Recalibrate
Let's look at it this way: I'm lucky to call two beautiful places home. (Sometimes beauty is subtle. Sometimes you have to go away to see it at all.) I'm lucky to have family in one place and a family of friends in the other. My children are lucky to have two passports, to feel (a little bit) at home in two places, to know that America isn't the Only and that the way Americans say things or do things isn't the One True Way.
Someone asked me, or maybe they didn't but this was the question I answered, why we bring the children to Ireland every year. I want them to know their grandparents, of course, before they don't have them any more; and I want them to know their aunts and uncles and cousins too, because those relationships are real and special and not something that you can just pluck out of thin air. But apart from that, I suppose I want them to know Ireland enough that it's not a big, huge, special, once-in-a-lifetime place for them. I want it to be a normal place, somewhere they're used to being and where they feel, to a degree, that they can belong if they want to.
And maybe I look too far into the future when I declare that I don't want to grow old here where my roots are not, and that I don't want to give my children another place they could belong, in case they decamp and have my grandchildren there, far from me. Maybe I should just chill about that sort of thing, because they might move to Australia or have no children or never move out at all, and I might be unhappy about any of those eventualities too.
Maybe everything is just fine, and I'm lucky.
I know I'm lucky.
posted by Maud @ 5:42 PM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
Lovely. Glad you're safely home and glad we got to meet!
Thank you! The meetup was definitely a highlight of my trip.
I live a couple of hours from my "home", not as far, obviously, as you, but all those thoughts run through my head continually. Glad you are home safely xx
I would go home a few times a year if I could.
I know Alabama isn't Ireland, but there is a sense of permanence I get when I am there that I don't feel anywhere else. I also think it's good for our kids to see where we are from, and relationships with aunts and uncles and cousins (or close family friends) is of paramount importance to making a kid feel that they are part of something larger than themselves.
I don't EVER want the girls to think that our way is the only way, so I loved this quote "to know that America isn't the Only and that the way Americans say things or do things isn't the One True Way."
I think it's perfectly normal and natural to believe that wherever you live is the centre of the universe, as a child. But I also think that because America is just so huge, it's sometimes harder to believe that the rest of the world exists if you don't see any of it for yourself. Growing up in Ireland I had more of a sense that, while we were in the best place, there were certainly others out there.
Yeah, ditto, but in reverse. I feel so conflicted about what I want their identity to be, but I suppose they'll figure that out for themselves. I hope once they're older we can go back to the US every year, the idea of it seems so daunting right now ;)
The time difference certainly works in our favor for travelling with children. When you go east to west you get them waking up in the middle of the night. No fun for anyone, and we've only done it to CA, where it's a three-hour difference.
I love the fact that Mini & her sister have dual heritage-they share a history of two countries and that can only enrich a child's life I feel.
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