It’s oddly hard for me to write this post, bittersweet for sure and it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the significance of it all.
After months of discussing, planning, waiting and preparing, 5 years ago today, Honeybun, Hubby and I boarded a plane for Dublin. Not for a visit, not for a vacation but for what would become our European adventure.
After weeks of packing up, carefully sorting our loves into things we would need right away, things we could live without entirely, things we would need within a few a weeks and things we could do without for a few months.
We left Florida that day with Sugarplum 14 weeks in my belly, 12 checked bags, 6 carry-ons, a stroller and a car seat. Our lives put into boxes and suitcases, bound for a place we had only visited, a temporary home we had never seen, knowing we needed to find our long-term home within a few days.
The pressure and anticipation were intense and the flight was long. We passed through border control, collected ours stacks of suitcases and walked through customs into our new home. At that moment I couldn’t have even imagined where we would go, what we would see and how we would change.
We hopped in a taxi van that was arranged for us by our relocation company. I installed Honeybun’s car seat and not 300 ft down the road we were stopped by the Garda (Irish police). After a lengthy discussion with the cab driver (who had prearranged the fare, didn’t have his fare ticker on and lied to the Guards about us being family) we were sent on our way to our temporary home.
We arrived mid-morning (most transatlantic flights are overnight and those to Dublin arrive early in the morning). We hauled our bags up to our apartment in the tiny, questionable lift and took it all in. This was our home.
Our first adventure was to the grocery store. The small one, in a rougher area that the maid suggested, not the bigger, nicer and closer one in the village where we would spend the next two and a half years.
That day we slept, unpacked and settled in. We took the train for the first time into hubby’s office to get paperwork so we could set up our Irish bank account.
The next days were spent getting our papers in order at the emigration and tax offices and looking for what would be our long-term home. Hubby started work on the third day but on the weekend we went sightseeing, took the bus tour, visited lots of new places and tried to adjust to the cold.
We instantly fell in love with our new home and life in Dublin and that first week, after visiting many, we found and fell in love with the house that would be our family’s home for the next two and half years (though we didn’t get to move in for another month).
In that time we visited 27 countries and immersed ourselves in the Irish culture around us. Hubby got friendly with his co-workers and I joined the American Women’s Club the same week we arrived. Within our first 10 days, Honeybun and I attended our first meeting (a newcomer’s coffee) where we met a woman who would become a lifelong friend. The next week we hopped on the city bus for the first time by ourselves to attend our first Coffee ‘n’ Kids meetup where we met many more moms and children that would light up our lives while living abroad.
As we took in those experiences, as I watched my new community and tried my best to “fit in,” not because I needed to belong but out of respect for this place that took me in, I changed. My mind was expanded. My views were widened. My opinions were broadened.
My life was not forever changed, I was forever changed from our time living in another country, a seemingly similar but vastly different culture.
We’ve been back in Florida now for 31 months, officially longer than the time we spent in Dublin. And I long to go back and visit. Not only to visit the friends we left behind but the remind my daughters of where they were raised. They were so little when we came back and while Honeybun claims to remember some things about Dublin, I know Sugarplum never will. But I also know that is had to of shaped who they will become, because it certainly shaped who we are as parents and how we talk about the world. Because we’ve seen it, experienced it.
We’ve wandered the souks of Tunisia and the markets of Istanbul. We’ve visited Mother Mary’s house and seen Napoleon’s tomb. We’ve walked around real viking ships and wandered the castles of Mary Queen of Scots. We’ve walked in the footsteps of Irish Monks, ancient Greeks, Julius Caesar and Jesus. We didn’t just experience history and the world, we lived it, took it all in and will never see our world and it’s myriad people in the same way again.
5 years ago today we walked off an airplane to live in a new country, I knew it would be an adventure but I never expected the true impact it would make.
