This post has taken me a long time to write, because it was a point of high expectation, that turned out quite differently than planned. You see, dear reader, prior to becoming a parent, years before I became a traveler, I was a book-hound. I love looking at bindings, papers, and inks; I revel in font choices; I soak up the typography. The rarer the book, the longer I want to stand near it and gaze.  (I know, silly.  But there it is.)

So, this summer I took my family to Dublin for a short climb in part of my literary family tree - Heaney, Wilde, Joyce, Yeats. I knew better than to go up to Yeats country in Sligo - not enough time on this trip. I'll go back when she's older, I told myself. Meanwhile - Dublin! There,  poetry survives in the valley of its making. You can walk Ulysses, by virtue of brass insets in the sidewalk. You can pose with the statues of any number of literary lights. You can see original manuscripts and where their writers studied or lectured.

And at Trinity College, where much of the studying and lecturing takes place, there is one special book - one of the oldest illustrated manuscripts known - called the Book of Kells, or Leabhar Cheanannais in Irish. Transcribed around 800 AD, it is a masterwork of illuminated lettering. It is a treasure.

It is also at the end of a very, very long waiting line.

We stood patiently for an hour, as the line threaded through the Trinity library gift shop, to the ticket-taker (@8 euros each, young kids free), up a staircase, and through a well-researched exhibit on illuminated manuscripts and history. She slept in the ergo carrier, and we were grateful, both for the sleeping, and for the seeming fact that there was careful work being done to make sure a moment with the book was optimal. Sadly, the well-researched exhibit was where she woke and began going through the motions of revolt. The exhibit is not as kid-friendly as some in Ireland. We decided to alternate time in the book room - where the manuscript is displayed with several others in a low, glass topped table, under dim lights.

My husband looked first, over the shoulders of several others camped around the table, and then headed with her towards the exit. Freed to bask, I headed for a position at the table, only to find that no one was moving, nor was there any room for the new viewers coming through the door. "Please do not linger," an aide requested from a languid perch nearby. The viewers, including a tour guide leader intent on giving a 45 minute presentation into his insights on monastery life and possibly forestry too for good measure, paid no heed. I was trapped - too far away to get more than a glimpse, and more people coming through the door every moment.

In earlier days, this would have been grounds for a do-over later, and possibly a stop in a local pub to kvetch. But we haven't had a do-over in four years. My brief brush with Leabhar Cheanannais was an uncomfortable, people-filled, blur. I was disheartened and claustrophobic. And then I stepped through to the next room into the Library.

Should you ever have the opportunity, do go. I looked up from my frustration to see my fussy daughter awestruck by the towers of books stretching up and out - all still available for study by Trinity students. The display cases in this hall, unlike the last room, were filled with many treasures - mathematical theorems, treatises on the natural sciences. We were able to point out books, and then their writers' busts, which were arrayed nearby.

So, the next time I mourn an opportunity lost - and Kells' passing in a blur of people still feels a bit like that - because we're on a kid-clock when we travel, I will remember what it felt like to walk dejected and surly into the Trinity Library and feel my heart leap unexpectedly.