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Looking down the barrel of my second Irish winter, it is impossible not to ruminate on my first frozen season.  I can't help but wonder if this second winter will be as tough on my reserves as the first.  Even while reminding myself that I survived it, a trial by ice,  I can't resist questioning  the defining moment when the passage from misery to acceptance slipped past me, or which specific event  prodded me into believing I stood a real chance of settling here in Dublin.  Last year, we arrived in early autumn, and the brutality of winter was soon upon us.  Living on the Irish Sea, we have storms of epic proportions, full-fledged gale force howlers. Battening down the hatches ceased to be a clever phrase and became a grim reality.  If our phone lines go down, it can be a week before they’re repaired, and the warmth of electricity can abandon us from fearful hours to bone numbing days. Sand  whips through row upon row of our seaside homes, and passing ships seek refuge in our white-capped harbors.  This bronzed and barefoot Californian took the harshness of the Irish weather particularly hard.  When I wasn't chopping fire wood and splitting peat, or wrestling with the impossible-to-kindle coal, I was scurrying through the lashing rain, head down, weaving unseeing through my fellow scurriers. I was far from alone in rushing through

. "Still, the notion that this was it, this is where we live now, for better or worse, enemies or friends, sent fear into my heart.  The notion of staying put was more foreign to me than any foreign country," Lori Alexander writes. Lori is a thirty-ish mother of two living in Dublin, Ireland, going on two years.  She's about to experience her second Irish winter, a prospect made more foreboding by the strange land she's trying to settle into. In this article, Lori deeply reflects on the preoccupation shared by all postmodern travelers. We're a transient people, moving on average every five years. For Lori, the thought of settling in, planting roots in a foreign land, starting anew in every aspect, began with apprehension. Now, she says,  "I realized that while the official ‘Expat’ world has very little to do with me, my identity as an American in Ireland has become a fundamental component in my view of myself. All of these realizations have persuaded me to get past my American - Expat - anthropology lovin’ cut-and-dried preconceptions and start understanding the real Ireland."  . Additional Resources Working Overseas  International Jobs Marketplace  Contact Lori Alexander  . .

On those cold and rainy days, days like today, when  I'm feeling tired  and a bit under the weather, I was utterly homesick. I spent much of the winter emailing home.  I ached for people who automatically understood me.  Car-less, I missed being able to hop in my Mits and fifteen minutes later be sitting on my sister's couch.  I missed deep blue skies. I missed the luxury of being able to pick up the phone and babble to people used to deciphering my rapid fire speech.  I missed trying to steam roll my nephew into baby sitting, and  my mom's one of a kind  macaroni salad.  I missed guava juice, lazy, heat saturated afternoons with friends, and summertime barbecues. I missed being warm all the way down through my bones.  I missed things being familiar,  things that made complete sense.

The Season of Torrential Rains

My husband, a veteran of three international, long term moves, tried to console me with the doctrine that the first full year abroad is the toughest.  That was small comfort to someone who considered herself lucky to last a year anywhere before getting thoroughly sick of the place. He reminded me I had come through Belgium a stronger and better person, but I defiantly countered that Belgium had come packaged with an expiration date of, surprise, a single year.

That winter, it never occurred to me to look for comforting substitutes here, in my new home. I felt too different, far too out of place. Besides the obvious option of being a professional tourist, I was fuzzy about what my niche could possibly be in this sleepy seaside village. I had no interest in coffee mornings,  Thursday mother and toddler play groups, or church socials.  The most I managed was keeping myself busy, mainly on tedious household chores and home repairs. 
 

Perhaps if we had arrived in the Spring, during more forgiving weather, I would have felt differently, more open.  Maybe I would have been more inclined to linger at the school gate, chat, make an effort to get to know my neighbors.  Instead, I considered being a self-contained unit a matter of personal pride and self-preservation.  In my  heart, I have accepted that I'm  a “mover,” a person who lives and breathes changing friends, locations, and lifestyles. It’s how I was raised, and all I had ever known.  I smirk at permanence and cower under the threat of the long haul. My closest friends behave in much the same way. We can go for years without meeting, and then pick up as though we've never been apart. Over the years, I have  wondered, deep down, if perhaps our lust for the new is merely a disguise for being quitters.  Ireland has solved that dilemma.

Second Born At Play in the Near Tundra

I had arrived in Ireland with my trusty side-kicks, my  tried and true set of personal minimums. Acutely aware of the luxuries I had left behind, I instead focused on what I could not do without: food, a roof, heat and hopefully, some happiness along the way.  I have traditionally relied on these standard expectations wherever I have lived, and consider them a reasonable  set of necessities.  I found Ireland testing even these simple demands. 

In short order soda bread lost its novelty. Our kitchen was leaking, and we were loosing slates from our roof during every storm.  I couldn't get the coal to burn and the peat smoked constantly.  I had happiness here and again, but my hands were too numb to write about it. 

Despite all my idealistic intentions, and ambitious fantasies for my children’s storybook upbringing, my inborn urge to pull stakes had me by the throat. My internal Moving Clock had always been jammed in an early-interval gear, but Ireland had managed to kick start it ticking within mere months.

Every day in my new home was a struggle against die hard habits: I have never lived anywhere longer than five years.  I'd only  managed to stay put for that seeming eternity for my first born’s sake.   I was determined he would have the security of falling asleep under the same ceiling every night, of knowing all the creaks in his staircase, having the same school mates year after year. My brain knew Ireland was capable of providing all of that and more, if I could only be patient. 
 

Still, the notion that this was it, this is where we live now, for better or worse, enemies or friends, sent fear into my heart.  The notion of staying put was more foreign to me than any foreign country.  I was cautioned by another American emigrant, a long-timer, that if I ever wanted to fit in, I would have to start using the local terminology.  She told me this in an accent more Irish than that of the locals. The question then, and even now is, do I have to want to "fit in"?  I like trying to squeak by on my own unique merits.  I expect it is a function of the frequent mover syndrome:  I find I can almost fit in anywhere, but feel at home in very few places.

Feeling Home in Very Few Places

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