Emigration Diary: Last Nights in Town

Orifinally written for ramp.ie as part of the Emigration Diary series

 

 We’re in the last few days now before the great odyssey and most of our goodbyes have been said. We’ve moved out of our house and are staying with rather bemused but very accommodating relatives in the house where I spent much of my childhood. The kids have constructed an unrestricted Nintendo nest in the boxroom and my husband has set up a round-the-clock online sales studio in the sitting room. It’s really quite fascinating what people will buy and I’m completely gobsmacked by the sheer number of things we possessed. I wasn’t even aware of half of the curios. There is a third skip in the front garden. It waits hungry-mouthed for any junk that is leftover on Thursday.

As George suddenly leapt into action and finally started shedding his load, I moved beyond the packing-repacking panic into a fairly mellow apathy. We are getting on that plane on Friday morning regardless of if we are ready or not. The miserable damp weather we’ve been having is playing no minor contribution to this attitude. I will feel the deliciously sticky New York summer heat on my skin on Friday afternoon if I have to go with nothing but a bikini in my handbag. It would be nice if we could get rid of the car before that though. It’s a teeny bit valuable for the skip and sadly, it won’t fit in my suitcase.

We had a little farewell do with friends last Friday which went on till the wee hours. It was rather romantic after the hugs,vodka and tears, to walk down the brightening, eerily empty Grafton St. accompanied by the dawn chorus and to watch the fast-food wrappers of the night before get carried away by seagulls before they could be swallowed by the street sweeper. These are the sights and sounds I most associate with our courtship many moons ago. We stopped at the end, had a kiss and waved goodbye to our Dublin scene. Then we fell into a taxi.

I found this picture while I was packing and thought it appropriate for this last post before our voyage. It was taken at a funfair in Germany. We were newly engaged and I was five months pregnant with my eldest son. I had been prevented from going on almost every ride by a red circle with a line through a stork. George suggested the photo to cheer me up. We joked that we would confuse our kids with tales of the olden days. It never occurred to me that circumstances may conspire for it to be taken as gospel in future generations.

So, I guess this is it. So long old country. Stay well. I’ll resist adding a certain John Denver track to this and I’ll talk to you all shortly from the other side.

Emigration Diary: Stripped Bare

This post was originally written for ramp.ie as part of the Emigration Diary series.

Our house is slowly, but surely, emptying of stuff.  Strangers knock on the door daily, hand me cash and take something away. All the storage systems, so carefully chosen, are gone, leaving us with baskets and boxes of things all over the floor. The walls are nearly all bare now and emotions are getting exposed along with them. We’ve overstocked a charity shop with pieces of our personalities. Other children are playing on my kids’ swings. My four-year-old keeps a small box of precious things in his bed in case they get given away.  Some things are easy to pass on and I know we won’t miss them; others are much harder.

 

 

 

Sentimentality is a tricky thing. It’s only as I’ve had to let go of some items that I realised what they represented to me.  It was as I photographed my hand blender for sale that I thought of the ambitions I had when I bought it. A new mum and a new wife, I had an image of myself in an apron making smoothies and baking cookies. It was never going to happen. I did make a few decent soups with it over the years but it never did transform me into that perfect stay-at-home-mum, providing daily nutritious meals with a smile. Letting go of this is letting go of an aspiration. Oh well, my kids don’t like smoothies anyway.

 

I’ve had a few little pangs of pain and loss. The objects are mostly gone now and that’s good because so are the shelves that they lived on. I’ve found it harder to let go of certain toys than the boys have. They’ve outgrown them anyway and they happily toss them away but I remember the shiny-eyed joy on their little faces as they unwrapped them. Will the memories of their toddlerhoods fade when I no longer have the toys to trip over?

My husband is struggling more. The realisation that his parents are ageing has hit him and he feels bad that he won’t be here to support them. Unlike me, he hasn’t emigrated before. Nor has he ever lived more than a few miles from his parents and sisters. Although he’s happy to start a new life in America with us, his new family, he’s not really in the mood to celebrate as he feels he’s abandoning the old. I am being reunited with most of mine. I will have more family around me than I have had for years. It was only when I stopped my excited babbling, about parties and schools, new careers and what still has to be done, moved or packed for five minutes and actually listened that it dawned on me he is being much braver than I am by making this move. He is extracting himself from his family, his role as only son, big brother and soon-to-be uncle and immersing himself fully in the eccentricities of mine. It’s easier for me. I was always doing this. I’ve been guilty of living in the future for a few years now. It’s only becoming real to him as the days on the calendar get marked off and I believe he’s hurting like hell.

So, I guess it’s acceptable that he’s a bit grumpy at the moment and it’s all right that I’m left alone to my planning. I suppose it’s okay that he hasn’t thrown out his animal skeleton collection yet and it’s probably understandable that he still hasn’t gone through that box. I know that he will and – even more importantly – I know that he’ll be with me, holding my hand, when we get on that plane. He’s coming with me this time. He’s starting again with our children and me. He’s chosen to let go and build a new life with us and that’s really all that matters to me.

The rest is only stuff.