Irish Goodbye

I’m sure by now you’re thinking: she is not still talking about leaving New York, is she? Would she ever hurry up and get on with it! And….fair. But see, an ‘Irish Goodbye’ is not what you know it to be. Somewhere along the way, leaving a party without telling anyone became known as an ‘Irish Goodbye’ but a TRUE Irish Goodbye is: announce you’re leaving, go say goodbye to a few people, protest that no you definitely are going but actually end up staying for a few more, say no really, really I have to go, have someone come up to you and say “I thought you were off?” and you say “Yeah, yeah I was just getting my coat” but you went to get your coat two hours ago and you’re still not fecking gone. That is an Irish Goodbye.

I promise you though that this post ends with me boarding a flight to Ireland! For good!

This is the day we were meant to move. It was the last day of our lease and our flights were booked but it’s just the start of the Irish Goodbye because we don’t actually leave for another four days.

The movers didn’t have availability until Thursday and now we’re leaving Friday, meaning I’ve four more days to organise myself which is both a blessing and a curse because I just want it to be over now. I am bored, unmotivated, hot, sluggish. It is groundhog day: the kids watching TV, me emailing and/or wiring money to one of the many players involved in an international move/buying a house. We weren’t easy on ourselves doing both at the same time.

The kids have received some lovely goodbye gifts from neighbours including a kid’s camera. I don’t know what it says about our 6 year old but instead of snapping photos of New York City or things and people she loves, her first thought was to use it as a surveillance tool. “Do you want to see security footage of Daddy?” she asked me. Then proudly showed me minutes of David, sitting working at his desk, absolutely oblivious to the fact that he was being recorded. She also came up with a plan to run a series of Youtube videos “teaching moms how to clean” and the star of the series was - you’ve guessed it: ME!

F. M. actual L.

A few things today that helped with the relentless boredom:

• I got up early

• I got on top of some admin before the kids got up

• I got us out of the house

• We bumped into people we knew.

It was a day of errands and we delivered bedside tables to someone from the local Buy Nothing group who took a hairdryer and a straightener too.

We got the bus to my gym to collect the runners I’d left there and I said goodbye to the owners.

We took a coffee and cruller break in Daily Provisions.

We went to a hardware store to buy mattress disposal bags and twine.

Few things have reminded me of my childhood as much as stepping into this independent hardware store on the Upper West Side. Every ten blocks of Manhattan is largely the same: each containing identical Lululemons, Kiehls, Marine Layer, Madewell, Faherty, Starbucks, Maman, Wholefoods, Equinox. The hardwares are not chains but oh my, are they identical to every other hardware you’ve ever been in:

The kids picked up paint swatches for their new rooms and empty spray water bottles for their American Girl doll’s hair.

We creamed up and took a playground break afterwards where the girls filled up their spray bottles from the sprinklers and used them to hunt down pigeons. Lovely.

The 6 year old cried because the 5 year old makes friends so easily and it is quite astonishing how easily she makes friends. I told her I didn’t make friends so easily either and suggested we observe her together to try figure out how she does it.

The 5 year old came by to introduce her new friend. I said hi and I asked if she went to this school (the playground is attached to a school). She said no and the 5 year old filled in the blanks: “She’s from Hawaii. She’s 7. Her birthday is in October”. Okay. Looks like her older sister isn’t the only one carrying out surveillance.

I straight up asked the 5 year old how she made friends with the 7 year old Hawaiian and she said (holding up her pinky finger) “I said: ‘Pinky promise we’ll be best friends forever?’” And well, how could you say no to that?

I took a break from donating the contents of my apartment like I’m running a small business for a playdate at the sprinklers to say goodbye to the 5 year old’s best friend.

In the evening, a friend came to the Upper West Side to say goodbye and we went for dinner in miriam. There was nice symmetry in this because before we moved to New York, my sister-in-law gave us a voucher for one of her favourite restaurants (miriam) and our first night out together, months into our arrival, was to miriam! Afterwards, we joined Dave and Seán for a drink in Fiorellos, the restaurant on the ground floor of our building and when I mention casually that it is our second last night in the city, Dave shoots me daggers, then explains that he hasn’t told the barman that we’re leaving as he couldn’t bring himself to!!!

We’re getting there. This is our second last day. The day the movers come to pack up all our stuff. The day started with a 6:30am call with our mortgage broker. At 8am, we shipped the girls out for the day with their babysitter. We need to stay on site to direct operations and pack anything that we don’t want to be shipped, not to be seen for the next seven weeks.

In the midst of the pack, I pop out to run some errands. I return a library book and try to pay the $1 fee on my account but she doesn’t take card and doesn’t have change for a twenty so tells me to fugeddaboutit.

As I’m walking round the neighbourhood I’ve lived in the last four years, I don’t feel emotional at all. I feel nothing but relief to be going home. Dave is sad but I am giddy.

While I wait in line for a sandwich, I uninstall all my American apps: Nordstrom, physio, gym, NYT, Venmo.

We eat the sandwiches on the roof and when we get back to the apartment, the packing is in hand so we lie on the mattresses piled up for dumping like we’re the princess and the pea and see to some admin side by side. I call the pediatrician for a copy of the kids’ medical records. I cancel my phone contract. They tell me I’ll have to pay whatever is outstanding on the device and I say “No problem, how much is that?” and they say “$392” and I say “Fuckin’ hell”. I cancelled Con Edison. Dave cancelled Verizon. We signed some mortgage docs that came through.

The kids return at 3 and we check in to the Empire Hotel for the night because the trash mattresses are gone and the whole entire apartment is empty.

We had planned a drink with neighbours on the garden terrace to say goodbye but smoke from wildfires in Canada thwarted our plans. Outside is gross. It feels and smells like smoke and hurts your eyes just standing in it so we move drinks to our apartment and order pizzas and a few beers. People trickle in, bringing thoughtful New York themed airplane activities for the kids, a tin of Levain cookies, a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of wine. We don’t have glasses or an opener so we send Bill back across the hall a few times to get some.

The kids go wild running round an empty apartment and the acoustics are insane (loud). The neighbour that brought the whiskey says he wants to let me know that he won’t just miss Dave, he’ll miss me as well. It wasn’t so obvious until he said it, that he won’t miss me at all. Another neighbour came up to me to say that David really was the essence of the building. Oh, OK, don’t mind me. Aisling ‘No Essence’ Marron. “Bonjour, je m’appelle Aisling and je n’ai pas d’essence”, went the opening line of my French oral.

I thought the party would come to a natural end (when the whiskey ran out) but another bottle appeared. One by one, the women slipped off to take kids home to bed and the 6 men gathered closer and closer around the whiskey. I said I’d take the kids across to bed in the Empire and Dave walked me halfway down the corridor to the lift. I was at the end of the hall when I heard him return to the 5 other men who all gave a roar when he walked back in.

The last day! We’re so close to getting on the plane!! The flight is at 9pm out of JFK and the whole day passes like the last day of a holiday where you do nothing but wait to go and wish you’d booked an earlier flight but there are no early flights out of NYC. We go for breakfast in Old John’s Diner, stopping for a family photo in front of the local hippo which we passed every single day of our time here. Every day I said “Good morning Hippo” and every day the kids ran round the back to look at its butt.

We stop into Strand Bookstore to get a card for our babysitter who we are meeting this morning to say one last goodbye.

We go to our apartment to get the last few bags we left there and holy shit, there are two painters in there already dickying it up. Things move fast in Manhattan real estate. We spend the rest of the day in the rooftop pool of the Empire, grab lunch there and then head! We leave forever! Right as we leave it feels like all the kids’ friends in the building just appear, right on time, and the kids are crying that they don’t want to leave. Seán and some doormen are there to help us out and say goodbye as we take our last cab to JFK Terminal 7!