We are going home

I write this post crossing the North Channel between Cairnryan (near Stranraer) and Belfast. I write this post just two hours from fulfilling a dream. I write this post, almost pinching myself. 

This is a day I have dreamt of for years. A dream I had long ago, before I met my wonderful wife, from the wonderful county of Tyrone, and we had our extraordinary daughter, to whom we gave a beautiful Irish name. The dream of being in the place where my heart lives. The dream of going home. The dream of living on the island of Ireland.

This feeing of going home is simply that: a feeling. It is a feeling like no other: a feeling that cannot be fully described in tangible form. It is something that can only be experienced.

I was born in the most Irish city not on the island of Ireland, Liverpool, and have been shaped by the generosity, humour, fierce sense of justice and community, and the warmth of its heart and people. Liverpool will always live deep inside me, as will the family and friends who held me tight there throughout my life.

But, ever since my teenage years, and then more intensely in my twenties, I have felt this deep yearning for Ireland and to connect with its land and people. I have sought out Irish people and wanted to hear them speak and be close to them. Clearly, the Sunday afternoons as a child hearing Irish music and a voice I loved but didn’t fully understand never left me.

I considered it the highest honour when in 2015 - thanks to my paternal grandfather (from the great town of Wexford) - I was able to become an Irish citizen and hold in my hand the 12.5cm by 9.2cm little book which guarantees me a warm welcome all around the world. It was formal recognition of what I had known for years - I was Irish and bursting with pride to be so. 

I considered it the greatest fortune of my life to meet my darling Aileen in 2007; born and brought up on the greatest island on the planet, and for her to somehow fall in love with me - something I have done with her almost immediately upon meeting. 

When we met and lived then in London, it felt too hard to imagine that our work and lives would allow us to reside on that glorious piece of land that makes us both so proud. And yet, today, we are about to do just that. We are taking our little family and setting up home in Belfast.

We are going home. Aileen after 25 years in England. Me after dreaming of it for as long as I can remember. 

There is of course sadness. Physically, I am leaving behind people that mean so much to me. People whose love for me and my love for them is boundless and endless. Love and bonds that are unbreakable. People who will always be in my life, regardless of my postcode, or theirs. People who mean more to me than words can ever adequately express. People who mean everything to me. Physically, I am leaving, but emotionally, I will never leave them. Never. They will always be in my heart.

But today is not about sadness. It is about fulfilling a dream. It is about taking my heart home. It about my incredible wife taking herself home after a quarter of a century. It is about Miss J taking her name home. 

I cannot wait now to see the port of Belfast. I have seen it in my dreams so often over these last few months. These dreams always end with me holding Aileen’s hand as we walk down the Lisburn Road, chatting with our daughter and other members of our family, who are now waiting for us to arrive.

This dream has sustained me for months - building on the dream I’ve had for years. Today that dream becomes a reality.  The reality that we are going home. Where my heart is. On the island of Ireland.