thoughts on living in a big family (1)

Today was the first really soggy day since the arrival in Dublin. ("Awful weather, just awful!" lamented my host mom at dinner, to which her sons shot back, "Isn't it always this way?") The photo was taken from the window at the SIT building. After class, I slogged to the DART station in the rain, and made it through the door just in time for dinner.

The girls are involved in school plays, and as a result, everyone has bits of songs from both Aladdin and The Wizard of Oz drifting through our heads. Fionnuala rehearsed her lines after dinner, and I taught the girls + Ronan (whose name means "little seal" - i'll get to this later) a card game. Following that, the younger sister rolled herself up in her mom's yoga mat and declared herself to be "a vegetarian sausage", and then decided to act out the meanings behind each of our names. When it came to Ronan's turn, she said, "LITTLE seal? More like BEACHED WHALE!" and flopped around the kitchen, being a beached whale. It was horrible and hilarious. At that same moment, the phone rang ("Oohh, it's your boyfriend!" was the chorus that followed). It turned out to be someone taking a survey. They oldest boy, Michael, grabbed the phone out of Ronan's hand, and said, in a very thick Northern Irish accent, "Aah, aye, I'm the man of the house" which led to a long conversation about the economic downturn and how it was affecting him, a rural homeowner. The girls dissolved into giggles and the boys egged him on. So the whole evening was very silly and wild.

This is the first of I'm sure many reflections on living with a large family. When I first heard that there were 5 children in the house I'd be living in, I was overwhelmed and unsure of how I'd fit in, only ever knowing life with one sibling. Now that I've been here for a little while, it's difficult to imagine this family with anyone missing, because each person - as trite as it may sound - helps to make it work.