Two weeks ago, I was heading out for my evening walk when a honking sound filled our neighbourhood streets. I stopped on the footpath, excited to watch and wait for them, for that first glimpse of the Canada geese flying through the evening sky.
It was a Friday. After a hectic week at work, after a New England winter that lingered on, the migrating geese were a very welcome sign of spring.
This will be my 31st North American spring, but in three plus decades, I’ve never grown used to it. I’ve never lost my joy at this sudden stage-set change from frozen and fallow winter to sunny and lush springtime.
That Friday evening, the Canada geese and I were headed toward the tidal basin and the salt marshes that sit within eye view of our house. As I walked along the finally snow-less footpaths, I spotted crocuses in my neighbours’ gardens, and the wild beach roses and forsythias looked ready to bloom.
Each spring reminds me of that first one in upstate New York. Back then, I assumed that the good weather would end, Irish-style, in grey skies and downpours. So I rushed out to buy a cheap beach chair and a bottle of factor 30 and called in “sick” to my restaurant gig. Then, after a week of lounging and reading in my rented back garden, I toddled back to work where, I’m sure, my new freckles and sunburn betrayed my workplace lie.
New life, new place
I read somewhere that, year after year, the Canada geese follow the exact same north-south flight path. Along the way, they stop over at the exact same feeding grounds. Also, as they fly in that inverted V formation, the more experienced birds fly at the apex, relying on their wisdom and their in-built homing devices to lead their flock home.
The birds are a lot smarter than me. As an impetuous 24-year-old kid, I left Co Mayo to land in New York with no life plan or career path. I didn’t know what I would be doing the following month, much less where I was headed or where I would land.
Since landing in the US, I have lived in 11 houses and apartments. Some were a stopover, where I stayed for barely a year. Others were for much longer than that. In retrospect, I know none of them felt like home. But then, pre-emigration, neither did any of those places where, as a student or a working singleton, I had lived in Ireland.
Over 20 years ago, my husband and I landed here in Newburyport, 38 miles north of Boston. Our tiny city sits at the mouth of the Merrimack River, a 110-mile waterway that stretches from New Hampshire's ski country to this tidal basin where the river joins the Atlantic.
Further upriver, in the 19th century, young girls from Poland, Québec, Ireland and elsewhere came to work in the riverfront textile mills and live in the factory-owned boarding houses. In 1912, “the mill girls” led a landmark labour strike of over 20,000 workers. The mill girls also founded and ran their own literary magazine.
Here, I feel part of this inter-generational narrative; a worldwide tale about people who book their passage to make a new life in a new place.
New home
Newburyport is an old maritime town that has preserved and re-purposed most of its old, red-brick buildings. These days, the estate agents cite and peddle this history, while also touting our commutability by train to Boston or by highway to the area’s tech and biotech industries. Also, on any weekday, our town’s cafés and public library are full of laptop-tapping telecommuters. We’ve converted two old railroad beds to walking and biking trails. There’s an annual literary festival, a documentary film festival, a chamber music festival, a downtown theatre and cinema, and a weekly farmers market.
On that Friday evening, I walked along the seawall where I could almost forget that we've endured another winter of turmoil, a political "burn and churn". Since our presidential inauguration last year, it feels like we've been forced to watch never-ending and mismatched snippets from The Simpsons that someone has randomly spliced together; all the while hoping that we won't notice the mess.
Here, if I fix my gaze on the barrier island beach out there at the end of the tidal basin, I can almost forget that I live in a country being overrun by a gang of hucksters, where Facebook, not factual reportage, has the power to influence entire belief systems. Where, disastrously, a just-big enough section of the click-bait- and voting public have created this Simpsons show in the first place. These days, America, to quote from the Dublin playwright Seán O'Casey, is "in a terrible state o' chassis".
Here in town, we exist in a real-life echo chamber. Most of us are staunchly left of centre, and I’ve met many of my neighbours - mainly women - at out-of-town protest marches or rallies. On one of those trips, a local psychotherapist told me that, since the presidential inauguration day, her and her colleagues’ clinical practices have seen a sudden rise in new or returning patients.
As for me, I keep on walking. If the hucksters and their shenanigans are going to make me lose my mind, I might as well also lose weight.
That Friday, by the time I reached the end of the sea wall, the Canada geese had made it all the way over and across the tidal basin. Now they were distant dots in the pinking sky, and I could no longer hear them. Watching them, I said a silent, secular prayer that was half gratitude and half supplication for this place where I’ve landed home.
Áine Greaney's essays and stories have been published in the US, Ireland, Canada and the UK. Her work has been cited in Best American Essays and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her fifth book, Green Card and Other Essays, will be published in the US in 2019. As well as creative writing, Greaney works as a health writer and leads workshops on personal writing as a route to wellness and workplace self-care.
