Musings of a Global Nomad

Turning 40! Well let me tell you, it is a big deal. You think you are ready, but you aren't. You know it's just a number but yet, it weighs you down. You have been expecting it, planning for it even, but when it happens, you have to take a deep breath and fight hard to silence the one hundred thousand impulses that surge through you, drumming one hell of a scary beat.     It helped that I turned 40 under a beautiful Parisian sky. I wanted to mark this day in a special way and had planned this trip even though it  wasn't  really the best time (midweek, winter and a sick child). But the rest of my gang hardly needed any convincing. And since it involved missing a few days of school, it was, as you can imagine, met with even more excitement).  So yes we celebrated my birthday walking the streets of Paris, eating fantastic but much too expensive French cuisine, taking endless photographs, throwing a key into the river Seine, climbing the Eiffel tower...

As far as romantic love stories go, ours is a pretty good story to tell. What makes it more exciting is that there is a his and hers version but I'll leave you in suspense and keep that story for another time. What I can share is that we kind of had our first date on Valentines day and as many humorous anecdotes as we each have about that night, we both admit it was magical and yes the beginning of a beautiful journey together. No we weren't already in love then and no it was hardly a traditional date or romantic evening for two by any means, but it was the first time we were out together and the sparks did fly and cupid was definitely at hand. So Feb 14th does remain a very special date for us and every year we celebrate that anniversary, reminiscing, laughing, being thankful. And the years have flown...  20 years in fact! Now that's quite some pressure. And so in the days leading up to this Valentines day, I put some real deep thought into what I could give him, thi...

Ever since Pope Francis told mothers in the Sistine Chapel to go ahead and breastfeed their children if they needed to, there have been a lot of blogs and stories praising the pontiff, mothers sharing their experiences and lots more interesting stories of all kinds. It got me thinking back to this really funny experience I had, and so no better to time to share it, than at the peak of all this breast feeding chatter. Spoiler alert: The story is not directly related to the issue of breast feeding in public, it is more about stereotyping, but nevertheless read on, and you will see the connection. This happened when my third daughter was a few months old. We were living in Rome at that time and would attend Mass at the Irish College most Sundays. The Mass was in English, the priests and seminarians warm and welcoming and they had a lovely catechism program for kids after Mass. So one Sunday, we finished Mass and the older girls went off for Catechism. It was a lovely day, the sun s...

Our dear family and friends As I sit down to write this annual Christmas letter, it’s an unusually bleak day here in Rome. It’s dark, rainy and cold and but sitting here, in front of the huge Christmas Tree we have put up in our living Rome, I feel anything but. As I look back on the year that’s been, and search out those tidbits of our lives to share with you, I feel warm and fuzzy, contented, accomplished, just plain happy. And that’s because I realize, it has been a good year, in fact it’s been a great year. Gerard finished his stint in Afghanistan and we are all together in a place we are once again happy to call home. The move back to Rome went well for the most part, and after the initial expected hitches (telephone and internet connections) and unexpected hitches (we were without a washing machine for almost a month) we settled down into our lovely home, ready for round 2 in Rome. The kids, especially the younger three, settled into their new school really fast. ...

This is a household of five ladies and one man. We range in age from about five to forty four, have a diverse  fashion sense, varied interests and a host of other idiosyncrasies. We share everything...clothes, shoes, hair brushes, lunch boxes, TV time... yes, (nearly) everything is communal. Of course we have duplicates and triplicates of some stuff that is just precious and that is sometimes needed by everyone, all at the same time. One of these, more precious than gold type of precious, things is the honorable hairbrush. Now all of us, sans one, have alot of hair to brush. Hair of varying lengths and varying textures. Hair that we sometime like plaited, sometimes put up, sometimes left to fly in the wind. But what can I say, how ever many hairbrushes we buy, however much we try and exclusively allocate them to individual members, they seem to have a mysterious pact. They enter the house, act all coy and obedient for the first few days and then they disappear, and they often ta...

Two years are up and I have been trying to write a blog on the end of what we call our 'India Experience' but I seem to be having a major case of writers block. There is so much to be said, but for some reason the words are stuck in some inner recess of my brain. Is it because perhaps I am reluctant to say goodbye and putting my thoughts down will actually mean the end of two incredibly amazing and yet agonizing years. But this must be done today, now. I must somehow tease and cajole the words out, because as time passes and I get caught up with life in the Eternal City, those words may just dry up and believe me I really need to sing my swan song as a long distance wife. I used the words amazing and agonizing and yes they are completely contradictory, but no two words can better describe our two years in India. Amazing because the experience was everything and more than what we expected and agonizing because simply put, the days without Gerard were...just that. But in sp...

My city goes to the polls tomorrow. After weeks of frenzied campaigning and an overkill of election propaganda, the streets are vanilla again. Yes, all signs of campaigning have been removed as per election commission guidelines. But you can still smell it in the air, you can hear it in the wind. The drums may have stopped beating but the echos haven't faded. The Indian General Elections 2014. The world's largest democracy voting to elect its next central government. Complicated, calculating, sometimes comical, this election seems to be one of the most exciting elections ever. Excited to be in country to vote in a general election for the first time since I turned 18, I went through all the procedures to get my name included in the voters list in my constituency. However when the final lists were published, I was utterly devastated to see that my name wasn't there. I set out on a mission to try and find the main master voter list to see if maybe my name had inadvertent...