From Ireland to New Zealand and back again. Twice

When I returned to Ireland from New Zealand at 11 years old, I was so happy. Before I had ever heard the word nostalgia, it was filling my insides, choking me up like a great glug of accidentally swallowed seawater.

We moved into a rented house in Cregmore, Galway, down a narrow boreen flanked by bare fields. At school, I held a hurl in my hands for the first time (it didn’t remain there for very long).

I felt at home with my new after-school minder, whose easy warmth and fondness of Aromat sparked deep-rooted associations from earlier life before we had left; half-memories of my granny and grandad’s kitchen, the radio blaring, dinner smells at lunchtime.

I lay in bed at night with my door slightly open, listening to the Father Ted opening credits drifting up from downstairs. This easy tune, Songs of Love, had me high on the feeling of safety, the feeling that I was finally back in the place I was meant to be.

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My school, which at the time consisted of two rooms, taught fifth and sixth classes together. My classmates welcomed me in a way that felt like I had never not been sitting beside them.

I did a quick job masking the Kiwi accent I’d picked up until I didn’t have to emulate the other kids anymore, it became natural. My teacher spent extra time helping me learn all my prayers before Confirmation, and even this new religious knowledge, while completely removed from my personal interests, made me feel comforted, in on it; whatever it was.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen

Slowly the phone calls to my best friend back in Wellington fizzled and I buried that temporary home, so far away from my real one, 12,000 miles away from all conscious thoughts.

[ A message for Ireland from one of the lesser-known Irish-American KennedysOpens in new window ]

This year, I went back with my husband, on our honeymoon. He had also lived in Wellington, but as a 28-year old. So our experiences had been very different: boogie boarding vs bars.

We drove out along the coast to Ōwhiro Bay, salt wind whipping against the windshield, an old quarry visible in the distance. We walked right up to my old house facing the water. It surprised me how like itself it still looked. It had been painted but the steps up to the rounded, wooden side door were the same, the dark post smooth under my palm.

[ If my granny saw me reading a novel, she’d tell me to do something usefulOpens in new window ]

I could see a woman working inside at the kitchen table but I didn’t feel like disturbing her. I stood in front of the garage, underneath my old bedroom, and looked for a long time out on to the sea, at the view I had stared out at for three years as a child. Sometimes there’d be nothing but wind and waves, other times a couple of dolphins would glide by.

I crossed the road, jumped across a couple of rocks and crunched my way through mounds of dried seaweed, taking pictures of broken paua shells and rubbing their shiny iridescent skin.

We went for a walk through the old quarry, the Red Rocks, where in the distance, around a sharp corner, stands the Devil’s Gate. Sometimes at the weekend we would come here for a drive. I have no memory of what lies beyond the Devil’s Gate, only that maybe it’s more of the same, just grey stones and ominous open space. My husband skipped a few stones into the water. No seals lounged on the rocks, but they must have been close; their smell was as thick as their skin.

I experienced a certain loneliness in New Zealand as a child. I’m not sure what I was expecting to feel this time, but it was nothing dramatic. It took me a while to place it, but I think it was a sense of peace.

Jordan Lillis is doing a PhD in creative writing at University College Cork.

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