Emigration

Rosemary Mac Cabe: How this avowed homebird found herself with a new life, living abroad

We really never know what’s coming; three years ago I was happily living in Dublin. Now I’m married in the US with two stepsons and a baby; although it still feels like home, just 3,600 miles away

Rosemary McCabe near her home in Castlewarden, Co Kildare: ‘There’s a lot of space in America. In Ireland, I have learned, there are 186 people per square mile – in the US, there are 90.’ Picture: Bryan Meade

There was a lot I didn’t know, when I stepped on that plane in May 2019 to visit my sister and her family in Indiana. Looking back, it feels like watching a movie of another person’s life; the version of me that boarded a flight to Chicago, then onwards to Fort Wayne, that summer, is almost unrecognisable to me now.

Of course, we never know what’s coming. I couldn’t have known that I would meet ...