I Miss You When I Blink: Essays(32)

I’m not proud of this, but here it is: I put more time into planning my wardrobe for Ireland than I did into figuring out how we would eat. It was, in some ways, my first office job all over again—100 percent prepared on the clothing front, zero percent prepared otherwise. Okay, maybe I’m a little proud—I packed such good outfits for Ireland. Dark brown corduroy skirt with a jaunty kick pleat in the back. Knee-high brown leather boots with a low heel and a zip up the inner calf. Cream cowl-neck sweater, a thick, luscious wool blend. (I felt wool would be an important component of my Irish wardrobe, what with all the sheep we’d surely see roaming around.) In this outfit, I’d become a chocolate-and-vanilla-swirl, multilayered, luxuriously textured, cosmopolitan-yet-cozy quasi-Irish woman of casual elegance. I’d look the part.

I never wore it.

I never had the occasion. When I took the kids out on mini-explorations while John was at work, I pushed a stroller, wearing two layers of coats and an itchy beanie hat that kept my brain from freezing but mashed my hair into a sweaty mat upon my forehead. We stayed warm and had a good time, but we didn’t look like a fashion spread. For the occasional big outing—to the Dublin Zoo, say—I had to swaddle my daughter so many layers deep in fleece stroller blankets that only her eyes and nostrils were visible. No one could see her parade of adorable ensembles, all color-coded to go with her big brother’s sweaters, chosen in shades that would look great against a green backdrop, because of course, in the cartoon Ireland of my mind, everything was shamrock green. I’m not entirely sure I didn’t see a little leprechaun dancing in the background of these visions.

It was not green in Ireland.

We got there in early spring, but it looked and felt like winter. Dublin was gray upon gray upon gray. Sidewalks and leafless trees and puddles on frigid streets. The air gushing out of the tunnels at the train stations even smelled gray. It left gray residue inside my nostrils that I blew out into a tissue every night. It tasted gray.



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I sent email dispatches back to the States, telling rollicking stories about our adventures. Here we are toddling down Grafton Street to St. Stephen’s Green! Here we are on the windy beach at Sandymount Strand! Here we are in Howth outside a castle! Here we are celebrating Mother’s Day with tea at Bewley’s!

These concept-life snapshots did happen. I was that expat American-in-Ireland adventuress, but only for moments at a time. “Look at this whole other life I have,” I seemed to be saying to my friends and family, but I was back to being same-old-me by the time I sat down to email the pictures. I hadn’t actually opened up a portal in time and space and entered a parallel life where I was someone else. This wasn’t like that old Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors, in which one person’s life happens two different ways in alternating scenes. I’m a sucker for movies and books like that, because it’s such a delicious idea—that each of us has enough potential to populate more than one life story. Somewhere deep in my twisted little brain is the desire to be so good at so many things that I earn the chance to be multiple people. It seems so unfair that we only get to read the choose-your-own-adventure book of our own lives once, that we can’t pick a point and go, “Okay, this time flip to page 102 and do the rest another way.” But no, I didn’t have two lives unfolding side by side: Atlantan front-yard life, Irish train-station life. There was still only one me.

A special occasion, or location, or outfit, can give you something to remember and show off, but it’s the everyday that makes up real life. The everyday is where we really exist, just the once, in chronological order. If you want to experience multiple lives, you have to cram them into that one timeline.

Our spring in Ireland had no denouement—no climactic event that shifted everything in our lives from one gear to another. I did, eventually, learn how to use the oven. I found my way around our end of town and signed up for Tesco’s grocery delivery service. We discovered a neighborhood bookshop. We took a lot of walks. We loved each other on different ground, under the same sun.

That was it.

A couple of months later, John’s job changed again and we went back to Atlanta, where the seasons had changed and it was too warm to wear wool.





The Pros and Cons of Joining the Ruby Committee


I did it for the right reasons. And I did it for the wrong reasons. Both. Multiple things can be true about someone at the same time.

Did I want to do some good for the world? Sure. But also, I had been feeling invisible for too long. Really, it was that, as much as any do-gooder urge, that made volunteering sound so appealing.

What I wanted, after several years of staying at home, alternating freelance proofreading jobs with trips to the toddler playground, was a little more structure, a little more sense of purpose, and some acknowledgment from somewhere that I was important. I had not ceased to be a member of society just because I no longer applied a swoop of eyeliner each morning before I went out into the world and sat around conference tables where other people could see me. I could still make an impact.

When I went to parents’ orientation on the first morning of my son’s preschool, I listened to the instructions about book bags (“No roller bags, please”—which, seriously, who is sending their four-year-old to preschool with a suitcase on wheels?) and the rules about snacks (no nuts), but what really caught my eye was the woman who stood up and talked about the parents’ association. All eyes were on her, in her shirtdress and flats, holding a clipboard full of sign-up sheets for various committees, smiling widely and introducing herself as “your point of contact if there’s anything you need this year.”