We're Moving to Ireland

We’re moving to Ireland.

Like, actually moving. Not the dreamy Pinterest-board version of moving where you sip Guinness in a wool sweater and suddenly your child grows up bilingual and wise. No, this is the real, messy, document-strewn, vaguely terrifying version where you ship your entire life across an ocean

I’m 43. I’ve traveled extensively, but this will be my first time living outside the United States, a country I love in all its sprawling, contradictory, infuriating glory. I mean that sincerely. I love it. I love the wildness, the presumptuous confidence and the fantastic greasy food. But I also feel like I’m living in a place that’s begun to glitch. Like the operating system of daily life is lagging, and when it finally catches up, you realize you’ve been buffering through a kind of static on last decade’s model.

There are many reasons why we’re moving, but two are at the forefront, and I know how that sounds. Like a corporate memo or a politician listing “key issues.”

Nonetheless:

1. To be closer to family.
   Specifically, my wife’s family lives in Ireland. As an only child, I don’t have the built-in network of siblings with young kids, and while we once imagined a bigger family, the reality is that parenting is HARD, and one is enough for us. That’s why it means so much that our son will grow up surrounded by his similarly aged cousins, with the kind of close-knit, everyday chaos we always hoped he’d have.

2. To escape gun violence.
   Ah, the shifting tone. Here’s where my childhood conservative friends groan. Stick with me. I want to be very clear: I’m not anti-gun. I’m for the Second Amendment. I’ve shot guns. I genuinely understand the passion and logic behind gun ownership. But, I’ve also watched the uniquely American horror of school shootings become background noise. Politicians throw up their hands like physics itself prevents them from trying anything. Just try something. Ban one kind of gun. Raise the age. Give schools more mental health resources. Require licensing. Hell, hold a brainstorming session. But instead, we rinse and repeat. Thoughts. Prayers. Lobbyist checks. News alerts. Tiny caskets. Repeat. Sandy Hook was an eye-opener. But, after Uvalde, I couldn’t escape the thought of losing my child, only to be stuck telling my wife, “We had an opportunity to move elsewhere.”

   
   And here’s the thing: I don’t want my son to grow up normalizing that. I don’t want him wondering if today is the day. I want his biggest fear at school to be whether his drawing looks dumb or if the girls like his new haircut. I don’t ever want him experiencing an active shooter drill while kids begin here, even before kindergarten. I want him to experience boredom at school, not terror. I had a long thesis full of statistics written to support this particular reason for moving, but, bluntly, I’m confident in my rationale, and it simply doesn’t need defending. The undeniable truth is that it happens here more than anywhere else, and my family has an opportunity to avoid it.

Of course, the move is full of mixed feelings. Weighing most heavy is leaving my parents. They moved from Texas to Colorado to be closer to us and to watch my son grow up, and now it feels like I’m stealing that away. Saying I feel guilty doesn’t really cover it. It’s more like a quiet ache that underlies all of the excitement. Still, they’ve been very supportive and even understanding. I’ll be back in the States at least once a year, and they’ll visit us in Ireland. For now, there’s always FaceTime. Imperfect, but something.

I will miss the convenience of the U.S. Where else can you get toothpaste and hot wings at 2 A.M from the same store? I’ll miss my friends, of course, though most everyone is jet lag personified and already planning visits. I’ll miss the absurd vastness of American highways. I’ll miss the Colorado mountains, which are more than just geography to me, but sacred. I’ll certainly miss the greasy fast food, which has filled emotional voids that salads can never begin to touch.

Ireland, let’s be real, is not perfect. It’s slow. Like, painfully slow, especially when you need to register your car, get a plumber, or open a bank account. Or, really do anything that requires a second person completing a task within a calendar month. Steps for acquiring my visa and PPS number (similar to Social Security) have already proved too difficult even for ChatGPT. Most everything has to be done in person, so trying to get a jump on things from here has been quite frustrating.

The weather is a gray, damp whisper of depression that seeps into your soul and soaks your socks. The wind will blow beach sand at your face better than any spa can exfoliate. The food is fine, in a “well, that was warm and contained some salt” kind of way. The housing market is an absolute joke, but the kind where nobody’s laughing. And moving with a four-year-old is complicated. He’s very excited now, but concerned about leaving behind his friends and the familiarity and comfort he’s known his whole life. Despite being quite adaptable, I know the real challenge will come when he starts school this fall as the American outsider. Hopefully, as a child, he doesn’t get the casual side eye I’m given when mentioning I’m American in a foreign country.

But even so.

Even so.

There’s something in the Irish way of life. The casual kindness, the previously mentioned built-in slowness, and its refusal to commodify every second. Ireland is a bit more analog. It feels right. The people are more friendly. The weather (ironically) will be excellent for my photography. The proximity to the rest of Europe opens opportunities for culture that I never had as a kid. Healthcare and education are significantly cheaper, while hustle culture is frowned on, and work/life balance is encouraged. And, maybe, more than anything, it feels like a place where I can parent without a slight hum of dread in my chest.

This isn’t about finding a better place. There is no “better.” There’s just the place that matches values, fears, hopes, and that feeling in one’s gut. And right now, my gut says it’s time to go.

So we’re going.

I’m not scared, or, at least not in the way people assume when you say you’re leaving behind everything familiar. Home, for me, has always been more of a concept than a fixed point on a map. It’s where there’s laughter in the kitchen and a nearby place to escape into nature. If we can build that in a small Irish village, then that’s where we’re meant to be. The plan is three years. After three years of living in the country full-time, I can obtain Irish citizenship. The Irish passport allows visa-free travel to 98% of countries in the world, so this feels like a common-sense amount of time to stay. After three years, we’ll re-evaluate how things are going, stay, move back to the U.S., or go somewhere else.

This September, we’ll be around 45 minutes south of Dublin in a seaside village called Greystones, tucked between the Irish Sea and the Wicklow Mountains. In 2021, it was named the “most livable community in the world” by the Chinese LivCom Awards, which, I guess, sounds impressive, but really was just the first thing I found when Googling positive things to send my parents when pitching the move. It’s a quiet, friendly place with ocean air, a coastal cliff walk, and a bakery with pastries that might make me forget I will no longer be able to hit the Chick-fil-A drive-in at a moment’s notice. I already have plans to migrate my wardrobe to tweed and flat caps, and debate about how Scottish whisky could never hold a candle to Irish whiskey.

If you’ve made it this far and are one of our people, we’d love for you to come visit! Right now, we have no house, no permanent address, and only a vague idea of what life will look like in a few months. But we’ll figure it out. Once settled, our door is always wide open. Pack a raincoat, bring a good story, and come see us on the other side of the ocean!

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