2 weeks away!
I planned to do more blogging before the trip… but the end of the school year is, well, tomorrow, so time isn’t really abundant (yet).
But I do want to capture some thoughts before I head on the adventure to Northern Ireland, before my head gets swamped with questions and research and ideas. All that will be documented and chewed on in the coming weeks and months, but for now, I want to set the stage by looking backward.
My connection to Northern Ireland started in 1997 when my family welcomed a young Catholic girl for several weeks over the summer. At the time, I knew:
I had a lot to learn.
Not only that Northern Ireland was a completely different country from the Ireland I knew from my grandmother’s heritage, but it was also a pretty scary place to be during the 1990’s. Sheltered in the Midwest, my summers consisted of baseball games and playing with neighbors, golf and tennis lessons and swimming at the lake. I was told these young people were getting a summer away from some scary violence, and given an opportunity to see how Catholics and Protestants coexist peacefully in America. What’s the difference? I wondered. Aren’t we all Christians?
In time, I learned a bit more about the history of Northern Ireland and the Troubles, about how these programs had decades of experience connecting kids from Northern Ireland to America.
I planned to do more blogging before the trip… but the end of the school year is, well, tomorrow, so time isn’t really abundant (yet).
But I do want to capture some thoughts before I head on the adventure to Northern Ireland, before my head gets swamped with questions and research and ideas. All that will be documented and chewed on in the coming weeks and months, but for now, I want to set the stage by looking backward.
My connection to Northern Ireland started in 1997 when my family welcomed a young Catholic girl for several weeks over the summer. At the time, I knew:
- a girl was coming
- she was one year older than me
- from a Catholic family that lives outside Belfast
- and her Dad, older sister, and several brothers would remain there.
I had a lot to learn.
Not only that Northern Ireland was a completely different country from the Ireland I knew from my grandmother’s heritage, but it was also a pretty scary place to be during the 1990’s. Sheltered in the Midwest, my summers consisted of baseball games and playing with neighbors, golf and tennis lessons and swimming at the lake. I was told these young people were getting a summer away from some scary violence, and given an opportunity to see how Catholics and Protestants coexist peacefully in America. What’s the difference? I wondered. Aren’t we all Christians?
In time, I learned a bit more about the history of Northern Ireland and the Troubles, about how these programs had decades of experience connecting kids from Northern Ireland to America.
But I also learned some valuable lessons on language - one of my favorite memories from that summer are the nights Tina and I spent in my room with a dictionary between us (literally), going through words and learning the differences between our vocabularies. A jumper instead of sweatshirt. Trainers instead of sneakers. A bubbler for drinking fountains… endless laughter over a shared love of words.
It makes sense now that I was so enthralled by this little act of bonding!
Tina and I remained pen pals after she returned to Northern Ireland. In her letters, I learned about how the school structure is different in the UK (Years versus Grades), which bands were featured on Top of the Pops, and all about the sport of trampolining (yes, just tricks on a trampoline! Not gymnastics!). That school year, I wrote more notes to send to Carryduff than I did to friends I’d pass in the hallway. To this day, I can spout out Tina’s address like I can my own childhood home!
In another post, I will share about the following summer, when I visited Northern Ireland with my parents and sister - there are so many great memories (and sometimes scary) that I recall vividly. And some details I’ll need to get from my family and Tina. But it was a thrill that in the months leading up to our trip, I’d get to reunite with my penpal and a friend I’d started to consider a sister!
Tina and I remained penpals until email came in the picture shortly before high school. I remember sitting down to write my first electronic note to her, and thinking how convenient it was that she’d get it right away, but also a sense of disappointment that I’d miss the unique, curly handwriting that I’d come to know so well! Fortunately, we kept up writing a few notes a year, even with email at our immediate disposal.
Teenage years and going off to “uni” put some distance between us, and an email or two through each year was the most contact we maintained. Fortunately, my mom was a lifeline that kept Tina in our lives, writing notes and sending Christmas cards through those busy times. And when Facebook hit the scene, Tina and I connected like all our other millennial friends!
I didn’t get to see Tina again until 2013. It was surreal to wait for her flight at the arrivals gate in my new home state of North Carolina, and hoped that I would recognize her from the photos I’d had from 15 years before and what I had seen on social media. I worried over nothing though - when you’ve had a bond that survived more than half your life, it’s pretty difficult to lose that connection!
Since Tina’s trip to North Carolina six years ago, she’s visited my family in Arizona and celebrated Easter with us, and traveled to Minnesota again to see my sisters over Thanksgiving. My parents have been to Ireland several times in the last decade, getting to see more of her family and sharing plenty of pints and laughs. And as I’ll write about here soon, Chad and I visited in July 2018 where we had a blast experiencing Dublin and Belfast with Tina and a couple of her siblings, before we took off on our own to discover the country.
I share this here because Tina is the heart that ties me to Northern Ireland. When this story floated my way, sitting on the beach one afternoon last summer, I didn’t picture Tina. Instead, I was struck by the memory of the questions I had about her childhood: Why she came to the US, what she left behind, why there was such a struggle between two cultures that I couldn’t see much difference in… and the characters became a vehicle for me to better understand those questions I’ve had since Tina came into our lives.
Many times since that August day when I outlined this story, I’ve doubted my ability to tell it. I question if it’s my story to tell… how authentic it really could be from an American author… how it might be received by readers who are from or more deeply invested in the culture… and I will likely live with those inner-doubts as I go through this journey. But I remind myself of the many books I’ve read by authors who aren’t telling a first-hand experience, how they found a way to do justice to the experiences of others - to teach us readers of how life can be lived different from our own walks. And that’s what’s keeping me going at this point.
It makes sense now that I was so enthralled by this little act of bonding!
Tina and I remained pen pals after she returned to Northern Ireland. In her letters, I learned about how the school structure is different in the UK (Years versus Grades), which bands were featured on Top of the Pops, and all about the sport of trampolining (yes, just tricks on a trampoline! Not gymnastics!). That school year, I wrote more notes to send to Carryduff than I did to friends I’d pass in the hallway. To this day, I can spout out Tina’s address like I can my own childhood home!
In another post, I will share about the following summer, when I visited Northern Ireland with my parents and sister - there are so many great memories (and sometimes scary) that I recall vividly. And some details I’ll need to get from my family and Tina. But it was a thrill that in the months leading up to our trip, I’d get to reunite with my penpal and a friend I’d started to consider a sister!
Tina and I remained penpals until email came in the picture shortly before high school. I remember sitting down to write my first electronic note to her, and thinking how convenient it was that she’d get it right away, but also a sense of disappointment that I’d miss the unique, curly handwriting that I’d come to know so well! Fortunately, we kept up writing a few notes a year, even with email at our immediate disposal.
Teenage years and going off to “uni” put some distance between us, and an email or two through each year was the most contact we maintained. Fortunately, my mom was a lifeline that kept Tina in our lives, writing notes and sending Christmas cards through those busy times. And when Facebook hit the scene, Tina and I connected like all our other millennial friends!
I didn’t get to see Tina again until 2013. It was surreal to wait for her flight at the arrivals gate in my new home state of North Carolina, and hoped that I would recognize her from the photos I’d had from 15 years before and what I had seen on social media. I worried over nothing though - when you’ve had a bond that survived more than half your life, it’s pretty difficult to lose that connection!
Since Tina’s trip to North Carolina six years ago, she’s visited my family in Arizona and celebrated Easter with us, and traveled to Minnesota again to see my sisters over Thanksgiving. My parents have been to Ireland several times in the last decade, getting to see more of her family and sharing plenty of pints and laughs. And as I’ll write about here soon, Chad and I visited in July 2018 where we had a blast experiencing Dublin and Belfast with Tina and a couple of her siblings, before we took off on our own to discover the country.
I share this here because Tina is the heart that ties me to Northern Ireland. When this story floated my way, sitting on the beach one afternoon last summer, I didn’t picture Tina. Instead, I was struck by the memory of the questions I had about her childhood: Why she came to the US, what she left behind, why there was such a struggle between two cultures that I couldn’t see much difference in… and the characters became a vehicle for me to better understand those questions I’ve had since Tina came into our lives.
Many times since that August day when I outlined this story, I’ve doubted my ability to tell it. I question if it’s my story to tell… how authentic it really could be from an American author… how it might be received by readers who are from or more deeply invested in the culture… and I will likely live with those inner-doubts as I go through this journey. But I remind myself of the many books I’ve read by authors who aren’t telling a first-hand experience, how they found a way to do justice to the experiences of others - to teach us readers of how life can be lived different from our own walks. And that’s what’s keeping me going at this point.