Next week I will pack my youngest into the car,and we will drive off to Dublin, to stay with my mum for a few days.
Even though I left Dublin over twenty five years ago to live 200 km away in Cork, with my new husband and subsequent four children, I still say as I leave for Dublin, that I am going home!
When I turn the corner at the bottom of our road, a million memories will bubble up. I will see friends from bygone days playing chase on the road and arguing over who was caught.
I will pass the small garden wall where I crashed my brothers brand new bike. It wrecked his bike and I broke my nose!
I will see the trees I was not allowed to climb but did so daily and remember the fields that used to be where houses now stand.
On reaching the top of the road I will drive in my familiar driveway and enter home.
My mum will be there to welcome me at the door, not quite as tall as she once was but still a ball of energy. Her warm embrace and welcome always fill my heart.
We will then head into the kitchen, 
the heart of my home. Much of the kitchen cupboards were made by my Dad, who died almost thirty years ago.
However my mom moves with the times so our kitchen does not live in the past,
yet it still inspires memories in me.
As I sit at the table supping tea, I will replay much of my youth.
The shouts and roars of my family rowing, the shrieks of laughter as we ate dinner together.
I will see my Dad joking around with Mum, pencil behind his ear, always building something.
I will remember how most of the neighbours children liked to gather in our house.
Later when I go upstairs to my old bedroom my trip down memory lane will continue. It was here I pretended to study. Lying on my bed, reading letters from my now husband, I dreamed of my wedding. It was in this room I could be alone in a busy house.
I can also remember when, for a time, I lost my home. My Dad had been sick for two years with Motor Neuron Disease.
We looked after him and despite his illness our house was a very happy one.
Then my Dad died.
The loss of his presence was enormous. Home was changed forever. For all my life home had been my Mum and Dad.
Now it was only Mum.
For a time I stayed away as much as I could. There was no urge to return. My house no longer felt like home and I couldn’t face it.
However, over time my amazing mum dug deep.
She side stepped her own grief,
and continued to parent us all. She created a new home, just as welcoming,
and filled with joy as it once was. One by one we left home, but when my brothers and sisters visit, we are a family again and it often feels as if time has barely passed.
The old arguments continue as Mum oversees everything.
It is a place I love to be.
So next week when I head to Dublin, I have no problem telling everyone, I am going HOME.
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I wrote much of this a few years ago and have rewritten it here so I can take part in Sadhbh’s linky on her blog, ‘Where wishes come from.’ It features different posts where bloggers remember their hometown. I know I didn’t quite stick to the rules, but I didn’t grow up in a beautiful small Irish village which I can wax lyrical about, as many of the others taking part did. Instead I grew up in Dublin, a large city I love, in a housing estate. It may not sound like the prettiest place on earth but it is and always will be ‘home’ for me.
Why not call over to read some of the other links and perhaps you might consider joining in? Fair to say we have a fair chunk of Ireland covered but it would be lovely to read some posts from ‘abroad.’ Here is where you’ll find it. ‘Live where you live.’
photo credit: Eva the Weaver via photopin cc
photo credit: hz536n/George Thomas via
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photo credit: pcgn7 via photopin cc
My thoughts on a page. 
I absolutely loved the enthusiasm and the backstory of your post. It made me feel as if I were there, and it’s one of my dreams to visit Dublin one day, so that’s exciting for me haha!
Dublin is indeed an exciting place to visit. Even though it is no longer where I live I love it and am proud to be a Dub. Thanks for your lovely comment, glad you enjoyed my trip down memory lane
Tric, that is beautiful. Our family home stopped being the family home the day my Mam didn’t get home. I am so pleased your Mum kept her home going as it did, it sounds like a wonderfully welcoming place to be xxx
Thanks Nicola. It’s only now I can see the massive effort it must have been for my mum to recreate a home for us all, especially one which draws us all towards it so often.
We had a few years to say goodbye to Dad, I cannot imagine what it was like for you all to lose your mum so suddenly and so young.
I love this post Tric.
Mission accomplished Colleen. 🙂
🙂
My parents left our childhood home for another when I was in my 20s. I was quite sad about. Recently when traveling back east my mom, brother and I went back to the old neighbourhood to see our house, visit the old childhood haunts… ahh the memories. 🙂 ❤
Diana xo
Aw that’s hard. To go back but not be able to go into your house. What amuses me about revisiting old haunts is how small some of the huge fields etc now look.
Yes! My elementary school looks way smaller than I remembered!
What a lovely, heartfelt post, Tric…full of warmth and emotion
Thank you Sue. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Your mother certainly sounds like a very strong woman. Enjoy your visit!
She is indeed. A real force to be reckoned with. It’s only as I age myself I can truly appreciate how lonely and difficult life has been for her over the past thirty years.
Gorgeous as always, Tric! You have a magic way with words. I can see it all and feel like I’m in the kitchen with you and your family. My husband always says he can still ‘see’ the kids playing on his own mum’s street and loves that soon it’ll be our own little ones playing out there when we visit!
Thanks so much for adding this beautiful piece to the linky. xx
Thanks Sadhbh. It was a lovely idea for a linky and I really enjoyed revisiting this post. How lovely to see your gang reliving your childhood so to speak.
This is lovely! Actually, it brought tears to my eyes. Maybe I’ll dig up something I’ve written about my “foreign” home in the US. Unfortunately I’ve embedded it in fiction so it’ll take work to lift it. And I’ve been long gone. Haven’t actually seen the house since sometime in the 60s. But how fortunate i was — like you — to be raised in the same house with the same friends until I was off on a career and family. My last sight of it was with yellow police ribbon around it after the current owner was murdered there. Irrationally I found myself fervently hoping the killing occurred in their addition to the house, not in “My Father’s House.” They never did solve the murder.
Wow that’s quite a final memory, a murder! I do think our childhood memories are so special. If you do lift your stories or write a new account be sure to let me know. I’d love to read it.
Thanks trip. Now I have a potential audience of one. I like that!
I have been so fortunate. To go home I only have to drive or walk up a hill a hundred yards away to where I grew up. That being said, the house I grew up in is no longer the house my parents are living in. It is just a house filled with all the junk none of us have any place else to store. It’s weird walking into all those old memories and seeing stuff strewn all across them.
Tim
Yes you are fortunate, but it must be strange to see your old home empty? Can you remember it as it was or has it become something different?
what a beautiful tribute to home and family, tric. i hope you enjoy every second!
Thanks Beth.
Reblogged this on Gave the sawdust a shake look what fell out..
Enjoy your time in the BIG SMOKE (now smokeless) Tric, yes it is great to revisit except I have a longer path to travel down memory lane (age related only) but all worth it –
Hahaha. Regardless how long the path I think we’ll always remember some more than others.
Thanks for the reblog.
You are welcome – Only you’d have too far to travel I’d tell you of my book launch in September!!!!
Oh wow how fantastic. Well done. Every good wish for it. Send me any links via email or what ever and I’d be happy to give it a plug. Looking forward to reading it.
Oh how I love this! Home is not really a place, it’s a feeling. One that has to nurtured and minded. When you thought you lost home it had just gone away a while, to regroup and reveal itself in it’s new form. That it re found itself in the house you grew up in is a testament to your mothers strength xx
Thanks so much. Yes as the years have passed and I’ve faced some difficult times I really came to appreciate how strong my mum was and what it took for her to redesign our home without a dad in it. One which we all have come to love.
Now I’ve to try do the same for my gang, with a dad in it thankfully.
I hope you have a safe trip tric! 🙂
Thanks a mil OM.Looking forward to it.
This sound like a great home and although i live quite far away from Dublin, it felt familiar. All home does 🙂
I love your comment. How very true, we live in different time zones, different cultures and within different family structures but all of us can understand ‘home’
My mom lives in a place that was never home to me. I never lived there. She moved there when I was about 34, already married and a mom myself. Yet, when I go see her, I always think that I’m going home because that’s where my mom is and it feels like home…like a place where I belong. So home is really in our hearts, which is not always where our bodies reside.