I told my brother I was having 28 adults and 18 children over for a kid’s birthday party and he didn’t stop laughing for several minutes.
In the time it took him to regain his composure, I kept asking “They’ll fit, right? Do you not think they’ll fit? Will they fit?” And this while my husband ran around in the background asking in increasingly high-pitched tones’ “should we get a kid’s entertainer? Do we need to get a children’s entertainer?”
When my brother eventually stopped laughing, he told me I was only fooling myself describing it as “28 adults and 18 children” and I needed to start saying, “46 people”. And then, because he is his father’s son and relates everything back to sport, he explained “That’s a full American football squad you’ve invited. That’s two full soccer panels. You know when the team is on the pitch and then there’s still people on the bench …” at which point I interrupted him to say, “thank you, yes I know what a panel is and I understood he meant two of them”.
There was one evening we had plans together which I had to cancel at the last minute and my husband said “that’s no problem, I’ll hang out with my friends instead”.
I’d only lived in New York for six months, so how could I even know 50 people? Well therein lies the problem that led to me hosting a party the size of 3½ Knicks’ teams: I didn’t know anyone.
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When we first arrived in New York, our aim was to make friends with someone who had a house in the Hamptons (which they would unquestioningly lend to us any time it took our fancy to decamp there). We came close in that we met one single person who, in passing, mentioned having a house in the Hamptons and when we immediately jumped in with: “Oh we’d love to go to the Hamptons!”, they generously responded that they could give us some recommendations. When the friends in the Hamptons plan wasn’t going well, we lowered our standards and aimed to make friends with someone (anyone) who would invite us to a superbowl party. Those invitations weren’t exactly flying in the door either and it quickly became apparent that what we really needed to do was simply make friends.
There was one evening we had plans together which I had to cancel at the last minute and my husband said, “that’s no problem, I’ll hang out with my friends instead”.
I looked up in surprise and then we both started to laugh. Because he had no friends. Neither of us did. And you know we laughed, but it was hard. I was lonely.
On Saint Patrick’s Day, we visited the Tenement Museum on the Lower East side where we toured a recreation of the 1860s home of Irish immigrants, Bridget Meehan and Joseph Moore, a married couple with young daughters. At one point in the tour, the guide told us: “The mother bore the brunt of the hardship of the move. There was only one other Irish family in her building. Her husband got to go out to work to socialise. She was isolated at home with the children.”
Well, 160 years and much better living conditions later, but every word could apply to me.
My husband wasn’t homesick. And the children certainly had no problems settling in. My three-year-old informed me, early on and very officiously, that: “In America, we say ‘mommy’.”
In the early days of getting to know our new NYC neighbourhood, I saw that our local supermarket had a small selection of Irish produce
She corrects my pronunciation of tomato. Unless I say her name in an American accent, she says I’m saying it wrong. She does an impression of me which involves a comically strong Irish accent and lots of “Ah no!” After just three months here, we went home to Ireland for a visit and the kids had all but forgotten their rural roots. On the drive home from Dublin Airport, the eldest, upon seeing a field of piebalds declared “cows!” and before I had a chance to correct her the baby chimed in with: “Moo!”
In the early days of getting to know our new NYC neighbourhood, I saw that our local supermarket had a small selection of Irish produce. At the time, this was something I noted with nothing more than mild amusement. I snapped a picture for the family WhatsApp and the general sentiment was: “Isn’t that gas!”
I never understood before why emigrants go so wild for Tayto crisps. Do they even like Tayto crisps when they’re at home? Have they not seen the fancy crisp section? Or the even more glorious cheap crisp section?
But now I understand. I get it. It’s more than just the crisps. It’s a taste of home and of the familiar. Okay, yeah, sometimes Tayto crisps taste like being six years old and being neglected at the back of a pub after Meath have drawn with Dublin for the third time in a row but other times they taste like a trip to the beach or divvying up a multipack with your cousins or making sandwiches in the small hours of the morning at a wedding.
And so, one day, a few months into our move, when I wasn’t settling in well at all and was feeling very low, I suddenly remembered the shelf! The Irish shelf! I took myself from our apartment, eyes red-rimmed from crying, across two blocks and down three streets, back to the shelf I’d clocked just a few weeks before with such mirth and I picked up two litres of Club Orange and 1½ litres of MiWadi, like some homesick immigrant with a Vitamin C deficiency. It was the comfort and the familiarity — I needed them so much.
Feeling better, I bought two tickets for Joanne McNally a few months in advance of her New York show, thinking, “I’ll have made friends by then, I’ll bring a friend.” Without putting any effort into actually making friends, it came as no surprise to anyone but me that these friends weren’t mysteriously showing up in my lap.
I remembered the advice my mother gave a friend of mine when we were in our 20s, a time before dating apps if you can imagine it. The friend in question was bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t meet someone but the same friend absolutely never went out and my mother kindly pointed out “Unless you have a stream of eligible bachelors walking through your sitting room, you’re never going to meet anyone”. I realised I too had to put myself out there and actively work on making friends.
She added me to the mom’s WhatsApp group for the building which led to an invitation to a mom’s wine night — it’s exactly like a book club except there is no book
The collection of 28 adults and 18 children included a woman I met in the playground a week before. I asked for her number and invited her. (As it turns out we’ve been living parallel lives all this time: she moved from Sweden last year with her two small children for her husband’s job. They lived one block away from us in temporary accommodation for a month, as we had done, before settling just a street away from us now).
Another woman I passed in the lobby of our building and I stopped her to say “hello, I see you have children. I also have children, do you want to hang out?” She added me to the mom’s WhatsApp group for the building which led to an invitation to a mom’s wine night — it’s exactly like a book club except there is no book (and nobody drinks more than one glass of wine but that’s an article for another day). And even though my husband was out of town that night, I said yes and sourced a babysitter so I could go up just one floor to make friends. The following month, I hosted the mom’s wine night.
I’ve said yes to going to a yoga class when I despise yoga. But this led to post-yoga brunch and a nice chat. I’ve said yes to playing pickleball when I don’t even know what pickleball is. Would I like to go to the ballet? Sure thing, yes I would. I stopped a woman in the street because she had an Irish accent. I stopped another woman in the street I thought I recognised and asked her was she from my hometown. “Yes I am,” she replied. “I’m visiting my daughter who lives here, would you like her number?” Mother, daughter and granddaughter were at the party.
If anyone has ever told me in even the vaguest way that they had a cousin or niece or uncle or colleague living in New York, I’ve been in touch with them. I’ve texted people saying, “hi, I believe we both know so-and-so, would you like to go for dinner?”
I’m working hard on not feeling homesick because really, home is wherever my children are —something they already understand. One afternoon, in our New York apartment, I watched the three-year-old as she packed up all her toys and clothes, announcing she was “going on holidays to New York City!”
When I asked her where she was now, she replied simply, “I’m at home”.