Ireland, I Took You for Granted…

…and I'll never forgive myself.

Dublin’s Phoenix Park

There’s a park downtown in Fort Wayne, Foster Park, and don’t get me wrong – it’s nice! But people talk about it with the sort of reverence one might reserve for the Japanese gardens.

Foster Park feels smaller than St Stephen’s Green. (It’s not; I Googled it. It is 10 times bigger. I am not good at sizing things, clearly.) It’s cute and the grass is well kept and there’s a nice walking track around it, but as parks go, it is small.

Or is it?

It’s no Phoenix Park, I frequently think – of Foster, and any other parks in town, honestly – but I recognise that’s not a fair comparison. Phoenix Park is one of the largest enclosed parks in any capital city in Europe, 1,750 acres, and dates from over a century before the US Declaration Of Independence. Foster Park covers 255 acres and was established between 1912 and 1932 – it’s barely celebrated its centenary. (By some accounts, it has yet to.)

I have, I think, been spoiled by the Phoenix Park, through which I would stroll, casually, when the mood took me, without ever stopping to think about how gorgeous it is; how lucky we are, as Dubliners, to have it; how majestic the deer are, or the trees, or even the Áras!

It’s made me think of the many other things I took for granted about Ireland, both big and small.

I’m sure I’m missing a lot from this list, so feel free to fill in the gaps and let me know what you think I’ve left out!

Radiators

Don’t get me wrong; I am rarely cold in my American house, where hot air is piped through the walls and the temperature is set to cosy at all times. (Eilis was right about that much.)

But sometimes, when you come in from a particularly chilly jaunt to the bin, or you get in from a drive that was too short for the car to truly warm up, you’d love a radiator to lean against for a few minutes.

And I still have no idea how Americans warm up their PJs.

Cuisine de France

Little did I know how much I’d end up missing the easy availability of buttery, flaky croissants from the Cuisine de France displays in newsagents and petrol stations all over the country.

Why has America not bought into these ready-to-bake delicacies?! Would that I had the money, or the entrepreneurial spirit, to bring that joy to these shores.

Spar

…and Centra, and Tesco Metro, and the small Super Valu that’s always been the focal point of any Irish town. Americans seem to be obsessed with size – the bigger the better! – and, as a result, are missing out on the sheer convenience of the convenience store.

There is nothing more galling to me than having to walk all the way to the end of an offensively large mega supermarket to get a gallon (not a litre, heaven forbid) of milk.

My kingdom for a corner shop like the one in Ardclough that has – quite literally – everything you could ever need, and is about the size of a Brown Thomas changing room.

Silence in the cinema

And in general, I guess, because Americans seem never to have encountered a silence they didn’t want to fill. But nowhere is this more apparent than in the cinema, where whooping and hollering and interjecting loudly are not just accepted but expected.

I mean, if I wanted to watch a movie with a running commentary I would be watching it on my television with my sister – where we would both happily make endless quips and comments throughout the action – but I go to a darkened, super loud cinema to truly absorb myself in the action, not to be yanked out of it every three seconds by the loud exclamations of someone I don’t know.

I must confess, mind you, that I have just returned from the cinema – we saw Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Lucy Liu was robbed at this year’s Academy Awards – and the only loud exclamations I heard were from children who are related to me.

Penneys

I know, I know, rampant consumerism is bad and even if the shops we’re buying from are honouring their climate commitments (ahem) and paying their workers a living wage (ahem, again), we still shouldn’t be buying oodles of crap that we don’t need, especially if it costs 2p and will fall apart after four wears and end up in landfill.

AND YET.

I miss Penneys so much. There is simply nothing here that compares – Walmart isn’t half as on-trend and Target just doesn’t have as good a selection and the nearest Zara is in Chicago (quite aside from which, American Zara is quite dear compared to its European outposts).

Sometimes I’d just love a little wander into town to look around the shops and buy some bits – you know, bits! – in Penneys and some baked goods in Proper Order and a decent loaf of bread in Marks & Spencer and is that all too much to ask?!

Which leads nicely into…

Walking

God, I miss walking. And I am not even what one would term an avid walker. When I lived in Dublin 1, directly on the junction of Gardiner and Parnell Streets, it was not unusual for me to get the 123 bus “into town”, a journey that took approximately 15 minutes to walk. (In fact, walking was often faster.)

But I miss having the choice. Once, soon after I’d arrived in Fort Wayne, I drove Beatrice and Don’s car to the repair place to have one of its tires replaced. While I waited, I decided that I’d walk across the road to have a look around Old Navy, a shop whose front windows I could see from where I’d left the car.

Well, let me tell you, it was not as easy as it seemed. There were no paths leading from one place to the next, so I ended up scaling flowerbeds and darting out in front of traffic to cross the busy four-lane intersection that led to Walmart and Michael’s and Chipotle and Chick-fil-A. Several cars beeped at me. What is she doing?! I imagined them asking themselves.

I was trying to walk from A to B, a concept that is, honestly, alien to most Midwesterners.

The fact that Beatrice lives what would be a 45-minute walk from me and I can’t walk to her house – because the path cuts off right around the corner from my house, the roads are winding and, most importantly, no driver is ever anticipating a pedestrian, least of all one with a buggy – goes between me and my sleep, even if I would probably still want to get the bus every now and then.

Which also leads (also nicely) to…

Public transport

I was (of course) in the car one day, driving to pick up groceries with the boys in tow, when we spotted a small group of people – three, maybe four – at a bus stop.

“Are those people homeless?” asked my stepson.

“Are they waiting there because they’ve nowhere to live?” asked my other stepson, as if those were two different questions.

“No,” I replied, baffled. “They’re waiting for the bus.”

When my cousins came to visit us here in the Fort, they asked, on day one, where the nearest bus stop was.

“There isn’t one,” I told them, although of course there is – it’s a 20-minute drive away, next to where we pick up our groceries. By the time you get to it, you may as well have driven to where you’re going. (As for a tram? A train? Forget it! Just drive, you tree-hugging loser!)

In Dublin, I could choose from taking the bus home to my parents’ house in Kildare – or, in fact, the other bus; getting a train to the station that is an eight-minute drive from their house; or hopping on a Luas and getting picked up in 15 minutes.

Here, unless you live in the centre of downtown, you need a car – and even if you did live in the centre of downtown, you wouldn’t be able to walk to the supermarket, because they’re all enormous and located outside of the city centre.

The weather makes sense

I mean, I know – when it rains for 60 days in a row in what’s supposed to be summer, you’d wonder what’s logical about it, but at least, in Ireland, when you look outside and it’s blazing sun, you know you probably won’t need a hat and scarf and gloves.

Similarly, if it’s lashing rain, you know you’d better put on a geansaí and a pair of warm shoes.

Here, you have literally zero clue what the weather’s like until you open the door. The sun could be splitting the stones at -5C; it can be raining cats and dogs in 35-degree heat.

I am almost always dressed incorrectly and I have, this week alone, got the baby into his shoes and his coat for a little trip to the swing set, only to realise that it’s -10C with a realfeel of -16C, three times.

Ireland, please, never change – and if you’re reading this and you live in Ireland, please, walk to Spar and get yourself a nice croissant and think of me.