It’s nearly 25 years since I left the streets of Belfast. It was a cold December night and the memory of the view over the whole city as we drove over the top of the hills out towards the airport still seems so clear, like it was yesterday. I was almost 19.
I yearned to live somewhere without the daily toll of a political struggle with no end in sight. I feared that day would never come and as soon as an opportunity arose to leave, I grabbed at it.
I have lived in Europe, England, a tropical island just 20km wide in the Caribbean for 11 years, and now in Florida for the past nine.
The waves of homesickness have come and gone. In the early years it was worst when there was a baby niece or nephew’s christening, or my dad’s 60th birthday party, or my cousins’ weddings. These events at home made me feel separated and unconnected, but yet I had chosen this expat life for myself.
It didn’t mean I wasn’t happy overlooking crystal blue Caribbean waters with swaying palm trees and white sand around my toes. The beach would remind me of family walks in Donegal with my cousins, all adorned in the Aran sweaters my mother had knit for us. We looked like a tribe.
We didn’t have Facebook or iPhones in those early days abroad, and if we had, perhaps the pain of missing loved ones would not have been so bad. I mastered the art of long handwritten letters of tales of the Caribbean, of steel pan music and the strange new culture to which I was welcomed.
I received in return letters from home about the terrible weather, new babies, weddings, and the adventures of the neighbour’s cat. All of these subjects brought me great laughs.
After the Caribbean we transferred to Florida. In June each year, we travel back with our two daughters to the “Motherland”.
It is interesting to see them play in the castle grounds near my childhood home as I once did, roll down the same hills, like history repeating itself. They connect with my city and I feel pride in that. Most of all I am proud it’s a better city since I grew up there.
Whilst it is hard to hold on to your heritage when you are no longer living in your birth place, I think I put more effort into doing so, because of that. My youngest daughter Irish dances and we celebrate St Patrick’s Day with our American neighbours, who would be devastated if we didn’t hold a gathering every year now.
The hardest time of the year for me is Thanksgiving, a time in America where families gather to be together. It’s a time I feel most lost, most yearning for my own family back home. It doesn’t get easier each year, especially as loved ones have passed and some are ill.
But in my heart it doesn’t matter where I am, they know I am always with them, and they with me.
This article was submitted as an entry to the Generation Emigration 'Ireland and Me' competition, which is now closed. For more 'Ireland and Me' stories, click here.
