Griffin - Not lost: one young Irishwomans emigrant story

NOT LOST

NOT
LOST

A S TORY A BOUT L EAVING H OME

SARAH MARIA GRIFFIN

NOT LOST

First published 2013

by New Island

2 Brookside

Dundrum Road

Dublin 14

www.newisland.ie

Copyright Sarah Maria Griffin, 2013

Sarah Maria Griffin has asserted her moral rights.

PRINT ISBN: 978-1-84840-302-4

EPUB ISBN: 978-1-84840-303-1

MOBI ISBN: 978-1-84840-304-8

All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

New Island received financial assistance from

The Arts Council (An Comhairle Ealaon), Dublin, Ireland

For Ceri without whom there would be
no adventure and no book. Youre, like, the
coolest person I ever met. Thank you for
taking me with you.

Theres a whole world off this island. It just takes one
long swim to get there. Tell my mother I love her.

Joey Comeau, A Softer World 18: Go, Emily, Go!

Contents

Summer

All This Is True (I Think)

I would like to tell you that I remember everything about the first few weeks. I dont I can only paste together flashes of the time as it was, even though it was only just a year ago. There was so much happening all at once, and so much nothing happening at all, that it is sometimes hard to say what happened during those first summer months. They are now a blur of tall, un-walkable hills, CBs hands after so long apart, strange discomfort at the new climate. They are a quiet memory. There were so many silent days in the empty new apartment. When I arrived all it contained was a too-small red sofa, an empty refrigerator, a table, four chairs, seven books and CBs clothes. The rest of it was untouched, wooden floored and blank white walled. Id have settled for hideous wallpaper or ancient carpet. Something to prove that anyone had lived here before, that something had happened in this house before. But there was nothing, just quiet.

Now, a year later, it has a hatstand and a French scientific diagram of a Tyrannosaurus Rex from a science classroom and a globe and candles and a coffee table and a yellow chair from the 1970s and a real live sixteen-month-old cat that is to say that now it is a louder place. It is better now, feels like us now. Back then it was not like us; it wasnt like anything at all.

CB would leave in the mornings when I would still be jet-lagged, glued horizontal, and he would stay at his job out in the wilds of Menlo Park until six or seven. Until then it was just me, so I did not spend a great deal of time inside the new house. This emptiness and quietness was a stark contrast to the life I had just left behind. The sheer music of my tribe back home, their stories, their complications, their absolutely constant presence our old little nook near the Grand Canal always held some trace of them. An empty wine bottle on the table, somebodys jacket forgotten, two cigarettes in the end of a box of a Marlboros. The debris of good nights was non-existent here in SF.
We didnt even have a bottle-opener, let alone friends.

San Francisco is gorgeous our flat positioned high up enough for a sweeping view, but low down enough to be walkable for someone used to flatness in their cities. I would just stand there on the step for a moment, looking out at the odd angle of the street, wondering which way to walk. Youd be surprised how much of a tailspin it is to have people driving the other side of the road all around you how easily that turns your left into your right. I am left-handed and have always had some difficulty differentiating left from right anyway, much to the frustration of any taxi driver, who has ever had the discomfort of my confused presence in their car so this backwardness of a new city landed me almost perpetually lost. Always walking in the absolutely wrong direction. This sense of intertia made me frustrated and cranky, coupled with asking for directions making me feel like a tourist.

At this point I had not yet learned that it was best to have minor social interactions, like asking for directions or buying a bottle of water, in something approaching a fake Californian drawl, as opposed to my natural lilt or brogue. Fake accents are hard, but a lifetime of being subliminally fed American television and cinema gives you a vague idea of what affected West Coaster should sound like. It saves time and embarrassment and the occasional query about my drinking habits.

Oh my gaaad youre Iiiirish is my least favourite combination of syllables in the universe. It is an observation that I was never looking for: I just wanted to order some breakfast or ask if I was walking in the right direction for Noe Valley.

I learned to stop asking for directions. This attention made me feel threatened and different it often caused people to speak to me like I was a child. This was particularly difficult because these minor interactions were often the only real live human contact I would have until evening came, when Id happily listen to CB read the phonebook in his funny, strange Blackrock accent. He was the last musician playing when the rest of the orchestra was five thousand miles away.

This was what Id wanted though wasnt it? This was the big, bold adventure Id been dreaming of for us, that wed somehow conjured into existence. This was it this was supposed to be fun, right? There was a constant tension between moments of wild awe and adoration at the tender beauty of the city and the hills, and the utter and total shock of it, the alone of it. The confusion was overwhelming, and Id no idea how to beat it.

So Id put on the headphones Id bought in Dublin Airport and a big pair of Penneys sunglasses and walk. Id set myself miniature quests: a lifetime playing videogames taught me that the best way to turn a scary situation fun is to view it as something to be overcome and defeated something that would make me the hero of the day. My first quest was to buy a hairdryer. I have a long and sordid history of systematically damaging my hair with bleach, so I had to take care of the crunchy scarecrow mop I landed myself with, and even a couple of days letting it air-dry was causing me to leave a ginger trail of snapped split ends everywhere I went. So, I decided the hairdryer would be my holy grail, my princess in the dragons keep, the golden triangle Id been destined to possess.

I looked up where one could acquire such a mystical artefact on my fancy new internet phone my Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and followed the pulsing blue dot that marked my position to the tiny red flag that marked my goal. Into the Mission I went, for the very first time streets that I have since fallen in a complicated kind of love with.

I still have this game I play with San Francisco where I look up and open my eyes and it shows me something new. There is always some strange hill lurking just beyond the buildings in front of me, iced with paper houses and tall, slim trees. These views fill me with the happiness Id been looking for just for a moment, but it is enough.

Mission Street herself felt immediately to me like a younger, wilder cousin of Moore Street in Dublin. Same vegetable vendors, same bustling community, same feeling of authenticity: like this street is so occupied with its own business and goings on that it does not have a moment to look at you unless youre buying some avocados, a bag of potatoes, some shrimp, some fresh salsa. Same feeling of a million stories happening all around you at once, but they pass by in a current: that pulse is how this place