Goodbye, Ireland

Ireland, I had no idea what to expect from you. Before arriving, I thought, “who cares?” I know lots of people are enamored with the idea of Ireland, maybe because of movies, maybe because of their heritage... but, for me, that was never a concern. I could have lived my whole life without ever visiting the Emerald Isles.

Boy, how wrong I was. I loved my time in Ireland. There are so many simple things I’m going to miss.

Let’s get the big one out of the way: I can communicate. After several years in Brazil, I didn’t realize how important it was for me to be able to talk to people. I felt like I was becoming weird and clam-shelled. In Ireland, that immediately solved itself. I felt a new confidence. I could talk to people, handle my own affairs. Suddenly, I had agency again. I went to the public library, got a library card, used their computers to do research on becoming a certified TEFL teacher, then set up a course for CELTA. By the end of the summer, I had gotten work teaching at the University of Limerick Language Centre.

I’ll miss the Language Centre. I came into my own as a teacher. I learned so much about teaching academic English, about organizing lessons, about sourcing from books. Plus, the campus is beautiful. During autumn, the chestnuts fall from the trees. Mushrooms sprout from the ground. There are large, open fields to lay in, and a river nearby.

I’ll miss the bike rides to work. Every day, an easy, but beautiful crisp ride along the river trail. Ducks, swans, dogs, plants. Sometimes I’d swallow a bug. One time my bike slid on the icy bridge, and an older lady just jogged right past me. It was great. Really, being able to bike to work in 15 minutes along such a beautiful trail is a dream of sorts. That is the perfect life. Bike there, bike back. I’ll miss the hell out of it.

My coworkers were great, too. Maura always made me laugh, and was fun to work with. Siobhan was a great new addition, easy to talk to. Declan was so professional, so helpful, and always willing to chat about books. Liz was easy to get talking, easy to laugh with. Aileen, for the year she was around, before having her baby, was always great—so down to Earth, so human. During the first time there, Debbie was in charge, and her crass way of just throwing me into the deep end turned out to be very useful. Eventually Zoe took her place, and Zoe is great. A real humanitarian, while also being incredibly sharp and equally sharp around the edges. Sonia, too, was always friendly and brought such a nice energy with her when she visited the teacher’s room.

I’ll miss doing Cambridge exams. I hope I can keep doing them somewhere, somehow. Listening to people speak and evaluating them feels, to me, like something I could do for a living and be good at. I hope I haven’t lost this opportunity by leaving.

Actually, I had quite a few big accomplishments in Ireland: CELTA certification, Cambridge Speaking Examiner certification, teaching and organizing a pre-sessional course (P4U), starting and maintaining the short story club Paper Wings, and creating Bestest Memories with the Freebird crew. This was a productive time, in a way.

I can’t believe how much I enjoyed some of the students. There are ones I may never forget, just because of how quirky they were. The students from Japan and the students from Kuwait, equidistant in their behaviors and skills. Hailey, from Vietnam, who was loud and opinionated, and whose passion was “to live in Ireland.” Maggie, from China, who had a degree in film studies and was, at UL, taking a course for some design thing that not even she knew what exactly it was. Sota, from Japan, who learned how to “think about” himself.

I loved our little apartment, even though it wasn’t properly ours. After Claudio left, it really felt like home. The location, the fireplace, the little kitchen. It wasn’t perfect, but, if we owned it, I could see us really making it ours.

Eunice especially liked it. I remember when we first arrived and toyed with the idea of letting her go outside. She was so cautious at first. Afraid, confused. Creeping slowly around inside, then on the ledge, then outside, until she became so excited by it that we had to find a way of locking her in. She would meow at night trying to escape. She would get confused and go into other people’s windows. Eventually she got used to it, and I could see her becoming a happier, more comfortable cat.

I’ll miss sitting outside the bedroom window on a weekend morning, coffee, blanket, reading a book. Cat jumping on and off me, over and over, deciding whether to stay inside where it’s warm or roam freely in the dew grass.

Oh, and that grass! I’ll never forget the grass. When the sun hit the grass a certain way, it became the greenest grass I ever saw, reflecting this bright yellow of the sun, along with a perfect blue sky. I’ve heard people talk about the greens and blues of Ireland, and there is nothing false about that. I can still imagine the semi-gold glow of the grass in the evening as the sun lingers low. The smell of fresh, damp air. It’s so beautiful, so touching.

I’ll miss the city center. I didn’t spend a lot of time there, but when I did, sometimes alone, it felt comfortable. Arthur’s Quay, looking over the Shannon as the water went from smooth to choppy at the dock ledge. The way the bridges were adorned with seasonal flowers, wild flowers growing out of the mossy rocks along the sides. King John’s Castle so near, so natural, like a street sign or a park bench, touchable and looming. 

I loved the evenings at The Locke with Marina, having a proper pint, listening to the music. I remember we had a favorite singer: a young man who played The Dubliners. Marina would ask him to play certain songs, and he would try. And then there were the tap dancers who would join him. 

The coffee shop on campus, in the Foundation building, where they always had an Americano ready for me. The hawkish, thin, Ukrainian woman (or maybe Swiss, because she liked Milka bars) who had the stiff blazer shoulders like from an 80s movie. Or the Brazilian woman who was a lawyer from Baia, serving me coffee, never getting better at English in two years, who gave me a hug when I left even though she never bothered learning my name.

I’ll miss the folks who worked at the liquor store: girl with brown hair and glasses, art-school guy with Mae Borowski tattoo, tall goth girl, et al.

I’ll miss the phone game I had, Romancing SaGa Universe, which I loaded onto my phone when we arrived and were staying at Breda’s AirBnB. I played that game a little for at least 700 days while in Ireland, and then the service itself shut down just at the end.

I’ll miss the cold winters. There will likely be more cold winters in my future, but I’ll miss these. The perfect autumns, with the smells and the fallen leaves. The foggy mornings and nights, thick enough to cut through. 

I keep coming back to it, but the air. The crisp air. I love the air in Ireland. I love breathing it, I love feeling it hit my face. Ireland is more open, more natural than I could have hoped. Playing music on my keyboard facing the open window, breathing it all in.

Cooking with Marina in our little kitchen. Snuggling on our weird new mattress. This is the country where we truly became an adult couple, truly became dependent on each other. This is the country where we really became us, I feel. 

Goodbye, Ireland. You have been welcoming and beautiful and impossible to describe. I’ll miss you.

Okay, Marina, love of my life, most perfect person, let’s go do something new and amazing!