Re-invention in a New Country
by Lisa McGee
Picking up and moving from one country to another is not for the weak hearted but it is something I grew up with my whole life. I was born in Morristown, New Jersey and at eighteen months old my parents moved to London. We lived in Battersea before it became hip and that’s where my brother was born. In less than two years, we moved again further north to Lincolnshire where we lived in a tiny town called Digby and I went to Catholic School in Lincoln. I remember an idyllic life there with a big orchard behind our house and rabbits out back and two black Labradors, Maddie and Bo. Because we lived next to a farm we played in their hay barn and once in a while a pig would get loose and roam around our garden
Again, a few short years later my parents decided to move back to America and we ended up on Nantucket Island which in 1976 was full of hippies and was very isolated from the mainland. We lived out of town on the road to Surfside. My father, who is an artist along with my mother, painted a mural in the Boarding House Restaurant in town. It depicted of bunches of asparagus on a beach – sadly the mural has since been covered up but my brother and I used to play in the garden of the Atheneum across the street while he was painting. My mother did some needlepoint designs for Erica Wilson during this time and we especially enjoyed our summers on the beach. The first or second winter we were there the ocean literally froze all the way to the mainland – 13 miles away and there is a photograph of my father and brother walking on the frozen waves. I think that winter did it for my mother – and yet again, we were gone – now to live for six months in a rental house in Lyme, Connecticut. My father had gotten a job working in New York so he commuted in and out of the city. We lived in a little cul de sac and our back garden looked out onto a tidal river and we had a row boat that we could row out to an island (accompanied by our father). After six months, we moved into New York and lived in an apartment building on East 96th Street (49 East 96th). We were one block from Central Park and one of our black Labradors from England, Maddie was still with us and her daughter Honey (born on Nantucket). The six of us lived in a pretty small apartment on the 14th floor. I remember the kitchen having this faux brick “wallpaper” on the walls and my brother and I had army bunk beds in our rooms. My father worked for a gallery on 57th Street and did a series of commissions for Sports Illustrated magazine.
But then, he “lost his marbles” as Sports Illustrated was quoted saying and one weekend when we were out in Connecticut for a drive, he found a 1780 Federal Style house for sale in the North-East corner of Connecticut – put a 25 dollar deposit down and yes, we were off again. This was 1980 and by some miracle my parents are still living in that house today. I loved living there as we had plenty of land and a barn which soon after moving there was filled up with a variety of animals including sheep, goats, chickens, pigs and a pony. I lived there until I went off to college but I go back every year to visit and my daughter goes and stays with my parents there during the summer.
So you see, I’m no stranger to moving or re-locating or starting from scratch. That being said, I suppose that is why living in Nenagh provides me with a community and a stability I had never really experienced. I lived in New York for 15 years – in three different apartments in Manhattan and one in Queens and while you live in neighbourhoods your friends don’t necessarily live there too. You tend to meet people through work instead of your neighbourhood and so you meet in each other’s locals when you get together or explore new ones. Living in Nenagh, although it took some time to adjust, has been a positive move for me.
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