Blind
Date - Ireland
by Lori
Alexander
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| 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. |
Lori Alexander is a
thirty-ish mother of two living in Dublin, Ireland. Prior to "retiring"
she was a Behavioralist and Program Coordinator for a large California
day program serving developmentally disabled adults. She is presently
working as a freelancer, and foisting her own little version of Americana
on her seaside Irish village.
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Additional
Resources
Living Overseas 
More on Ireland
Contact Lori Alexander
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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. 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. 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.
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| 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. Soon, he was off on his new job, and
I was left to my own stumbling, thoroughly American devices. |
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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.
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| 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. 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 |
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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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