Sipping mulled wine and eating warm mince pies seems strange in sunglasses and factor 30, but it is 25 degrees, the palm trees are dusted with fake snow and Santa has just arrived on a camel.
Christmas FM and all the weather reports from home serve as a delicious reminder that we will be landing in Dublin in only a few days; our first Christmas at home in three years. While everyone at home complains about the weather, my husband and I delight in the thoughts of cold winter nights by the fire with family and long lost friends. Not to mention Guinness, roast spuds and chipper chips.
“Home” has become such a complex word for me since leaving in 2009, but it’s with the festive season that it seems to carry the most weight.
I didn't leave Ireland to set up home in one specific place. Instead, I've become a citizen of the world in a way, and have made five different countries on three different continents my home over the last six years. In one of those countries I met my husband, who is also Irish, and in others I've been afforded many opportunities and had endless cultural encounters. Every time I return to Ireland around the festive period, I come from a different country and with different outlook and view of home.
The last time my husband and I were home for Christmas was three years ago, and we returned from the Republic of Georgia after a few months of working in rural schools. We had been living with a Georgian family in an unheated apartment block in the middle of the Caucasus Mountains. The hospitality, sense of community and generosity of the people we encountered in Georgia, especially in times of such hardship for many of them, reminded us of all we had waiting for us at home.
Recession or not, Ireland seemed a prosperous place in comparison. By the time we touched down in Dublin, with our home made Georgian presents from our adopted Georgian family, we hadn’t seen our Irish families for four years and the emotion and warmth of that Christmas will never be forgotten.
This Christmas, the story couldn’t be more different. We have been living in Abu Dhabi for the past two years where we have been afforded incredible opportunities in terms of our careers and savings for the future. They are opportunities we know that we would just not have at home in Dublin.
It’s relentlessly hot here, there are no mountains or greenery, our jobs are more challenging than ever before, and we have a whole new culture to get to grips with. But as we sip our non-alcoholic cocktails at a Christmas market by the beach, we know how lucky we are that we can now fly home any Christmas we want.
With one brother in America, and one in Canada, this year our parents will be even more grateful for our journey. Counting down the days until we land in Dublin, we're once again anticipating through which lens will see home this time.
