St. Patrick's Day Makes Me Feel Old

I love St. Patrick’s Day but it always makes me feel old. It reminds me of when I moved to Ireland at the age of 18 to be an au pair and lets face 18 is a long time ago now.   Anyone who says they still feel 18 need only to spend the afternoon with an actual 18 year old to realize just how not 18 they really are.

Moving to Ireland was my first real adult decision and probably the one that has shaped me the most. In the months leading up to the move my bestfriend and I had been planning an extensive post high school trip throughout Europe. We talked about it endlessly in class and I swear I told everyone I knew. My parents were surprisingly ok with me taking a year off before starting university, providing as my father put it “I did something interesting” .The plan was to work that summer and then leave in the fall. September, October and November came and went and we were still there. My friend backed out and I was facing an ultimatum from my parents either i get the heck out of town or I was going to school at the local community college in January. This was before the expression FML was in fashion but if it was am sure i would have woke up every day and said FML. Everywhere i went i ran into people who wanted to know what i was still doing in town.  I desperately wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to leave alone. I was the type of person that had all the same friends from elementary school,  we played on the same sports teams, got cast in the same plays and worked at the same jobs.  To be honest I wasn’t quite sure who I was if it wasn’t in relation somehow to one of them. One night in December i was online late at night and found a family in a village an hour outside of Dublin looking for a nanny. I had found my way out. I booked my ticket two days later and was gone just after the New Year.

My arrival in Ireland was a bit more bumpy than i imagined it would be. I didn’t have a work visa (this seems very obvious to me now but at the time was somehow very easy to overlook and to be fair the rule around needing a work visa had just changed on January 1^st) The immigration officer grilled me and threatened to send me back or to prison (i thought the Irish were supposed to be friendly?) In the end I told him he could send me back to Amsterdam where I had connect through– to which he replied “that Amsterdam is a horrible, horrible place” and reluctantly let me in. 

I could write so much about Ireland and everything i experienced there. I was one half house wife looking after two little girls during the day, gossiping with the other au pairs, watching bad irish daytime tv, ironing non stop (my family required that their underwear be ironed – underwear!) one half normal 18 year  old girl drinking (a lot) falling in “love” every 2^nd weekend with a new Irish boy (that accent stills kills me) and causing minor scandals in our  little village. The other au pairs and I took full advantages of the few weekends we had off to visit other towns to drink in new bars, meet new irish boys and cause scandal there. It was more than just fun though I made some life long friends there, two summers ago i travelled back to Finland to go to see a fellow au pair marry her Irish sweetheart.

Ireland taught me that if I really wanted something I couldn’t wait for someone else to give me the ok or to hold my hand, I had to just do it.  I learned that the first week and sometimes the second week was going to suck but eventually you meet people, settle in and soon you can’t imagine not having come.  If I hadn’t gone to Ireland, I may not have moved to Vancouver on my own the following year to go to University, may not have gone to work on the cruise ship where I met my husband. And of course just as importantly had I never gone to Ireland I may have never learned to drink.

Things like that

When you are growing up there are certain stories you hear over and over again about your parents courtship. As a little girl I used to ask for tales of their life before me and my brothers as my bedtime story. My dad was my mom’s baseball coach, she hated him because he changed her from catcher to third base, their first date was a concert which my father asked my mom to two months in advance. Another story I heard less but as I grew older seemed meatier was  that initially when my father proposed my mother said no or rather not yet since she was still just 19. Am not sure how the rest of the conversation or likely conversations went but i know there was some talk about my grandfathers ailing health and family pressures, the end result was my father told my mom that either they get married or he was going to Australia. Ultimately  my mom ended up proposing to him awhile later and she was married at the age of 20.  While the exact retelling of the story varies depending on the parent one thing they agree on, is that she should have told him to go. Maybe he would have left and return weeks later after wandering Sydney love sick and lonely. Things like that happen all the time. Or maybe he would have gone and they would have kept in touch for awhile before drifting apart and meeting other people. Things like that happen all the time.
 

My own story involves leaving instead of staying. When I was 26 I quit my job and left my apartment, friends and family to move to Bombay to be with Mehernosh. It sounds like a great sacrifice but if i am truthful my job was a mindless administrative position and I lived in a basement suite.  Besides I was sort of crazy about the guy and figured if I didn’t go I would always have that doubt in the back of my head, the constant “what if”.

It was basically a disaster from the time I arrive. We couldn’t get a place because we weren’t married, the one we did find flooded. We ended up living in a run down hotel, with a shared bathroom down the hall. The job I lined up before leaving ended up being horrible and I worked a series of bizarre jobs to make ends meet and to keep busy (those jobs are another post altogether). I got very sick. Mehernosh had unexpected surgery and had to move home while I stayed alone. There were bombings within days of my arrival and every conversation with my parents ended with my mother begging me to come home.  While the city was in turmoil, so were we. We loved each other but  . . . . suddenly my boring job and basement suite seemed very appealing.  There were financial and family pressures not to mention visa restrictions and long conversations about what we should do that lasted for days. Finally months later I decided to go home and Mehernosh decided to let me. When we said goodbye at the airport I don’t think I have ever felt so exhausted.   

It takes about a day to travel from Bombay to Vancouver and I don’t think there was a minute that I didn’t think about it. The moment I arrived in Vancouver I knew I could never leave him again and in Bombay he was thinking the same thing. We were married five months later in Costa Rica and will be married for four years this Saturday. The time that i spent in Bombay was probably some of the hardest of our relationship but I think it was also the best thing that could have ever happen to us, we know now what it feels like to let go of each other and we never want to do that again.  Things like “this” don’t happen all the time.

I Sometimes I Say Horrible Things

A friend of mine recently brought back some gifts for Kayan from Mexico. After presenting them he went on to say i should be cautious and use my judgement because he had bought them in Mexican markets and it was not as though the government of Canada had tested them for safety. To which i replied “well what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” I admit that i have a problem with saying horrible things but this is quite possibly the most horrible thing i have said in recent memory. Fortunately there was apparently no one from Children and Family services and my friend has a high tolerance for horrible things.

The thing is that may well have been my life outlook in regard to my own self  but really doesn’t reflect how i think about my sons well being. My response was i guess just sort of a reflex after years and years of having the motto of interesting things first and safety last life.  I am not an adrenaline junkie or anything it just sincerely never occurred to me to be scared or concern. It is probably because of this i am now having a hard time discerning just what i should care and not care about. Where exactly does danger lie?  Just a short time ago i was riding on the roof of old trucks down Haitian highways  still split apart from the earth quake and now i refuse to carry my son while wearing high heeled shoes in case i trip.  Following this logic i apparently believe that it is far more likely that something serious happen from tripping than from flying off the roof of truck on the highway.

We are going to India in May and i am obsessed with countless things about the trip. The car seat, the weather, the water, the cleanliness or lack and that everyone that touch him first submit to a full body scan to detect any diseases. Mehernosh is at a loss because this is not my first trip there and on the first three i never had a worry. I rode on motorcycles, took the public train days after bombings, regularly gave my hand to street people (i have no idea how i don’t have leprosy) and took great pleasure in seeing the real Bombay by eating at some of the most “rustic” restaurants. Now I want to bring our own bottle water because i don’t trust the ones processed in India.

Of course the greatest irony is that I do hope that Kayan grows up to be unafraid. I hope he gets to experience even more than I have and that he lets his intuition guide him. Some of my best memories are of walking through the Favelas in Rio or getting lost in a less than desirable town on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua. I hope Kayan has great adventures but he better not tell me about them.