Moo-ving In

It was Cow Harbor Day on Sunday. This is a traditional annual festival held in Northport, where we live now, which was once known as Great Cow Harbor because cows used to graze in fields by the waterfront. Thousands of people filled the sunny, waterfront village for a parade and a funfair, loads of live music, antique cars, impressive motorbikes and the local restaurants had grills and hot dog stands out on the sidewalk to feed the crowds.

 I love the place names here on Long Island. We’ve got the Jericho Turnpike which is lined with strip malls where you can buy absolutely anything. My favorite beach is in Sunken Meadow State Park. Our local IKEA is in Hicksville. We’re a few train stops from Amityville and I do most of my clothes shopping in Walt Whitman Mall, on the Walt Whitman Road, near the birthplace of the poet. We often take a stroll on the beach at Little Neck Bay, which borders Great Neck, the backdrop for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. We’re also five minutes down the road from the Vanderbilt Museum which houses the rather obscure collections of William K Vanderbilt II in his mansion on his former estate, Eagle’s Nest. It’s interesting and fun getting to know the local history. I guess that’s one of the advantages about moving somewhere new – no matter where you go.

 My kids have started school and seem to be settling in well. My second grader is already using terms like ‘pop quiz’ (nothing to do with music) and ‘Show and Tell’. Football has very quickly become ‘soccer’. My Kindergartner goes in everyday with his ‘tote bag’ and ‘erases’ things when he makes a mistake. It is certainly not taking them long to pick up the lingo. I needn’t have worried about them fitting in. They seem to be doing just fine. They both go to afterschool club which they really seem to enjoy and have made loads of new friends. They’ve been off part of this week for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. I was surprised, to be honest, that schools in New York were off for Jewish holidays, but there you go.

 In the meantime, George commutes into the city to work. Although I don’t envy him the 70 minute train journey each way every day, he does seem to be meeting some glamorous people and visiting some even more glamorous places. He came home with some expensive men’s product last week. Someone had given it to him as a tip for installing blinds in her apartment. Is that the etiquette? I’d love to see the face of a UPC technician in Dublin if someone offered them male moisturizer for fixing their broadband. I think I’ll stick with handing over an extra couple of bucks for now. See? I’ve got the lingo going on too!

 There are a couple of things I am finding it hard to get used to though. Turning right on a red light makes me feel downright rebellious every single time, but I’m beeped at ferociously if I don’t. I can live with the guy in the gas station filling my car for me while I sit there. I’m not really comfortable with cooking here yet. Chicken breasts seem outrageously large and there are sneaky artificial colorings and flavorings in quite a lot of products. There is quite a selection of healthier goods available. It’s just a case of me getting used to what’s good and what’s not and figuring out the best places to buy stuff. The choice is certainly available. It’s sometimes overwhelming. I’ve been working my way through my American cookbook for all the things I wanted to make before but couldn’t easily find the ingredients in Ireland. It always seems to be the case that if one child likes something the other doesn’t but that was the same in Ireland. No doubt we’ll fall into some kind of meal routine soon, even if it means each child only gets fed every second day. So we really live here now. It’s starting to feel like we’re more involved in society, not merely vacationing observers. We’ve certainly been made to feel very welcome. I wonder how long it’ll be before we start to consider ourselves Irish-American? I don’t think it will take the children long at all, probably the adults a little longer. Maybe next year, we’ll even take part in the Cow Harbor Day parade ourselves.

Emigration Diary: First Steps

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

Well, we got here. After an uneventful flight, we hung around in US immigration for a couple of hours, signed here, fingerprinted there and with a ‘Welcome to the United States’ we were sent out into the heat with two overtired, overexcited children and minus one suitcase.
The first weekend was passed catching up with family, splashing around in the pool, unpacking, organising and figuring out what we have to do to get social security numbers, enrol the kids in school, get phones, driving licenses and set up bank accounts. On Monday morning, I gathered the necessary documents and we found our way to our local social security office just to be told that we would have to be in the country for ten days before we could apply for our numbers which we need to do all of the other things. Oh bureaucracy, must you follow me everywhere?
I came home a little bit discombobulated and automatically picked up the phone when it rang. It took me a while to figure out that the earnest young man on the line talking about preplanning was desperately trying to convince me to buy cemetery plots for myself and my husband. We only just got here! I told him it really wasn’t a good time for me to plan my funeral that morning. He didn’t even let it go there. I think he’s going to call me back after Labour Day. Note to self: screen all calls.

So enforced vacation it is for a little while. The weather has been a bit changeable but the kids are in the pool most days regardless. We even got to the beach one day. George found a list of house maintenance tasks to be getting on with before he starts works next week. I’ve been trying to establish some kind of routine and collecting loyalty store cards. I have four already!

On Tuesday, I took the kids grocery shopping and let them pick out some store cupboard snacks from the unfamiliar brands. This involved driving the giant automatic car on the wrong side of the road and finding my way to the grocery store. Out of force of habit, I took shopping bags with me. I didn’t know it at the time but each bag you reuse gets you a 5c discount on your bill here. Even so, still not many people recycle them and plastic bags are peeled off the roll by the dozen. I felt quite smug as the cashier counted my bags to ring up my discount but pride soon turned to shame when I realised all of the bags my kids were stuffing with non-nutritious food were emblazoned with the label Bottle Bargains and had come from the local liquor store. There goes my good mom image right out the window, and we’re not even here a week.

Applying for jobs here is interesting. It’s not as simple as just emailing off a resume. Each position requires a carefully tailored cover letter and often a lengthy application form as well as a resume. It takes hours. I am delighted that there are so many interesting things to apply for though. Luckily George is set up with something already. He starts this week, while I get on with enrolling the kids in school and finding my way about.

It’s still very early days here and feels more like another holiday in my mom’s house than the beginning of a new life but we’re settling in slowly but surely and as I empty and put away the suitcases it’s starting to become real that this time we’re not going back.

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.

The Last of The Spice

This article was originally written for Ramp.ie as part of the Emigration Diary series.

I used up the last of my jar of cumin today.

Not a big deal to most, I know, but to me it begs the question of whether I should buy another one or not. We’re leaving this house in less than three weeks and we’re leaving the country altogether in five. Forever. Our little family of four is all signed up to become a permanent resident of the United States and nothing more than a statistic to Ireland. We leave on Friday 13^th July.

Unlike many others, we are not being forced out of our country by the economic downturn. We’re used to being broke. We’ve never had much money here, yet we’ve managed to carve out a happy, relatively comfortable life. We’ve never owned a house but we’ve made homes in the ones we’ve rented. The Celtic Tiger somehow managed to pass us by, but that only meant its death was no loss to us. The fact that after years of trying – getting extra qualifications, setting up a business, working for minimum wage or worse, for nothing –  we are no further up the proverbial success ladder meant that when my number finally came up, twelve years after I applied, and I was summoned to the great round building in Ballsbridge, I ran there as fast as my best stilettos would allow and insisted the three males I’ve accumulated wore shirts. I even ironed them.

Emigrating is not a big deal to me. I’ve done it before. I was young, dumped and jobless, so I signed a two year contract to work in The Gulf in 2000. I wasn’t sure quite which gulf it was until the day before I left but I reduced my life to two suitcases and off I went into the unknown. I had a ball and stayed three years. This time it’s a bit different.

This time I have a husband and kids in tow. My husband has far more family to leave behind than I do. All the glitter of NYC will be dulled for him somewhat. My kids are seven and four. They are right at the beginning of their lives. Some say it’s a great age to move them. I feel like we are possibly influencing the course of their destiny by this move more than we have by any parenting decision we’ve ever made. For the record, we are subscribers to the go-with-the-flow school of parenting. I believe and really hope this rare decisive action we’re taking is for the best.

This time too, I know where I’m going, at least initially. We’re going to my mother’s house. She left for the US in 1992 with her husband and two small children and it was truly a leap into the unknown for them. They have done well. To an extent, us going now is history repeating.

To an extent, we have it easy. To an extent, this is a no-brainer for us. However, no life-changing uprooting comes without its doubts. So, should I buy another jar of cumin before we go or not?