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Usually car-less,  I soon learned to sling the canvas grocery bags over the handles of the baby's stroller.  I also learned to stay near the stroller. If the ballast stood up, the stroller would capsize, taking him and the groceries down with it.  Sometimes he escapes from the wreckage, sometimes he flails like a turtle.  Despite looking ridiculous, and making a huge  racket, I learned to plan ahead and  drag along the boys' plastic wagon if I was out for anything heavy like apple trees, loads of peat for the fire,  or five liter containers of paint.  The days of 40 pound bags of dog food and diapers by the gross were gone!

Even in my close-to-home travels, I rapidly realized that before you leave, even armed with a map, it was essential to remain oriented to the compass points. Irish  road signs are few and far between, but the cross-roads are not. Roundabouts, which apparently exist on the East coast of America, sent me for a literal loop.  Again, I used the method of slowing down and observing, and discovered it didn't much matter if you kept going in circles until you figured out which lane to aim for.  The Irish are more than used to tourists,  and are fairly tolerant of total confusion  on their roads. Along with farm animals, and very slow-going tractors.  Locals are generous with directions, if they can figure out where you are shooting for from the description provided by the guide books.  I still have my reservations that the pile of stones in the farmer's cabbage field had anything to do with Stella's Tower.

Our first Irish winter was the stuff nervous breakdowns are made of.  During the early fall I couldn't believe how long the weather stayed reasonably mild, and how warm the sea was.    Soon after we arrived, I met someone who had lived in San Francisco, and he assured me it was going to be getting a lot colder here than what I was used to (I secretly thought he was exaggerating). By mid-October The Weather confirmed his predictions, and made up for my false securities.  It was the worst winter Ireland has seen in "donkey's years".  It was the first time our house had flooded in 30 winters. We had our first white Christmas (and no insulation besides the blanket of snow).

Ireland is listed as a "temperate climate, lacking in extremes of heat or cold".  Right.  There was nothing extreme about the storm that swept my eldest away on his scooter, like a cow in a tornado, bringing him to a crashing halt a full block away!  Strangely, I find the natives broach the subject of weather more  than I do, although it may not dominate them quite the way it does me.  I do know, in my heart of hearts, they don't like getting wet, either.

I did have had to learn to do mental gymnastics on occasion.  It turned out not to be the metric system I had to learn, as miles are more common here than kilometers, but to exchange American pound weights for the Irish stone.

I have had to exchange the American grading system of kindergarten through high school for the Junior Infants, transitional year, and sixth year system.  I have yet to figure out precisely how our good old high school diplomas correlate to the Irish Leaving Certificates, or what the real difference between Protestant schools, Catholic schools, and Gaeltacht schools is.  All I am sure of is that the Junior Infant year aims at "socialization", yet my son is already  a proficient reader.  I know that  my sometimes wayward child respects his teachers. I know that while he still likes his Headmistress, he felt that the day he was "sent up"  for discipline was the "worst in his life".  Still, he feels relaxed enough to greet me in the afternoon with his shoes off, and no one seems to mind!
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Our first year's anniversary in Ireland was 8 September. We have run the adjustment gauntlet.  I lack even the faintest hint of an Irish accent, and remain something of a recognizably sore thumb. My eldest is becoming more Irish by the day, and my baby is growing up referring to me as,"Mum".  I do know what they're talking about most of the time now, though, and have even appropriated a few slang terms,  my favorites being 'mancky' and 'knackered'.  I will shout at my children  to "mind" what they're doing, and at some point started to look at the early evening meal as tea rather than dinner.  I can get a trolley out of the locks in my sleep, and now swivel my head the right way to check for traffic before crossing, purely on instinct.

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I hope as time passes, Ireland will begin to feel more like "home".  I have begun to feel as though I have a  place here,some idea of what is expected of me, and where I fit in.  I want to stay who I am, hang onto what was instilled in me my first thirty years, and now Ireland is becoming a part of that tapestry.
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