| Blind Date
- Ireland Page 1 |
| by Lori
Alexander |
| Why did
I decide to move to Ireland? With two young boys, we knew we
had to get out of California if we wanted to get ahead. We wanted a home
of our own for our boys to grow up in. My husband had lived
in the same South Dublin home until adulthood, and I had lived in too many
to count, spanning several states and a couple of countries. With our eldest
teetering on the beginning of his formal education, we felt it was time
to choose what we wanted for our kids: a childhood like my husband's, or
a childhood like mine. The irony of becoming an expat in order to set down
anchor was not lost on me.
I decided to
commit to Ireland because I look before I leap. I have a great deal of
trouble absorbing reason. I stubbornly refuse to acknowledge fear
until I am in so deep there is nothing to do but to keep swimming. |
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| I did my research
and talked to people, but in the end, I comfort myself with the knowledge
that even if we had visited for a three month scout, I still would have
had no idea what I was really getting myself into.
My Irish
husband had been away from Dublin for fourteen long years. He
may have pined for Ireland in his own way, but until children, particularly
the thought of the children's Education, came into his mind, he was content
to be away. His notion to move home was conceived in December, and
we batted the idea around until February. A little brick house on the Irish
Sea, in the family for a hundred years, surrounded by a huge walled garden...the
temptation became too much for me to resist. I could retire, raise
the kids, garden!
By April, I
was on my way to being an expat. My son was officially enrolled in the
Junior Infant class in his new Irish school. In May, the deposit
was paid for our pets' six month incarceration in Lissenhall Quarantine
Facility. Passports were sorted out for the boys, and I had my own
re-issued. By the time I plunked down a couple of grand for the airplane
tickets, in July, I thought my heart was going to stop. |
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| A few friends
were still muttering that they would believe it when they saw it, but I
already felt like I had one foot on the plane, and was sorely tempted to
yank it off.
The movers
drove away with four and a half pallets of our belongings on August 18th.
After two weeks of indoor-camping, and fighting over lawn chairs and plastic
utensils, we were on our way to Ireland. I had never been so afraid,
or so unprepared, in my life.
Jet lag
aside, the first few weeks were a monumental blur. Everyone,
every place, and every thing was completely new, yet deceptively similar.
Getting used to living in Ireland rapidly turned into getting used to living
in my house, my new village, and my new role as an Irish housewife,
mother and daughter-in-law. I had to re-learn simple things I had
previously taken for granted, and my husband's Swiss cheese memory
of his previous incarnation as an Irish citizen was of little help. |
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| Soon, he was
off on his new job, and I was left to my own stumbling, thoroughly American
devices.
The house
itself won immediate and humiliating victory over me. When we arrived,
we discovered we didn't have an oven, only two stove top burners (we used
the oven for saucepan storage). No one seemed to know how to operate the
ancient storage heaters, and we had the wonkiest water heater in Ireland.
Our ancient washing machine soon broke, and I was then doing laundry in
the bath tub. The tub cracked, and I was doing loads of laundry
in the kitchen sink, for four people. We were bathing by crouching over
the tub's drain hole and spraying ourselves with a flimsy little hose (the
shower head had fallen off). My mother-in-law came to the rescue,
but we could barely keep up with the repairs and replacements before the
next appliance keeled over. By the time our bathroom window
fell out, I was ready for anything. And my carpentry skills were
improving daily.
Life in the
North County Dublin village of 8,000 was as far removed from my San Francisco
suburb of 50,000 as I was likely to get. |
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| In order to
function socially, without making glaring mistakes, I had to learn
to slow down, observe, and imitate. Our grocery store bewildered
me. I wasn't used to being required to weigh produce on a machine
with pictograms, or collecting the price sticker for the clerk. I
was often sent back to the produce department for my forgotten sticker,
like a naughty school child. Hot dogs in a can is something none
of use beside the baby are ever likely to view as normal. Getting
the hang of the shopping cart locks, or rather, 'trolley locks' was further
muddled by getting it right the first time, and then second time around,
getting a faulty lock. To cut down on carts escaping the store,
they're all chained together, and paroled from the chain gang by
depositing bail: a pound coin slid into the padlock. The happy surprise
was that you actually get the pound back.
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