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Dearbhla, D-e-a-r-b-h-l-a. No, the ‘bh’ is pronounced like a ‘v’. We don’t actually have the letter v in the Irish language, though we have several ways of making the sound. Yes, that’s right, ‘Dearbhla”. No, no, no worries, how could you know how to pronounce it, it’s not English, it’s Irish. You know we have our own language?

‘Dearbhla’, D like dog, e like elephant, a like apple, r like radio, b like bicycle, h like hotel, l like laugh, a like apple. Yeah, ‘Dearbhla’. I know, it’s Irish, Gaelic. Thanks, yeah, I love it but you can imagine being named ‘Dearbhla’ here…if I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked to spell it in the last twenty years…

Look it’s two syllables Dearbh and la. ‘Dearbhla’. It’s not that difficult, come on. Really, it’s just two syllables, Derv / la. How do I spell it? No, that’s just going to make you more confused cos it’s not English, it’s Irish, you know Gaelic. Okay, I’ll spell it for you and then I’ll spell it phonetically. D-e-a-r-b-h-l-a / D-e-r-v-l-a. Why don’t I just spell it the Anglicized, phonetic way? Why not? Do you know anything about Irish history?

Scene change, the Royal Marine Hotel, Dun Laoghaire (checking in).

- ‘What name is the room booked under?”

- “Kelly”

- Ah hiya Dearbhla, welcome back.

Cue big smile and waves of the relief of familiarity flooding my body. I’m home and I don’t have to explain my name or how to pronounce it.

I’ve lived in the United States for almost twenty years now and this country has been very good to me. I came here as a graduate student in 2001 and married my American husband in 2006. I finally became a US citizen in 2019. I’ve been happy here and it’s home, how could it not be after all this time? And yet I still refer to Ireland, more specifically Dublin, as ‘home’, as if it’s my real home. Which is weird because really home is where Dave, my husband, and I are. In many ways, our relationship is home, our little family of two. Home is belonging and I know I belong in our unit.

But home is also Dublin and Ireland. The green, green of the land. So green it’s intoxicating. The wild and often desolate beauty of the West, particular cadences and turns of phrase, The Late Late Show. The streets of Dublin that I love so much. Sometimes here in impossibly sunny Los Angeles, I walk those streets in my head taking in the familiar sights, the Ha’penny Bridge; College Green; Dublin Castle and on up past Burdock’s to Christchurch and the Liberties, where I used to live. The cut down past St Patrick’s Cathedral to Stephen’s Green and Grafton Street. On up to the Shelbourne for an Irish coffee or a cocktail in the Horseshoe Bar, down past Doheny & Nesbitt’s and over Baggot Street bridge past Raglan Road and into Ballsbridge.

God, I love Dublin. It’s my drug. There’s something about being in my hometown that makes my cells sing like nothing else; I actually feel more vibrant. Dublin quickens my pulse and animates my soul.

My city, split in two by the River Liffey; not the most beautiful city, no doubt about that. But it’s something more. Dublin is character, pure personality, a city for people, for living in, heaving with cafés and bars. Dublin is in my veins and in my daydreams. I go there so often in my heart and mind and it’s never too much. But do I still belong? Does the longing in my heart that never really goes away grant me a place in my city when I return? The painful truth is that sometimes I feel a slight dislocation, a sense of not quite having a rightful place, or maybe it’s that I feel like a visitor.

In Dublin, my husband and I stay in a hotel or some other rented accommodation. We adore my Dad but the spare room is really only set up for one person (think single bed) so staying there isn’t an option. In many ways this is great, we have our independence and I must say I do often enjoy staying in a cool city centre hotel. It can be sore on the pocket though a and there is something about having to stay in a hotel in your hometown that feels just a tiny bit lonely, a bit dislocated.

Times I’ve gone home without my husband I have stayed with my Dad in Dun Laoghaire, which is lovely. I cherish the accidental chats in the kitchen and walks on the pier but I also try and go into the city centre as much as possible. Just walking around makes me happy, popping in for a bite to eat or a beverage here and there, faffing around and checking out the shops. Talking to the flower sellers on Grafton Street and moseying up to Camden Street for some fresh fruit from one of the stalls up there. I love the Dublin banter, the bit of craic. God, I live for those interactions! Truly at home in my use of language. Not having to filter how I speak, to make sure I’m intelligible. All the Dublin locutions come out and I can speak Hiberno English without having to translate.

But the truth is I’m also chasing something. What that is I can’t really name. I just want to spend as much time in the city as I can. I’m like an addict trying to consume as much of my drug as possible before it gets taken away. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to spend hours wandering around the city I love above all others? I know it feeds something deep inside me that longs for satiation and completion.

Before I moved to the States in 2001 I lived in the city centre and had a wide social circle of friends, acquaintances, people I’d worked with or gone to college with. But now not so much. Time was when I could be almost certain of bumping into someone I knew walking around town and more often than not going for a coffee or a pint depending on the time of day. But that rarely happens these days. Being gone for two decades changes things and sometimes that feels a little haunting - like I’m a visitor to my own city. But how can I be when as I soon as I open my mouth it’s obvious I’m from Dublin?

The confused identity of the returned emigrant.

At this point, I’m more an Angeleno than a Dub. I’ve lived in LA for fifteen years now, have a wide social circle here, although given the sheer size of this city it doesn’t feel the same as having a wide social circle in Dublin. Everything here takes planning and effort. There isn’t the ease and spontaneous possibility of life in Dublin.

I do have a core group of girlfriends that I’ve stayed connected to and try and see whenever I’m home. Not everyone can make it every time and I have to remind myself that their lives don’t stop just because I’m home from Los Angeles. I hope they know just what it means to me when I see them. How much I value our connection, our shared histories, how we’ve borne witness to each other’s lives. These are the moments to cherish, they fill my cup.

To be clear, I love my life here in Los Angeles. It’s a beautiful life and I am fortunate in many ways. I did not have to emigrate but chose to follow my search for meaning and the quest for answers when I moved to Chicago in 2001 to earn a Ph.D in philosophy. (I didn’t end up going all the way with the doctorate but sin scéal eile). There have certainly been times I’ve felt homesick but they are usually fleeting, although there has been a low-grade hum of longing for Ireland as background noise, sometimes louder sometimes barely perceptible. But there have been a few occasions when the distance has caused anguish and heartache.

Case in point, participating in my sister’s life from afar. She is three years older than me and we have always been extremely close. I was working in Dublin for the summer of 2002 and she told me she was pregnant. Coming back to the States knowing that she was in Galway dealing with the pregnancy and trying to make a go of it with the father was really tough. I wanted to be able to support her more and went back to Ireland in March 2003 to be her birthing partner but alas I had to fly back to Chicago before my niece was born. Fortunately, I was able to be there for her baptism and crossed my fingers behind my back as I repeated the oaths to the priest accepting my role as a Godparent.

The distance became particularly acute when my sister found a lump in her breast in December 2016. When she told me on the phone, my heart almost stopped. The doctor told her she was pretty sure it was cancer when she went for a biopsy and to mentally prepare. She was upbeat, sure it was nothing to be worried about; me not so much. I started to break out in acne. At forty-three. I’ve never had acne before. The dermatologist injected an anti-inflammatory directly into the area. Hurt like hell. I felt like my world was shrinking. My musician husband was overseas on tour and hard to reach. My friends were less supportive than I would have liked. I called my Dad a lot and cried on the phone

The day she was getting the biopsy results I tried to meditate in the morning. I was frantic. Frenetic. Couldn’t feel my breath, mind imploding. Rivulets of sweat dripping down my arms. Just let her be okay. Please, please let her be okay. I can’t feel my breath, after all of these years meditating and practising yoga, I can’t feel my breath. Eventually, it came down to this: breathing in, I’m aware that I am breathing in; breathing out I’m aware that I am breathing out. it was that basic and that necessary. Later on, she texted that the diagnosis was positive. Lumpectomy and radiation to follow.

Boom! My beautiful sister who had already been through so much as a single parent. She had struggled with alcohol and was eight months sober when she got the diagnosis. I never felt further from home or so helpless, amplified by the fact that my teenage niece was navigating with her own significant challenges and my sister was dealing with it all. Five thousand miles. The distance felt so far. I struggled with whether to go home or not and in the end, I didn’t, having concluded that my presence in her house might actually cause more stress for my sister who was remarkably stoic about her treatment and all of her travails. When I did visit a few months later and saw her scar and the radiation burns on her skin, my heart broke a little bit and again I felt bad for not having been by her side.

But there was one time when I dropped everything and booked a flight to go home. My niece was in a perilous place with her own struggles and the strain on my sister was enormous. More so than cancer treatment. This was the time to get into high gear and get on a plane to show up and be present. There are times when you simply have to be there and do whatever it takes to make it work. Thankfully this hasn’t been a frequent necessity.

Sometimes I question why it is that my life worked out the way it did. Could I not have stayed in Ireland? I mean, I love Dublin, was really happy living there and had a great life. A meaningful life. But it was the very search for meaning that took me away from Ireland, my need to do philosophy and ask questions. I’m not really sure that I’ve found answers.

What I have found is a rich life, a fulfilling life with connection and purpose. I suppose in some ways I’m living the dream, at least MY dream. And if Ireland is always present, even by virtue of its absence, then so be it. There’s a place in my heart, in my soma, my very being, that longs for Ireland, that deep sense of home and belonging. It’s cellular, ancestral. I hold it close to my heart, it’s sacred and entirely mine.

But if Ireland is always present, what is it exactly that I’m missing? This is the question I can’t resolve. Yes, it’s family and friends, it’s hearing accents like mine and not having to explain my name or how I speak. It’s being able to throw in the cúpla focail and not being met with a blank stare. It’s the sense of familiarity, revisiting my favourite old haunts and discovering new places to love. And it’s also more than this; it’s the very land itself, the green, the curve of Dublin bay, the sense of history and connection to folk memory. It’s something I can’t fully explain.

Much as I’ve thought about it over the years, I’ve never had an epiphany and I’m not sure there is one to have. There’s simply a slight sense of separation and dislocation, trying to reconcile disparate parts of myself, a distance I can never fully traverse, a multiplicity of being, irreducible to just one thing.

Dearbhla Kelly, March 2021.