The Postman Always Rings

…..but not on the phone. He calls to the door when he delivers one of the packages--usually from my mother.

Of course in all this time we have developed a relationship. Not of the sordid kind, but of the friendly, looking out for us, waiting until I'm home from the school run to deliver parcels kind. We've been here for nearly 5 years so that's a lot of care packages from family in Texas. He also drives a taxi in the off hours so we've hired him to take us to the airport and out to dinner too. He brings the kids birthday chocolate and Christmas sweeties and has stopped by for tea. This Christmas since the kids can read he's taking off all the customs stickers so they won't know what presents are hidden inside. We all shout and run for the door when we see his green van…Eugene's here!

My friends all think it's a bit odd but I am glad for this personal touch. When we moved house last year his route changed so he still delivers to us. And when I'm out jogging I can count on a honk and wave from my friendly (friend) postman.

After all, life is the relationships and experiences you have. I am glad to know that someone is out there watching my back and caring about my homesickness. I think it's a bit of what's missing in the world today. So, cheers to the friendly people of an Post. Happy Christmas and thank you for delivering all those packages.

Go raibh maith agat

There are certain foodstuffs that you can't find in Ireland. Most are of the processed or convenience variety but also southern things we Texans take for granted—chipotle peppers, pickle relish, decent bbq sauce, tomatillo salsa, cream corn, and cornbread. The cornbread is key here because I need it to make my mother's cornbread dressing. Thanksgiving cannot happen without the dressing, as everyone knows. Mother usually sends me boxes of Jiffy cornbread mix but we both forgot it this year. No problem, I thought. I knew I'd had it at someone's house once, didn't I? Now all I had to do was find it. I rang a few shops and was rewarded when I tried SuperQuinn. "Oh, yes. We have it….yes, in a square, yes I will hold them for you." So far, so perfect.

It was with this happy cornbread acquisition song in my heart that I arrived at SuperQuinn on Friday morning. In I went to collect the golden ingredient for the Thanksgiving table's best supporting star. It all fell apart when the girl brought out three loaves of multi-seed bread. Not a square, not golden yellow, not cornbread! I tried to remain calm, suggesting maybe she'd brought the wrong bread over to me….surely this wasn't the cornbread that had been put on hold for me. "But that's not cornbread", said I. "Oh, yes it is. This is cornbread" said the Lithuanian bakery girl. Please! Don't argue cornbread with a Texan. I know from cornbread and I will not be fooled.

It was with this that Sofia and I left SuperQuinn. Me practically in tears, she embarrassed by her American mother's stuttered protests to the Lithuanian baker. "It's okay Mommy. What's the big deal about cornbread anyway?" Oh, dear. I have got to get this girl back to Texas and straight away! What's the big deal???!!! Thanksgiving cannot go on! I am ashamed to admit that on the way home in the car, I cried. I gave in, I gave up, I was beaten by the lack of cornbread.

And then I got home and Paul, as usual, talked me off the ledge and I did what I knew I would do. I figured it out. I rang a friend to ask if she knew where I could find it. No. I googled it and found that corn meal or maize is called polenta in Europe. It seems so simple and logical that I can't believe I never realized it before. All this time I had been doing without corn muffins with my chili when all I had to do was go to the health shop, buy some polenta and whip up a batch of golden bread.

On the way home from the health shop I was listening to the radio (I seem to do that a lot don't I?) and had a dose of reality. There were floods in the west of the country, people's homes were ruined, and anymore rain would spell more disaster. This was a genuine problem. Not as easily solved as googling the origin of maize. I felt terrible for being so dramatic about such a small thing in the midst of real suffering. Snapped back to earth, I came home, counted my blessings, and got on with it.

I worked away making it all and it has never been easier or more fluid. By Saturday afternoon when our neighbors arrived to celebrate with us I had it all done, cool as a cucumber. Thanksgiving went on. And what a lot to be thankful for—a warm, dry house, more than enough food, a loving family, terrific neighbors, every day ahead to make the most of and to make cornbread out of polenta. I am thankful to Ireland for all these life lessons.

I’ve got a gra for ye

The thing I love about life is that you can always learn something new. New experiences, eye openers, and changes in my world view give me a buzz. While I was away in Geneva this past weekend I learned some things and was reminded of a few too.

I have a gra for travel, for being in new places, for learning new things. Some have a gra for someone, others a gra for chocolate cake, and some a gra for the past. Translated literally, gra means love in Irish. It also encompasses the romantic, ardent and desperate side of love--that of yearning, longing, and fervent desires.

Find your gra and hopefully you can satisfy it, achieve it, marry it.

I also learned about an English 80s band called Imagination. It was a 'one hit wonder' of a band as far as I can tell. The American equivalent being Tommy Tutone's "867-5309/Jenny" or A-Ha "Take On Me". The Imagination song is "Just an Illusion" in case you're interested. The funny thing about it is that the lead singer, Leee John, was spotted by my Geneva friends at a bar in France. We went to the bar ourselves on Saturday night and the Imagination album was on repeat. Sadly, Leee was only there in spirit.

I saw the jet d'eau on Lake Geneva, practiced some French, had the best lunch imaginable, and was impressed by Kirsten and her new life. Being in a new place requires that you see it not just cross it off your list of to dos. That's why you need someone who's living it to guide you and to share a bit of their daily life. Isn't that the point of this blog--to shed some light on the inane and every day?

Note: gra is meant to have a fada or ' over the a but I can't do it here and you pronounce it with a slight w sound, grawh.

Locked

When you're drunk you're 'locked'. And when you go out 'on the piss' you're having a 'session'.

Wednesday night I was all of the above. It started out very innocently with a grown-up dinner at 8. A reasonable few glasses of wine sipped with the 3 course meal of mushroom and leek soup and sea bass with tomato salsa followed by Toblerone cheesecake. See, grown-up. Something happened to me between the cheesecake and the bill. A session switch clicked in my head and I was on my second wind.

We stayed in the restaurant until they asked us to go downstairs to the pub. We stayed in the pub until they asked us to go outside to the late night bar. And we stayed there until they turned on all the lights and they asked us to go home.

I have always wondered where the expression locked comes from and I think I've gotten to the bottom of it. We used to have lock-ins at the skating rink where we would stay all night skating and playing games like who can make the best mummy with a roll of toilet paper. And the church youth groups have lock-ins to raise money for charities or church trips. A very different kettle of fish.

When we were in the pub portion of our evening they locked the front doors. This was common practice back in the days when pubs were mostly for men and rules were easily bent. The doors were locked, the few remaining regulars ensconced inside drinking the early morning hours away. Locked.

To leave the pub we had to follow a circuitous path behind some men of a certain age through a tiny Alice in Wonderland door and into the makeshift outdoor bar. This area is usually part of the restaurant but there must be some elastic regulation regarding where people can drink until late (or early) so they've industriously come up with a plan. So really it's the opposite of a lock-in now.

One more expression solved. I am getting such an education. You're welcome.

Paul, my Pillar

A flu by any other name would smell as bad. It isn't confirmed but the baby and I have been undercut by something suspiciously porcine. Or it could have been just the regular stomach flu. Who knows?! What isn't up for debate is that we were/are sick.

The timing is impeccable and I am very thankful that I will be brave enough to soldier on for my long weekend in Florence with Texas' best girlfriends, Kristin and Abby. At least that is the plan. Today isn't as horrible as yesterday and I have until Thursday morning to recover. Of course, my main concern now is who is going to pick up the pieces if (pray not) Paul is felled.

I will not be here to let him sit in the shower floor crying and shivering as scalding hot water rains down. I will not be here to let him lie in a puddle with the hot water bottle, covers tucked up to the neck and sleep for hours on end. I will not be here to dress, feed, make lunches, take to school, tend to Leo, pick up from school, do homework, feed, bathe, entertain and finally, blissfully put the kids to bed. What will happen? We don't have grandparents to come to the rescue. Luckily, we do have friends. He will have to ask for help and I will feel even more guilty as I swan around Florence free from all the above.

Please, please let Paul stay well. At least until I get home. Then it can all come unraveled and I will be able to handle it. He wouldn't entertain the idea of me not going because what would happen if I stayed and he didn't get sick? He would have to go around drinking from my teacups and powerade bottles to ensure it if I stayed. And that wouldn't be good for anyone. No, I can't cancel.

Not least of all for the fact that we had a crisis with the flight tickets for one of the Texans this morning. We all rallied and came up with a solution so we could be there together. I don't want to miss this trip. I feel like a 2 year-old stomping my foot and clenching my fists against anything ruining my fun. We've been planning for 5 months and we will all be there.

Clerical errors and pandemics be damned! I have a date with David.

 

 

Generosity, Not Luck

 

The Irish have a world-wide reputation for many things. The famine, the troubles, drinking, and luck are all well known. But the truest generalization I can make about the Irish I know is that they are generous.

Any of my friends would give me their last onion if I needed one for my dinner just as quickly as they would buy me an impromptu coffee if I didn't bring my purse on the school run. Equally, they offer to do favors without blinking an eye. There is an understanding that we are all there for each other. The idea is that what you give will always come back to you. Instant karma. The worst thing you can be here is 'mean' or cheap.

We first realized it when we threw a Halloween party. We said, bring the kids and we'll have chili and hot dogs, plus games and candy and all the American stuff that goes with Halloween. Every couple brought either a bottle of wine or beer. It was incredible. We had like 5 bottles of wine at the end of the evening and that was with drinking it during the party. Others brought bags of treat sized candy in addition to the booze. That's when it dawned on me: you don't go anywhere without bringing something. It sounds strange to me even thinking that's a new idea because it's been so ingrained since being here.

Of course at home when there's a party we offer to bring something or to help with the food…don't we? I really can't remember but surely we do right? It is really lovely how when you're invited to someone's house for tea or a coffee morning everyone brings something. Usually biscuits (cookies), sometimes flowers and even crisps (chips) if there are going to be kids around. It is just what's done. No one would ever dream of showing up at a house empty handed. And if it's a Friday afternoon during the summer someone will bring wine, but don't let that get out.

I could never give enough examples to convey the generosity I have received here. There is a generosity of time, spirit, money, love and laughter that cannot be matched. I can say that I have received many gifts here; none as valuable as the lesson on how to give.

So, thank you. For lunch today, for sharing school collections, for texts, for tea, for cakes, for laughter and above all, for friendship.

 

Four years gone. How have my ideas of the world changed? Ireland has become simply where we live with everything that goes with that. We know people to stop for a chat on the street, we can find our way around our little town even understanding all the dual named places and what it means for something to be 'at the top of the hill', we have friends who we regularly meet for the kids to play, a coffee, a drink, dinner and a gripe session. It is where I live, what I do, and how I view life. I see things from two angles now; as an American in Ireland and as an American IN Ireland…where the American is blurred and I see home from a different perspective. It is odd how you learn things. It kind of seeps into your consciousness and changes your viewpoint without you realizing you're changing. Not that I've undergone some dramatic alteration, that would be overstating it, but I have begun to take things for normal that at first seemed different and new..…things that would seem quaint, mystifying, and strange if we were only visiting tourists.

I think back to those first exciting, confusing and lonely months here. In my mind I documented all the new details, trying to incorporate them into my life. Details like paying for parking at a parking box within a shopping center to go to the grocery store, using a euro coin to borrow a shopping cart or 'trolley' (the first time I did it there was an attendant at the trolleys who saw me coming, obviously out of my element and taking pity, simply rolled me a trolley freed from its chains, I naively thought was how it was always done), taking your own shopping bags for your groceries and SACKING your own groceries as the somewhat surly, definitely bored, person at the cash register sat (yes, sat…they have chairs here) not entirely patiently as I struggled to stow away my purchases with my cranky 3 and 1 year old embarrassing me by seeming so darn loud. And that was just the grocery store.

People walk an awful lot here and everything is measured in how many minutes it takes to walk from point a to point b. And there is usually a hill involved. So, if the shop (grocery store) is around 5 blocks away you'd be told, "the dunnes stores is just a 3 minute walk". Or for directions to the school you'd be told, "just through the town and up the hill". No one uses street names when giving directions either. It's place names and hills and minutes that serve as markers. Which is not very handy when you don't know the area. And everything seems to have more than one name. It's like they keep calling places by their previous names as well as by the new one, figuring it out is like peeling back layers of old paint. For example, there's a pub commonly known as Jackie's but the name on the outside is O'Driscoll's. No one calls it that so you have to sort of know. Best of luck.

In retrospect I can also see how I must have appeared to them. In the beginning I just kept smiling and trying to ingratiate myself with the people I would regularly see. The smiling was probably seen as weird. Why is this strange girl always smiling at us? was probably whispered among the older neighbors I would pass on my way out to the shops. Most of my neighbors were older and they would pass by with a nod of the head. When we got here I had a big red jogging stroller for Sofia and Rowan. One of the selling points of the town and location of our house was the proximity to the sea. And the mile long Victorian era promenade along it. It is perfect for a jog and that was the potential I saw when I first laid eyes on it. People are always walking along it, kids ride their small bikes on it even though the ground is painted periodically with 'no cycling' in big yellow letters, dogs run and chase and it is the center of the St Patrick's and summer festivals every year with amusements and rides erected for weeks on end. All of this yet no one really jogs, especially women. You have your occasional guy or two pounding by the walkers and you will sometimes see a woman jogging but it is definitely not the norm. And then there was me. With big red. And shorts! Taking up so much space plowing up and down the mile long promenade, smiling. Always smiling. My friends now who would see me back then like to joke about how I was so alien in my shorts with tanned, Texas sun legs, running along behind my big red stroller with the two kids.