FAIQ #2: What Do You Miss About Ireland?
The short answer is I miss talking and I miss walking. But I’m not good at short answers.
I miss the mountains, soft grass under my feet, the smell of the sea, rain on my eyebrows, heavy traffic, buying a book when intending to buy milk, trains, conversations at bus-stops, roads that bend, tourists, the views of the bay, sliced bread, socializing on school nights, unsignposted ancient monuments, umbrellas, girls in big woolly jumpers, pubs without music, being handed a mug of tea in a friend’s house, being handed a mug of tea in a stranger’s house, the lack of a work ethic, windows left open for air when it’s cold, knowing every neighbour for streets around, petty crime, the accents, fishing boats and piers, the spontaneity of society, walking on beaches, streets covered with chewing gum, discussions on art, imperfect teeth, footpaths that go somewhere, footpaths that go everywhere, being the same as everybody else, curtains on windows, seeing thousands of other people who cycle, the imprecision of it all, sandwiches, the bustle of a city, having four pork products for breakfast, weekends away, neighbourhoods with centres, negative talk, horses on streets, unheated bathrooms in winter, what we do with words, rainbows, over-hearing teenagers on buses, international news, fields with hedgerows, meeting people after work, hitch-hiking, the sound of a kettle being filled, self-deprecation on a national scale, French films at the cinema, dashing for cover in a shower, passionate speeches by monumental mothers, doors on every room, eight o’clock meaning whatever you want it to mean, the sounds of the gulls, congregating in kitchens, other people having the time, upstairs on the bus, clouded closeness, not counting how many starch items are in a meal, the reflections of the city on the water, the greenness, and being told how full of it I am.
But mostly I miss talking and I miss walking.
Update: If the above sounds romantic, it shouldn’t. See the comments below for an explanation.
Update Eile: After over 8 years living in America, I returned to Ireland in September 2007, so I no longer miss it.
See Stuff Kind of Related:
• Homesick Cures for the Irish in America
• How Do You Find America?
• What’s With You Irish And All This Guilt Stuff?
• A Kansas City Phone Call to an Irish Mother
• You Travel By Train in Ireland, Don’t You?
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Oh, alright. If it helps the home sick pangs…you’re full of it!
When we were at the Irish Fest Promoters Conference in Pittsburgh last weekend, we had a talk from Eoin Kennedy from Tourism Ireland. He gave us some really startling facts…for me anyway. Ireland has seen a 94% growth in tourism since 1995. 6% annual increase in GDP, the fastest growing in Europe. 125,000 immigrants into Ireland in the last 3 years. Ireland recently passed the USA to become the number one exporter of software in the world. 53 new hotels built in the last 5 years. All of which makes me wonder how much of the Ireland that you grew up with and remember has or will be drastically changed or even vanished in years to come. Is there such a thing as too much prosperity?
The rate of change in Ireland over the last ten years has been nothing short of spectacular, but I don’t hold a romantic notion of wanting that change arrested.
Even in the stagnant seventies and depressed eighties there was change in Ireland. The gap-toothed streets of Dublin’s city centre in the 70s were filled with fake Georgian buildings in the 80s. The run down inner-city area designated as a future bus-station in the 70s, blossomed into the ultra-rich social center of Temple Bar in the 80s. In the seventies it regularly took people five hours to drive to Cork from Dublin. By the time I left in 1999, with car ownership doubling every year, and European funds building better roads, the trip to Cork took a lot closer to what 160 miles should take in a car.
Unlike neighbouring Britain, or much of Europe, Ireland never had an Industrial Revolution. As I was growing up it was transitioning from a small open agricultural economy into a service-led one with Tourism first and then I.T. leading the way.
Working in I.T. I witnessed first hand the mass immigration back home of Irish people who had left ten and more years before never expecting to return, and I witnessed the mass immigration for the first time also of foreign nationals into Ireland, which I loved and found tremendously exciting.
Much of the changes that have taken place have definitely altered the fabric of everyday life, but I wouldn’t want them not to happen. Attendance at Catholic churches is down 90%, Dublin now has a tram system, laws have changed with regard to divorce and homosexuality, and much more people seem to have much more money. But the changes are just as much Irish as what went before. In October I enjoyed walking around the Russian and African shops of Dublin, but I did it with the same rain on my eyebrows as I enjoyed for the thirty-three years before I left.
Most days I talk to people in Ireland, and listen to Irish radio, and follow Irish news. And I visit every year, and it is what I see in the ever changing Ireland that I still miss, not what I experienced in my youth.
I was home twice last year and saw more kids playing on the street than I saw the rest of the year here in KC. I miss that. Girls still wear wolly jumpers. I like that. People do get the bus (as well as the Tram and trains). And they talk a lot.
Ultimately my list of what I miss stems from the twin activities of talking and walking. Despite the changes, talking and walking still happens greatly in Ireland by comparison with where I live now, and I do them much more at home in Ireland when I visit than I manage in KC, so it is that I miss them.
I think what has mostly vanished from Ireland is the Ireland that was never there, the Ireland we hear of here every St Patrick’s Day. My urban Dublin, monstrous as it takes over Leinster, and always unromantic, will still be there, as I expect will the long-term unemployed who never went away.
About the only thing that is truly vanishing for me is the chewing gum off the street surfaces, which is probably a good thing.
That does sound like progress.
Jesus. I miss the walls, the grass, the old churches, the humour, the feeling of being home, do you know that feeling? just being home. I have never felt that feeling anywhere else. I’m from Dublin, but I can get that feeling anywhere in ireland. I left in the 8os when things were bad, but I just don’t fit in anywhere. That is strange.
I don’t know that it’s strange Yvonne, I think that’s what emigration does.
And yes I know that feeling.