We submitted an application for the baby’s passport on Saturday. I made the appointment a few weeks back; both parents have to be present, so the earliest weekend date I could get was four weeks out.
Though he’s been here for almost six months, once I had the forms filled out it felt as though this had become an urgent project, a to-do list item that must be ticked off sooner rather than later.
I took his photographs against a white, fitted sheet. Our sheets wouldn’t do – one floral, another spotted, a third grey – so we took a little trip into his older brother’s room and peeled back the duvet.
I lay him down on his back and tried to straighten out the sheet behind his head. He laughed at me. “Tha tha tha!” he said. For once, I told him to be quiet. “Ssssh,” I said. “Stop smiling.” He laughed again.
He was wearing a starry onesie I’d bought from Primary, of course influenced by an ad on Instagram. It seemed patriotic enough for an American passport without being too on the nose. For his Irish passport photograph, I might dress him in the “Dote” onesie an Instagram follower sent us. You probably won’t see the text, but the bright green will be enough – and I’ll always know what it says below the line.
We paid the extra money for the passport to be expedited. I’d like to go home with him in May, before summer begins in earnest in Fort Wayne, so that I don’t miss too much pool time, and before my parents make their regular (at least, pre-pandemic) summer trip to entertain-slash-supervise my nephews during the summer holidays.
Even an expedited passport, I’m told, can take five to seven weeks. “But people are saying it’s taking two to three,” says the helpful woman at the post office downtown.
I start to wonder who these people are. Do they come back, after they’ve received their passports, to update her on how long they waited for? Does she have family members who’ve recently applied for – and received – passports? (Does she get a friends and family discount?)
In all, we paid $250 for the privilege of international travel, which seems extortionate. The flights will be another $700 minimum – thankfully, babies fly free, which seems only fair as he won’t be able to take advantage of the pretzels or the small but occasionally lifesaving seat pillows.
I have started to tell friends and family that I plan to come home in May. “I can’t wait to see you!” they say, and I think, yes, yes, but it is not they who are top of my list.
“I’m going to tell Mum to make sure she has Superquinn sausages in the house,” I tell my sister. “And those frozen croissants from Aldi.”
This is a theme I can warm to.
“I’m going to go and visit Liam so that I can get Bombay Pantry delivered to the house,” I say, imagining the freedom of leaving Atlas with Granny and Grampa while I gallivant into town. “And I’ll go hang out in Ciara’s and we can get chipper from the end of the road.”
There are different foods associated with different houses: toast in Elizabeth and Allen’s; scones with jam and cream in Emma’s; pastries in Ellen’s, with freshly brewed coffee. The food comes first. I think it is my love language, at least in terms of self-love. When it comes to loving other people, I am a gift-oriented lover.
I am salivating at the thoughts of the cafes I will frequent.
“I’ll be at Bread41 for the afternoon,” I will tell people, and receive guests there in the style of some royal or another. A cinnamon roll first, perhaps a croissant to top it off, a large lunch plate, more coffee, more, more, more.
Ireland had never truly seemed like a foodie paradise until I left it all behind, until I moved far away from White Mausu’s peanut rayu and home-made caramel in Two Pups and those small-but-perfectly-formed falafels in The Fumbally.
I know that a lot of things will have changed. Restaurants and cafes have closed. The Canvas Cafe in Kill, which did an excellent breakfast scramble, now apparently serves pizza; Debenhams, which was open the last time I was home (even if my reason for frequenting it was usually to get from the Ilac Centre to Henry St), has shut its doors for good.
Some other things will not have changed – they will have become more of what they were before. The Ivy, I’m sure, is still being frequented by luvvies and Instagram huns who don’t care that they stole tips from their workers. Avoca is, I’m sure, still producing scones the size of your head and charging €50 for a notebook with twee little ribbons embroidered on the cover.
There are probably even more Press Up venues, now, than there were when I left. Dublin in the 1920s must have been full of speakeasies, I imagine tourists telling one another. I resolve to go, finally, to the tenement museum on Henrietta Street and to take a train with my mum (free travel now, you know) to the Titanic Museum in Belfast and to soak in not just the food but the culture I had ignored before, always thinking there’d be time enough to explore it next week, next month, next year.
I’ve never been away from Dublin for this long – the two-year anniversary of my chaotic arrival into Chicago’s O’Hare airport, on March 14th of 2020, has just been and gone – but, when I close my eyes, I can feel the wind and the fresh rain and the sound of the seagulls and the hiss of the buses as they slow down to stop and the ping of the Luas and the sound of cars, driving through puddles and splashing filthy water up on to the path at unlucky pedestrians.
I can smell the hops from the Guinness brewery – a sickening odour, if you’re unlucky enough to have a hangover – and hear the flower sellers shouting on Grafton St and I can smell the blend of coffee and chocolate from the Butlers cafes by St Stephens’ Green, on South William Street, in Heuston Station, punctuating the comings and goings of the rail commuters.
A friend asked me, yesterday, how I’m getting on. “Does it feel like home yet?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. “Yes,” I could have lied, “It does.” And maybe it would only have been a half-lie. I feel that this is my home. I belong here, with my American and our children and our dumb dog and Mel Brooks, the newly adopted cat who has taken no time in making himself at home.
But when I close my eyes and think about Fort Wayne – the feel of it and the sound of it and the smell of it – I draw a blank. It hasn’t imprinted on me the way Dublin has. Maybe it never will. I’ll just have to hope that I don’t ever have to wait this long to go back again.
If Home is Where the Heart Is, Maybe I'll Have to Split Mine in Two