her about it. “What do you like to do, even when you’re sad?” She looks at me, but her mind is adrift, thinking. I’ve clearly interrupted, but continue. “Do you feel like, maybe, there are other interests you’ve missed out on—or other careers you might’ve pursued?” As a senior in high school, she’d already begun college applications in the field of archaeology, geography, and history, following in our footsteps.
     “No.” she answers, flatly, returning to the map, making little marks, that only she knows the meaning to, her own coded language.
     “Well, what I mean to ask is… did we lead you down the path to our interests or were you free to choose?”
     “Your path?” Larney’s eyebrows lift, amused. “Last I checked, I read a map better than you two!” She talks with ease about the vision of her future she sees for herself as a GIS cartographer or analyst, enough to ease my mind.
     “Singing,” I blurt, like a confession. “It’s what I thought I’d do with my life.”
     “Really?” Larney’s face crunches up, unconvinced. “Can’t see it. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sing — not even in the shower.”
     “Mmm, right.” I frown, wanting to tell her about all the jobs I’d held in college, singing on cruise ships, in theaters, at sporting events. For a while, I was part of a regular touring chorus that sang madrigals at summer festivals. It was at one in Galway that I’d met Nuruu, who happened to be on scholarship at University; we met over a table of old books and stayed up all night talking. Later, we hitchhiked a ride south to watch the sun rise over the ancient stones in Kerry.
     Even after college and a family, singing was still the thing I did when I felt sad and overrun, until something else stepped in.
     “I blame the ancient women of Alba,” I say aloud, perhaps to myself, or to Larney, or to the auntie a few seats back, that she might offer some consolation over a lost dream.
     “Is that a band?”
     “No.” I chuckle, taking from my bag my old copy of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, turning to page 181, where I’d noted a brief mention of them, and had underlined and dated it. “I needed a topic for my graduate thesis and found this on my gran’s bookshelf, and began to read it as I took care of her through the winter flu.”
     Larney gives it a look-over, but needs more. I’m unsure how much to share, knowing when we get to the exhibit, and there’s no mention of them, that she’ll ask why not, and I’ll be forced to tell her.
     “I can’t find anything online.” She shows me her phone.
     “You won’t.” I grow silent, remembering, then explain it to Larney.
     On the morning Gran’s fever broke, the December sunrise turned the book’s pages pink, causing me to pause a little longer on a passage about a group of women who were like me and Nuruu, who carved out an existence away from their clans-people. Though portrayed as punishment, the women were, in their isolation and exclusion, also free to resettle, to raise families, and carve out an independent life in a new community.
     “In the process of discovery,” I continue to share, “while raising our family and facing similar opposition, the women of Alba gave me the one thing I longed for, a heritage, a link to a shared history, and it became a matter of life and death, for me, our family, and for others like us, to trace their movement, to learn everything I could about them.”
     “And singing?” she asks.
     “There was no time for singing,” I explain, the urgency resurfacing. “This work was too important — this history became a shield against every bad word or poisonous stare, since it helped me to reconcile the forced-part we sometimes play in being perceived as different, an opinion that exists outside our experience, as you know — yet here, in the histories, we had a new story, one of beautiful strength and solidarity.”
     The bus wobbles to the curb and parks, before passengers begin to fight one another to get off. Standing, I look back for the auntie and niece, wondering what passion they decided on, if any, but they too are gone.
     Out the window, another man with an unfavorable, anti-everyone sign, paces the sidewalk, a soldier in a solo war. Watching him, it hits me why I really let go of singing: time wasn’t the only factor, though I had little time to myself, in between classes and raising a family. As such, I didn’t want to waste even a minute sharing myself with anyone, anywhere, unless, I was free of the umbrage of otherness. When someone targets you, makes you feel different, it can feel like you’re participating in accepting the difference. It was also why I left the women of Alba out of my thesis, or published papers, or the exhibit, wanting to preserve them, for as long as I could. With time, you just come to no longer give attention to the undeserving.
     Larney tugs on my jacket. “I’d like to hear you sing sometime.”
     I’m about to shrug and make an excuse, but recognize there is nothing stopping me from singing now —
     Out the window, the sign-man grows more vocal, his face, so full of rage. People like this used to scare me, but I’d grown a family out of the same world, just like the ancient women I belonged to.
     As people file down the aisle, I find a melody to a madrigal on the tip of my tongue, and without hesitation, my voice lets out a warble: at first, it’s hardly audible over the shuffle of movement, but gradually, gains strength, until I get Nuruu’s attention — she seems embarrassed, then smiles, as if remembering the part it played in our history.
     Soon, she forces the line backward, to get to us, taking my hand and kissing it. Though no one takes too much interest in my song — most with heads deep in cellphones — I sing anyway — I sing until we’re on the sidewalk, crossing over the road toward the National Museum.
     It’s not until I’m at the podium, in front of a well-dressed audience, and the champagne glasses are raised, and I’m ready to announce the opening to the exhibit, that I remember the man with the sign at all — but he seems tiny and unimportant, like another traveler on the same river flowing in the opposite direction than the one I’m traveling, and so he’s forgotten, as I tell the story of the women of Alba, and share what it’s like to live together, past and present, in freedom and unending love, under the same big sky.