I grew up in the southwest of Ireland in a small village called Mountshannon in County Clare.. Mountshannon was where I was born and raised, but it is also the place that shaped me into the individual that I am today.
My local village is located on a lake, surrounded by lots of nature… and as you may also guess, many green fields. I was extremely fortunate to grow up somewhere where I knew almost everyone in my local area. However, as wonderful as the community is, there are very few facilities in my local area, particularly for young people. There is a small shop, a school, a church and a pub. And if you want to go to the shop to buy even just a carton of milk… you better be able to drive, because otherwise, you will be walking for many, many miles.
As I find myself writing this reflection a long way from home, while I sip on an iced coffee in Ed’s café, I find myself thinking about how my upbringing in the tiny village of Mountshannon has shaped my identity and my perspective on life.
When I was growing up in Mountshannon as a child, I always looked forward to the day that I could leave the small village and community behind, to go on to see bigger and better things of course. On the 31st of May 2022, I departed for New York, in the hope that all of the dreams I had as a child would come true in a big and brand new city. I spent the summer working in Manhattan, or as Alicia Keys would call it, ‘The concrete jungle where dreams are made of’. Let me tell you that she defines New York perfectly, because I can confidently say that all of my dreams came true the day that I arrived at my summer abode in the upper east side of Manhattan. I arrived to see not only the many skyscrapers around me, but the subway station that was situated around the corner, the 24 hour deli/ market connected to our building, and not only the Dunkin Donuts down the street, but also the McDonalds located right beside it. On the first day that I arrived alongside my older sister, we could not believe that we had so many facilities readily available to us. It was the first time that we didn’t have to hop into our car to drive to the shop for a carton of milk or drive miles out of our way to buy a cup of coffee… It seemed like it was everything that we ever wished for while growing up.
During the summer, I experienced a feeling of immense pride that I had never felt before, for not only being from Ireland, but from coming from the small little village of Mountshannon in county Clare. I worked as a waitress for the summer in an Irish restaurant. I’m not going to lie, there were often times I felt like a celebrity after taking a family of fours’ food order! The Americans often looked at me with delight as they would say, ‘Oh my God, you are Irish!’. They would then proceed to tell me about how they are almost as Irish as myself… ‘You know, i’m Irish!’ they would say… ‘My great, great, great grand aunt was from county….. county…. Dungadee…’.
Now, although county Dungadee does not exist, I would usually respond as such. ‘Wow, Dungadee is a beautiful part of the country!’.
I learned this summer that as much as I wanted to get away from my small Irish village community in Mountshannon, there is simply something so special about being part of such a community. People are tight knit. They care about and look after one another, particularly when you are abroad. When I was surrounded by millions of people in New York this summer, the people I wanted to be around the most were the people from small Irish communities like myself. It was the small Irish community in New York that made it feel like home. It felt like being a part of a small community, like I experienced growing up in Mountshannon, where people cared about you, where people always offered their hand to kindly support you or help you out. I realized this summer that being a part of such a community is not a bad thing, it is a blessing. It is my identity. My home economics teacher in secondary school once told us that when you leave home, the first thing that you will more than likely pack is your home county jersey. As I packed my bag to depart for the states at the end of May, my Clare jersey was the first thing that I packed. And when I wore it in New York, you can be assured that I wore it proudly, because it represents where I am from, it is who I am..
My upbringing was humbling in the sense that there were very few facilities available to myself and my community members around me. As I often wished about the day that I would leave Mountshannon growing up, I am still sitting in Ed’s thinking about everything that it offered me, particularly the massive appreciation I have for currently having a gym, a library, and so much more right around me. It also has me feeling so grateful for the fact that I was surrounded by such a tight knit community growing up, people who would often park outside to bring me to camogie training without even asking them to collect me, people who text me while I was in New York during the summer asking me how it was to be ‘living the american dream’, and for the many Irish people that I met in New York that always almost finished the conversation by saying, if you ever need anything, just reach out.
Although I am writing this in a place that is far away from Mountshannon like I once dreamt of, it is everything that I learned and experienced in my small knit local community that shaped me into not only the person that I am today, but the person that I hope to continue to be.
