Emigration Diary Update

So, eleven years since we left Dublin - it’s been ten years since I updated this diary. I believe I was about to embark on the NYC Teaching Fellows journey, I was still working in The Ritz Cafe in a seaside village on Long Island and between studying, attending classes, working two jobs and juggling babysitters while commuting 90 mins each way each day, I pretty much stopped writing anything other than academic papers and posts on social media.

I quit the restaurant job a few months into the teaching program. It was just too much. I was leaving on the 6.19 train to go to work in Queens, two nights a week I would have to travel into the city for a class until 8pm. I was getting home those nights after 11pm and then working a double shift on Sundays. I was never sitting down to a meal and hardly ever seeing my kids. I was now employed by NYC DOE though. It was a good, safe, union, job, with great benefits and an even better pension as long as I survived the two year initiation program.

I have been teaching in a District 75 school, which is the specialized citywide district for students with special needs. I hadn’t had much experience with children with such challenging issues before. I had taught back in the Doha days. (there’s a whole book there) but when faced with 30 little kids, a cheery rendition of ‘If you’re happy and you know it…’ will usually get them participating even if it doesn't always stop the tears falling. My new kids didn’t respond to that really. I had to reiterate and adapt - a lot. I did though. I read, I gained experience, I watched, I listened, I got bitten, I got scratched, I got completely ignored, I got accused of being ‘too soft’. I tried things and other things and eventually I learned a big enough repertoire of skills to figure out how to best serve these most challenged students and de escalate most crises without anyone getting hurt. I ultimately became interested in how our kids were engaged by technology and got involved with technology instruction. I’m ten years working in the same school now. That more than doubles my record for any job I ever had.

In 2015, I entered an NYC housing lottery and we were selected to rent an ‘affordable’ apartment on W45th St. I had been looking at options to move out of my mother’s house on Long Island. Although,it is a beautiful home and it was so wonderful to be able to spend time with family there, it was time for us to make our own home. My children had lived there for 3 years by that point. They were both more upset about moving from Northport to Midtown Manhattan than they had been about moving to the US from Ireland. Their friends? Their school?, Their treehouse?, Their pool?’ It didn’t help that we had no choice but to move them and enroll them in a new school on May 1st when the school year is largely winding down. One of their teachers actually went out on family leave a week later and she had already filled in his report card when she did.

Our apartment was in a new building with a doorman and elevator and fresh flowers in the lobby. We were on the fourteenth floor - it was actually the thirteenth but there is no thirteenth floor in NYC buildings - who would’ve thunk Ghostbosters was true? We had a view of the Empire State Building. It changes colour for a different cause every night. We looked it up every day for years. It was a nice apartment. Although it was compact, it was well laid out and we had an L shaped, dining space, kitchen, living space, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. All the bedrooms and the living room had a Manhattan view. Thousands of lives inside little lit square windows. I liked to go to sleep with the shades up and just imagine I could feel the energy of all those different lives so close to me but yet so removed. That feeling of community living in Hells Kitchen was extraordinary. It is such a diverse community and no one really knows anyone very well. It’s NYC, we mind our own business. But, having kids in school there, sharing an elevator daily, street lockdowns, building Christmas parties, summer block parties, food festivals, playground openings. Later; a pandemic; fear, helpfulness, ambulances, curfews, looting, 7pm cheering and pot banging for a full year...we clung together in a socially-dstanced way.

I was busy, busy, busy during lockdown. As the tech teacher in a largely analogue school, I was one of the only people who had ever even heard of Google Classroom, I was supporting my school with remote teaching. I was also supporting our parents with accessing reliefs. In Queens, many of our families were in dire straits. Our school community lost too many people to COVID. Many of our families were unaware of supports that were available. I did my best to make the accessible. I also volunteered on a tech helpline for students in temporary housing. After a few weeks, George bought me some jigsaw puzzles and I predictably fixated on those until they were done. I then began to relearn to crochet. I’ve made a few things since but with my trademark inconsistency.

Remote school in our apartment was not fun. My younger son got our bedroom, the elder got theirs and my husband, furloughed from work and the only one not in school, didn’t really have anywhere to be as I belted out nursery rhymes to my laptop in the living room like a deranged TV presenter. As much as we loved the area and the apartment - we had outgrown it. Sharing a bathroom with your husband and two little kids is a whole different ball game than sharing it two pubescent teenagers. As soon as we could move, we did.

We moved uptown. We are now in Hamilton Heights in West Harlem. Our apartment has four bedrooms and two bathrooms, almost unheard of in NYC. We also have a fire escape that gets the sun nearly all day. What we lost with our doorman and our city view, we gained in space. Although it’s a hundred year old building with a hundred year old building problems. It is musical where we live. The notes of samba from barber shops and open cars are consistent. Old men play chess in the middle of Broadway, adults party on the stoop while children play in fire hydrant sprinklers in summer. We are five minute walk from Riverside Park where we can watch the sunset over New Jersey. It’s a very pleasant place to live and still so close to the city.

We’ve been here three years and my eldest is eighteen now and going to college this fall. My younger has two years left of high school. I’m very proud of the young people they turned out to be. I often wonder would they be different if they had been brought up in Dublin. Would they be different if they had never lived in Dublin? Who is to know? We are going home this summer, to finally take that canceled 2020 trip. Unfortunately we are too late to see some people again and we have graves to visit and ashes to scatter. But I’m so excited to see the people I miss all the time who are still very much alive. My friends. I may have made new friends but I never replaced them. You cannot replace the people who truly understand you. One of the saddest realities of my life is that the people I truly made connections with are scattered around the globe. I have so many stories to tell. This is the boring bits really. Maybe I will go into some detail soon. But for now, I’m coming home. Let's hope there’s some nice weather.