Grasping at silver linings

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks cowering beneath playground apparatus all around Dublin, waiting out heavy showers of rain, while wrapped in waterproofs and fleeces.  Clutching paper coffee cups for warmth, I’ve tried not to think bad thoughts about my sister who, at the same time, has been baking on a Mediterranean beach, while I have to buy my vitamin D in a plastic bottle from Boots.  We must think positively.  As I remarked to one mother I was huddled with for warmth: “at least when the rain stops, the gale-force winds will have the slides dry in no time.” Silver linings. 

 

The reason I’ve been spending so much time at playgrounds was that over the past few weeks a number of my friends were home from abroad with their children, some of whom are much younger than my own. Hence why I thought I was done with that particular jail term…

 

One pal from Germany, one from Australia, one from the USA – my Irish friends who travelled abroad after college and settled in other countries. I’m lucky enough to have been part of a generation for which the choice to emigrate was just that – a choice – but it didn’t make it any easier for those of us left behind when they left to go and find adventure far away. I miss them dreadfully, and I love when they come home with their ever-increasing broods. Those broods are now so large and of such varying ages that open spaces and playgrounds with adjacent fields were the best option for us over the past few weeks (although the weather certainly did NOT play ball).

 

Yes, I love when they are home, and I miss them when they leave, but one thing that never ceases to amaze me is how the older kids all seem to remember each other, and fall back into friendships formed over only sporadic visits over the past decade. Watching them play, listening to them discuss the Premier League and school holiday arrangements (we get a week more than you – ha!), I realise that my loss may be their gain, and when the time comes for my boys to find adventure abroad, they will have good friends to travel to all around the world, should they wish to. 

 

It doesn’t make me miss my friends any less, but hey, you know. Silver linings.