Things I Miss

One of the things I’ve grappled with most since moving to the US in 2020 and becoming, officially, an ex-pat, is the idea that I’ll be going on about Ireland for the rest of my life.

I imagine myself, sometimes, as an old lady, crabbily telling whoever will listen that things are sooooo much better in Ireland and I hate it! I much rather the fantasies where I’m a snappy but hilarious granny whose grandchildren are torn between love for and fear of me.

But I can’t help it; there are things I miss, things I maybe won’t ever stop missing. And these things aren’t missed enough to make me not want to be here, with my boys and my husband and my house, where I am, for what feels like the first time in my life, content.

They are, however, missed enough for me to think about them more than I’d like – they are missed enough for me to think that I will, in spite of my hopes, be jabbering on about the old country until the day I die.