My daughter Molly is curious about Ireland. She often asks when we will go there. Her requests are hardly surprising, as she rightly regards herself as half-Irish. The trouble is that I have no idea if and when we'll make that journey together again. It's a long way back from southern Tasmania to rural Westmeath. And, as with my religion, I've let my passport lapse.
“Máire is ainm dom,” she recites proudly: the Gaelic version of her name is her unique badge of honour. Her smattering of Gaeilge is courtesy of a DVD and textbook from Auntie Mary. So I can’t claim any credit for her cúpla focal. Anyway, I’m not one to wear my Irishness on my sleeve. You won’t find me gadding around in a GAA geansaí.
“Will we go this year, Dad, do you think?” she’ll ask. “Or will we go next year?”
If only it were that straightforward. I have no firm plans to go, just yet, so I usually opt for some vague response. That’s not to say I don’t think about a visit. What migrant doesn’t? But I’m loath to tell her that, in my mind, Ireland is fast becoming just another country. Apart from that familiar landscape there’s little left at home. And I suspect my daughter would find it all something of an anticlimax. The ghost village of Finea, my bachelor brother’s livestock, and all that bog would no doubt run a distant second to her daily social network.
She has been “home” once before, but she has no memory of it: how everyone fought and fussed over her. Her shock of red curls were a huge hit. She can watch that earlier version of herself on a DVD. In it, my smitten mother is following her around with food, and my ailing father is bemusedly watching her theatrics on the kitchen linoleum.
She occasionally asks me to list the names and chronological details of my nine siblings – and those of her cousins scattered across three continents who remain strangers. Perhaps her queries are her attempt to put me in some sort of context.
At times her interrogations have me ducking for cover. It’s not as if I’m harbouring any family secrets. At least I hope I’ve jettisoned that old chestnut. It has more to do with my innate reticence. I imagine that her joining the dots about my childhood will become more sophisticated and perhaps even more insistent as she launches into adolescence. But since my parents died, in early 2010, my inclination to return has seriously waned.
In the meantime life goes on here in Tasmania, 240km south of the Australian mainland. Another summer is just around the corner. Sunny mornings are giving way to warmer days. I’m keeping an eye out for the ubiquitous tiger snakes. We’ve already have a few bush fires, although nothing catastrophic, yet. Something – a bandicoot, I’m guessing – has taken to burrowing into our potato patch down near the dam, so I’ll have to upgrade the fencing, quick smart. A pair of kookaburras are taking turns at ruthlessly picking off grubs and other delicacies in the front paddock. The first of this season’s strawberries are being picked, so the cherries can’t be far off. And it won’t be long until itinerant fruit pickers and backpackers begin arriving in droves.
So for now I’ll bide my time, and we’ll see what next year brings. After all, Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran are more important to my would-be travelling companion right now than a flight halfway around the world.
I tell myself I don't mind. Like the father in Brian Friel's short story Among the Ruins, perhaps at some level I'm reluctant to go back there again, just yet. So much has gone for good. And too much is tucked away in my mind. After a long sojourn in Melbourne my new life in rural Tasmania is an easier place to occupy. It'll do, for now.
