A year of firsts

When you’re in your first year in a new place, every season brings surprises.

Sometimes these are lovely surprises, like flowers blooming in your garden where you didn’t expect them. Sometimes these are unwelcome ones, like lots of school holidays hitting in a row when you are working parents!

Most years, we roll these rhythms into our lives. We embrace cozy winter rituals or plan vacations to sunny places to get through the dark nights. We lean into lazy, unscheduled summer days, knowing that back-to-school time is imminent. While no two years are exactly the same, these rhythms let us savour the season we’re in, with a reasonable expectation of what’s to come.

As we roll into our third season here in Ireland, we’re starting to feel more settled. I know my way around more and have a routine, but this can give me a false sense of security. When something unexpected rears its head and throws me off, I have to remind myself that we’re still in our first year. I still have so much to learn.

The (literal) season we’re in

Right now, one of the curveballs has been weather.

Adjusting to the climate is a big challenge for immigrants moving to Ireland— us included. The winter temperatures are pretty mild compared to what we’re used to, but it is darker and wetter. With time change at the end of October, we were plunged into darkness from 4:30pm in the afternoon to 8:30 in the morning. And this year, Ireland has had over 50 straight days of rain (no rain-free days in 2026 yet!), which is unusual even according to the locals.

Some weeks in January felt apocalyptic from the wind and rain. We had to spend a weekend scrubbing our garden shed down with vinegar because a storm blew our roof shingles off, and mold had started to grow on everything from all the water that came in.

While the dark months were tough, I was also pleasantly surprised that winter felt short. I was doubtful when I read that St. Brigid’s Day (Feb. 1) marked the first day of spring in Ireland, but February really has felt spring-like. Daffodils and crocuses are popping up everywhere, and we’ve had pleasant days in the 50s (Fahrenheit). We gain 15 minutes of light a week, so it’s now light til almost 6:30pm.

GAA season is starting, which means kids and teens are heading out to their local GAA clubs for hurling, camogie, and Gaelic football. And the festivities of Valentine’s Day, Pancake Tuesday, and half-term last week have us feeling that slow burn of optimism that Easter’s right around the corner.

Stumbling through our first year in Ireland

By the time you reach middle age, which I define “somewhere between late 30s and dead”, you know that the only way to get to the other side of the discomfort of being new is to push right through the middle. Experience teaches us that as much as we want to fast forward through the hard, rocky parts of doing something that we’ve never done before, we just can’t. - Brené Brown on FFTs

I’m starting to think ahead to summer, and I have more questions than answers. What camps do kids here do? Will other families even be around in the summer? It’s hard to plan when you don’t know what the options are or what to expect.

We’re also working through some “fun weekend projects” like filing our taxes in two countries and working toward our Irish driver’s licenses, and I desperately want to skip ahead to the end of both those processes.

Once I’ve been through our first school year, our first full summer, our first tax season (hopefully I’ll only have to take the driver’s test once!), I think I’ll have a lot more confidence in our second year. But if I skipped forward through all of these experiences, I would also miss all of my firsts.

My first time watching the kids chase the ocean waves for an hour straight. My first time sitting in a pub with a roaring fire and traditional Irish music. My first time discovering my new favourite coffee shop, bookstore, or walking trail. You can only experience that joy once, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Even if it means feeling upside down for the better part of a year.

If there’s one thing I know for sure, normalizing discomfort, learning how to stay standing in the midst of feeling unsure and uncertain, that’s the foundation of courage… Knowing that we have the strength to survive those moments and come out on the other side with new information, new ideas, new habits, new skills, that’s how we get braver with our lives and with our hearts. - Brené Brown