The end-of-year homecoming is a time of reflection for many emigrants. Some young professionals, back for the holidays, talk to Conor Lally about being home and away.
There will be many tearful goodbyes at the airports this weekend as emigrants return to their lives abroad. Some will leave with regret, others with relief.The end-of-year homecoming becomes, for lots of emigrants, a time for reflection on both the lives they have built away from Ireland and on all that they have left behind.
Dubliner Peter Smyth is typical of many of his generation who left Ireland for the US in the late 1980s. He was 20 at the time. He has been in Boston for 14 years, has built up a thriving business, but now at the age of 34 intends to return to live in Ireland this year.
What has left the biggest impression on him over nearly a decade and a half spent away is the can-do consumerism of the States.
"If you want to work hard then you're on, you're in the club," he says during a Christmas stopover on Irish soil.
When he first left Ireland he worked in construction for around two years. He then gravitated into the entertainment industry, pulling beers in an Irish bar in Boston, working and playing hard but saving even harder.
At 24 he went into business with a fellow Irish immigrant. The pair opened The Druid bar in Cambridge, Boston and then launched a second venue, Hibernia in downtown Boston.
"When I left Ireland the job scene wasn't absolutely terrible. It was at the end of the 1980s and things were starting to turn. But when I left school I was applying for regular jobs in companies like Aer Lingus but there were just so many applicants going for the same job you felt like you were going up against a brick wall right from the off." In the US, he says, it was a lot different.
"Looking back on it, when I opened the bar in Cambridge aged 24, I was very young. If you were that young in Ireland and approached a bank for a loan to buy a pub you'd be told to go away. But I can never remember not being taken seriously in the States." When he was younger, he says, the independence and selfishness needed to stay away from home came easier.
But now he plans to sell his businesses in Boston and settle in Dublin again.
"Your family becomes more important as you get older. And while things went well for me in the States, I was aware when coming home for holidays that things were going well for people here too. Ireland has changed a lot. I'm looking forward to coming home, to taking a month off to clear my head. After that I'll be looking around for opportunities."
Unlike Peter Smyth, Nuala McArdle's foreign odyssey has just begun. The 29-year-old graphic designer left for the bright lights of London five months ago and is "loving it so far".
"I just felt I needed a change from Ireland, I've lived here for so long. I think when you go away, when you leave the place you are used to, obviously the security blanket is gone. You don't just ring people up and meet for coffee in a new city in the same way you would at home."
McArdle has moved in with friends in London and is working as a waitress. She is starting a course in make-up artistry later this month. London has been a hugely positive experience for her so far and she believes 2003 will be the same.
"The graphic design industry in Dublin has been very tough the last while. A lot of people I know who have jobs are afraid to change because there is not a huge amount of positions to change to, so to an extent they are trapped. I feel my move to London is a great opportunity to break away and to wipe the slate clean.
"I think that's why so many Irish people opt to live away, it's exciting and it's a challenge." She says she has no definite plans as to how long she'll stay away but believes the proximity of Dublin will go a long way to softening the blow of being away from friends and family.
"I've no big plan as such. I'm looking forward to giving London a go for at least a few years. Really, it's a case of so far so good and from now on whatever happens, happens."
Hugh Roddy has been living and working in Chicago for 18 months. While he enjoys his life on the other side of the Atlantic he says if it were not for his American fiancée, Ginger Page, he "would have come home a long time ago".
He met Page in Dublin in 1999. After having a long-distance relationship for over a year he decided to bite the bullet and move to be with her.
"You hear lots of people saying, 'I'd love to go away, I'd love to move to the States'. But when it comes to leaving, to actually packing your bags and going, it's a lot different. It's a killer if you are close to your family like me."
Nonetheless he says his family are pleased that he is happy in America.
"I suppose they wish Ginger was Irish and Ginger's family wish I was American. I know that if we came to live in Ireland in a few years she'd be hurting as much as I was when I left. But when you're with someone you love who is not from the same country as you are that kind of thing will always be with you."
The 28-year-old engineer says the pace of life in Chicago is surprisingly similar to Ireland. But he still hankers after his friends in Dublin. The Chicago nightlife, he says, is a lot more subdued than in Ireland.
"And even though I have a lot of friends in Chicago it's not the same as being with the lads in Ireland. When you come home here the craic is ninety and I guess, along with my family, that's really what I miss the most. And I miss the bread and butter as well. When I'm away I'd do anything for a bit of batch loaf and some Kerrygold. I'm telling you, when I'm home it's all I eat."