Fleeing the nest… December 16, 2007

Two years ago today I did something truly terrible: I left home.

I had done it once before; as a very naive just turned 18 year old; taking off to the big city, well as big ad Belfast and the academic and social adventure that would be my three years at Queens. But I’d come home every weekend to my supermarket job and political debates with my Dad; to home-cooked meals and a washing machine that worked. This was different; this was not renting a room with friends and drinking partners; this was my own apartment, my own mortgage, this was it.

I had moved back home on a ‘through-the-week’ and at the weekend basis when my second teaching practice was assigned to a relatively local high school. But just before that teaching practice ended, my world collapsed; things fell apart and the centre really could not hold.

My Daddy committed suicide and my Mum found him. It has never been something I could properly articulate. I never wanted to create a language of acceptance that somehow validated the choice that my darling Daddy made.

In the terrible months that followed my little brother returned to Belfast complete his university degree; and my older sister moved back in. She had been on the verge of a round the world trip; ticket booked and paid for; plans made; but it clearly wasn’t the time. Part of her grief was the restlessness of not fulfilling those carefully laid plans; within a year she would be off to London pursuing career glory and forcing herself to ‘make-it’ in the big city.

My little bro pursued academic glory. His prospects moved him from Belfast to Dublin and beyond: while we waited at home for his infrequent visits and e-mails. They dealt with their grief by moving on; by putting space between themselves and the torment of memories home now represented; whereas I, for a long time, needed to be there: I needed Mum; needed to sit in Daddy’s chair and needed to hold on to anything I could consider a constant and a world turned entirely upside down.

With the other two gone; it was only Mum and me; and we got the routine down pretty well. A catch-up and moan about our days coffee when we first got in, she would make dinner; I would start my marking and we’d eat together; ‘meeting’ later in the evening for supper and TV. And yet after time I became restless; somehow stilted by my domestic bliss and horribly resentful that my siblings’ choices had meant that if I left Mum would be on her own again. What should have been a simple move seemed like total abandonment.

But she never stood in my way; she as always encouraged me to do ‘what would make me happy’; to live my life for me and to make my way, in a world of my choosing. So I did; feeling incredibly guilty with each step of the way.

As these things tend to be, the move wasn’t simple; when I first went to the bank, the snotty assistant manager snickered at my ‘wearing my interview suit’ and incredibly dismissive of my affording a mortgage given my ‘aptitude for frivolous spending’. It took some months before I approached a financial adviser who was much more forthcoming.

Having spent the summer on property websites and trolling the North Down area looking at flats that should have advertised themselves as ‘possible drug den locations for low budget television’; I found a place. Not quite my dream mansion; but the right size, a great location and more incredibly: within my limited price range. I visibly shook while on the phone to the estate agent; but it would be four months of legal manoeuvring before the keys would be mine.

As the time for the move finally approached I grew increasingly less assured. There had been not so subtle hints from my Mum’s side of the family that I ‘could have waited for the right man with his solitaire and half a deposit’- what was my rush? There had been fraught conversations with my brother and sister as to whether Mum would be ‘alright on her own?’ And there were nightmares in which I saw myself ‘Angela’s Ashes’ style, pregnant and destitute on the rainswept streets unable to pay my bills.

But the moment came; Mum and I had spent a week painting and me many months purchasing various cushions; candles; plates and wine glasses; feeling very much like the child who’d played ‘house’ with her large family of dolls. The day of the move was filled with the moments of slapstick comedy these occasions are made for: my friend’s “moving van” wouldn’t fit under the archway to the car park, making for numerous very wet journeys from van to flat.  The physical struggle with my furniture meant my friend, usually chivalrous if witty gentlemen in the presence of my mother, were now using language she was actually more accustomed to hearing; and there was of course the joy of the flat pack assembly when even the most Oxford of graduates would feel dismayed by her lack of structural intelligence.

After a Chinese takeaway ‘last supper’ dinner; the moment had arrived. I was going to have to say goodbye to Mum, to climb into the van for the last time and drive away. There were tears of Niagara proportions; I felt like I was breaking her heart and selfishly walking away. It was less than an hour before I phoned for a chat..

And now two years later  sometimes I think I made the right choice. Given the perilous and frankly ridiculous nature of the housing market; my now or never moment would have been just that.  I can have nights where I have people round; days I can spend in my pj’s; eat, drink and sleep when I want to without Mum’s unobtrusive but seemingly ever watchful eye. But I get lonely; I resent the financial responsibility and the lack of scope having bought an apartment six miles from home and five miles from work creates.  Opportunities still abound but it is more difficult to reach for them…

As for Mum, Big Sis is now back home (if only for a while) and she enjoys the opportunity of having someone to look after again. She is stronger than the world gives her credit for; and I realise now that I took much longer to accept our change in circumstance than she did.

It is perhaps time for me to make my peace with my decision; to give in to my decorating desires and to begin an IKEA induced de-clutter. Time to turn my moments of loneliness into windows of opportunity; time to embrace the independence I so craved; and time to turn this little house into my home.

My New York love affair… November 16, 2007

There have been no blogs of significance in a while, I wanted to wait for the stardust to settle. I wanted to wait for the blues to past which took much longer than anticipated. I also wasn’t completely convinced that ‘My trip to New York’ would work as a blog: I mean how interested are you really in someone else’s holiday photographs;and this particular city is nothing if not experiential (but then I realised who is interested in my drivel anyway- I might as well indulge myself).

My love affair with the astonishing city that is New York quite possibly happened years before I ever quite made it to island of Manhattan. It’s a city you can’t escape: backdrop and set to so many sitcoms, films, commercials and image rich novels: a city that should have drowned some decades ago in the sheer weight of the expectation of first time visitors; but NYC is that extremely rare thing: it entirely lives up to its own hype.

Date#1

My feet finally did touch the shores of the Hudson in 1998: a one day trip, flanked on either side by the overnight bus back to Boston; my first Broadway show and first scary encounter with Port Authority bus station. Just there long enough to whet my appetite for a much bigger bite of the Big Apple.

Date #2

 A weekend in the summer of magic that was 2000: that was my DC summer: days spent as a Congressional Intern; nights spent at Embassy parties, or with pitchers of beer in Irish bars. My friend Emer and I spent a crazy weekend in Manhattan. We arrived late, again at that the place of sheer fear: Port Authority; armed only with our wits, our rucksacks and a list of hostels; only the weak hearted book accommodation before arrival. (I was 21- and stoopid). This weekend, in the theme that we’d embraced warmly all summer was fuelled by too much beer. Emer and I met an NYC, ER doctor  (looking back and given the pulsing popularity of George Clooney/ Dr Doug Ross  at the time- this may have been a line; in fact he actually told us his name was Doug) who decided to show us ‘real New York’. Real New York turned out to be Arthur’s Tavern: a bar deep in Greenwich Village; with its Christmas decorations up in July (they were ‘Trying to maintain the festive buzz) and a waitress who was either Chrissy Hynes or her identical twin.

The late night and many beer pitchers left us both feeling quite green on the Staten Island ferry and left Emer standing at the World Trade Centre subway station while I was on the leaving train….my lost in Manhattan story includes tears, the help of many strangers and sheer panic…still felt like I was only nibbling at the apple’s edges.

Date #3

The ‘O’Hara’ family trip to NYC: began as a running family joke and became the means that allowed Mum, Big Sis and myself to ‘wish little bro and his lovely lady luck as we waved them goodbye’ on their trip around the world. The idea of a family holiday was ambitious: as children of a Vegetable/Cereal/ Sheep farmer we knew that finance and agricultural responsibilities made holidays something other people did. Our one family trip away had been to wilds of Enniskillen in an overheating car; while we three were still young enough to truly appreciate the wealth of the ice-cream menu and the arrival of our tasty delights with sparklers.

So four days in NYC with Mummy O’Hara, Big Sis and Carrie all in the same room was ambitious from the outset. And we were trying to balance the needs and desires not only of these three very different women but also of Little Bro and his gorgeous girlfriend as well. (This girl has the heart of a lion: not only does she date/live with my wonderful but infuriating little bro but she braved the O’Haras en masse for almost a week!)We had a blast- far surpassing even the most ambitious of possible scenarios. We spent a day enchanted by the MOMA;  an afternoon discovering Strawberry Fields and the other hidden treasures of Central Park and we only thought we had known retail therapy until the bright lights of Bloomingdales: soothed our souls and melted our credit cards.

I know that many decades from now when we are each who knows where; I will remember the sound of our collective laughter and awe at the top of the Empire State, the moment of true family intimacy as we huddled round our baked delicacies and amazing cappucino in Cafe Angelique in Greenwich Village and Little Bro’s goodbye; after a performance of ‘The Lion King’ and a final drink in a Times Square Irish bar.  (I didn’t even mention our ‘Sex and the City’ tour which deserves a blog, dissertation and epic novel all of its own…)

Which brings me finally to my most recent date with NYC: Date #4

This trip began in what has now become something of a urban legend… It was a friend of mine’s first day back at school, the same fate was to befall me in the very immediate future, so we met for coffee to lament the passing of the summer and the beginning of the new school term. My hallowe’en itinerary was supposed to include the Sistine Chapel, St Peter’s  and too much great red wine: but ‘Mum and Carrie do Rome’ has been postponed; Mum couldn’t get the time of work. My friend Hazel asked what my half-term plans were and asked if I’d go back to NYC (this was to be her virgin visit to my now old flame); I nearly knocked the carrot cake out of her hand in the dash to my laptop and the booking of flights.

I was now an old-Pro. We stayed at the same downtown hotel (from the previous year lauded family vacation)off 5th  Avenue; gaining the same immediate views of the Empire State and the Flat Iron building; we breakfasted at the same Gourmet Deli every morning and I fell in love all over again.

The Circle Line guide (encountered during Trip#3) had said that one of the questions he gets asked most was this one: How long does it take to see all of New York? His witty response: a whole year and one million dollars. We had four days and no where near that much money. Hazel was determined that I see more of the city rather than simply re-discovering places of past dalliances. Even now I’m amazed that we managed to discover so much: a trip to Tiffany’s, Grand Central Station, The Color Purple on Broadway (which deserves and will get a reverential blog all of its own), a trip around Brooklyn, the Rockefeller Centre (go early in the morning, it measures up to the Empire State in that you then get to see it too in your panoramic view of the world’s most famous skyline), lunches in scarves and designer sunglasses (purchased last year on 5th Avenue baby!) bathed in the sunlight of the park and then the Hudson, a rickshaw ride from the Park to the Plaza, an encounter with the film set for Sex and the City… I could go on and on and then on some more…

‘The Greenwich Village hallowe’en parade’: features on quite a few ‘Things to do before you die’ lists. Hazel has listed this as a “must-see” for our trip. Our day had started, as they all did upon the Gray Line Red Bus; we didn’t brave the subway and used taxis Carrie Bradshaw style when high heels made it necessary. These tours are phenomenal: for $50 we had three days of NYC transport and more entertainment than I’ve had in a year. This particular morning our tour guide was a real NYC boy; think of getting on a bus with someone who has Joey Tribbiani’s voice, Chandler Bing’s wit and Cassanova’s ability to flirt with any woman in a ten-block radius. The congested journey through Greenwich Village and towards South Street Seaport was one we didn’t want to end: he combined his charm with history cultural and political, a poignant confession that his high school had acted as a triage centre on 9/11 and that his father had worked in the south tower; along with an amusing anecdote about his roomate’s girlfriend and her frivolous waste of his quality olive oil and his desire to have one of his many screen plays ‘picked-up’ by HBO.

This was also the day of our beside the river lunch and tour of Brooklyn. We returned to Manhattan and I was determined to find the Magnolia Bakery on Bleeker Street: a key stop in the SATC tour which boasts the best cupcakes in all the world. And find it we did… just in time to encounter the children of Greenwich Village begin their ‘Trick or Treat’ tour of the designer stores who give out candy.

In preparation for the night ahead, Hazel and I decided that an afternoon cocktail was in order. We were served our deliciously lethal Cava Juleps by the Dalai Lama. One of New York’s Finest (an NYC cop) stopped to enquire if we were Irish, the afternoon drinking had alerted him to our heritage… The parade itself was something of a let-down, as novices we hadn’t realised that a parade that starts at 700pm (and here was the first glitch in the American efficiency we’d come to depend on: as by 745pm the first weird creature with a political purpose had yet to make its appearance) meant you needed to be, in your ‘only place you can actually see what’s happening- right there at the barrier position by 5pm.

Our wait and lack of view left us impatient: but on our walk back to 5th Avenue we encountered a dog dressed as a hot-dog: with ‘bread rolls’ attached to his side and ‘mustard’ dashed along his back, was asked by one Wonderwoman if we’d seen her invisble jet and missed a key photo opportunity of another Wonder Woman hailing a taxi. They DO Hallowe’en in New York: there is no, put on a bin liner and pretend its a costume: this is a cultural event; an excuse to go a little crazy and indulge your inner child or inner demon for all of your fellow New Yorkers to see.

Our night ended by my literal stumbling upon the fabulous restaurant we’d all eaten dinner at the Hallowe’en before. Houston’s on Park Avenue. The barman looked like a younger and less cynical Humprey Bogart; he had that New York knack of managing to refill your wine glass, melt your heart with his smile while taking someone else’s drink order. Hazel had to stop me from writing my phone number on the bar in red-lipstick…while we ate dinner and drank yet another bottle of gorgeous wine; Darth Maul and Queen Arimathea (Vox:if I spelt these names wrongly, it is because while I was still in recovery from the bar tender, we encountered a waiter who’s ancestor was probably the Greek God Adonis: so Star Wars vocabulary was the last thing on my mind).

Having been home a couple of weeks my time is consumed with plans of how to return: here is a list of my possible scenarios:

1. Finally let the world know, I was born to be on Broadway; they are calling me to be the leading light in a show of my choosing.

2. Find my own Mr Big(maybe the barman who will have made his fortune before I get there) who will let me share his Upper West side Penthouse apartment- with view of the park (I’m not too proud to be a New York lady who lunches.)

3. Rent a Brooklyn brownstone, teach English in City High School and let Manhattan be my weekend playground ( I would of course be taking Broadway acting classes and my talent would be on the cusp of discovery).

4. Go back to 1985, get Ms Sherwood’s job teaching English in the School of Performing Arts and be in ‘The Kids from Fame.’/ or I could marry Theo Huxtable from The Cosby Show.

5. Be a struggling writer/ would be actress/ take the Christmas job I was offered in Macy’s: Grayline tour guide entertaining the tourists with her own guide of the city she loves.

Not even one of these scenarios is plagued by realism: its New York, somehow they don’t have to be.

I love this city; there’s a big world out there 99% I have never seen and yet I’d go back to Manhattan in a New York minute: its a city of infinite possibility, a city that celebrates being alive; a city that has the arrogance to believe its best place on earth and then take you out on the town to prove it.

Good night New York I love ya- and I’ll see you very soon.