My son hasn’t learned the German word for goodbye yet.
Fionn says “bye-bye” often, mostly when I pick him up from playschool and he waves goodbye to his caregivers. But the German word “tschüss”, or the more formal “auf Wiedersehen”, is not part of his vocabulary.
That’s probably because he doesn’t hear it much in New York, where we live now, or perhaps because “bye-bye” is simply easier to say.
So when his doting German grandparents left New York to go home to Germany one Sunday evening – after almost three weeks of games, high jinks and general messing (especially at the dinner table), as well as walks hand in hand around Park Slope, adventures to pumpkin patches and animal farms, a 13km hike in a forest, and jumping over waves and splashing in the sea on holiday in Rhode Island – saying goodbye was difficult for him, both literally and figuratively.
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Like many kids his age – he was 21 months old at the time – Fionn is having a hard time understanding that goodbye is not for ever.
He cries when I drop him off at playschool and when I leave him to go to a gym class in the evening, but I had never witnessed him cry when someone other than myself or his dad left. That is why I will never forget his reaction to his grandparents’ departure.
That day my husband and I were standing on our stoop. Fionn was in my husband’s arms. He was waving goodbye and holding back the tears, trying desperately to put on a brave face as Omi and Opi – or Omini, as he calls them – climbed into their Uber and left for JFK airport.
As the Uber set off down our street, Fionn thrust his arms out towards it and burst into tears, crying ‘Omini’ over and over at the top of his lungs, as if this would somehow conjure them back into our apartment
I could sense Fionn’s curiosity tinged with creeping apprehension as he watched them load their suitcases into the boot and heard the car doors slam, gobbling up his cherished companions.
In our living room five minutes earlier he had become rather withdrawn as his grandmother attempted to hug him while wiping away tears. As the car set off down our street, Fionn thrust his arms out towards it and burst into tears, crying “Omini” at the top of his lungs. He began to flail his arms and legs about, bawling and repeating “Omini” with increasing emphasis on each syllable, as if this would somehow conjure them back into our apartment.
It was too much for us to bear.
After managing to carry him back upstairs to our apartment, all three of us fell to the ground sobbing and clutching each other, a broken, blubbering mess on the kitchen floor.
I have lived outside of Ireland for almost 13 years now, so I am used to tearful goodbyes. My husband less so, but he’s also very pragmatic. We have both accepted it as a fact of expat life, having left our friends and family behind in Europe to move to the United States in January of this year.
I had thought moving abroad wouldn’t affect Fionn too much at his young age – he was 12 months old when we moved. And for the most part it hasn’t. As sad as it is to realise this, Fionn probably remembers little if anything at all of Germany, which accounted for the entire first year of his life. He saw his Omi and Opi regularly then. But thanks to lengthy FaceTime video chats on weekend mornings over Barry’s Tea and pancakes, he has a strong bond with both his German and his Irish grandparents.
No photo or video of a grandchild saying ‘tomato’ or ‘Flugzeug’ for the 15th time will make up for the sheer joy of witnessing someone grow and develop in front of your eyes. Nor will it replace the comfort of a hug and cuddle
And over the two and a half weeks they were here, his German grandparents witnessed a prodigious expansion in his German vocabulary.
The most impressive addition was undoubtedly that of the word fertig, meaning ready, finished or complete. Fionn unexpectedly used it to promptly end a bit of small talk between his grandparents and our Airbnb host in Rhode Island, presumably because she had interrupted his investigative stroll around the garden with Omini (although this act of sabotage was completely unbefitting for a child whose Irish mother’s loquacity is well known).
It made us all laugh.
And therein lies the tragedy of living abroad. No photo or video of a grandchild saying “tomato” or “Flugzeug” (aeroplane) for the 15th time will make up for the sheer joy of witnessing someone grow and develop in front of your eyes. Nor will it replace the comfort of a hug and cuddle. It is a feeling we all know too well in these post-Covid times.
Saying goodbye is hard for all of us, even though we, unlike Fionn, know it’s not for ever. We’ll see each other in a few months, for Christmas and for Fionn’s second birthday. And when the celebrations are over, the Christmas decorations taken down and our bags packed, we’ll have to go through another tearful goodbye.
Maybe, by then, Fionn will have learned how to say “See you soon” in both languages.
Mary Teresa Böhm (formerly Madders) is originally from Waterford. Her husband, Linus, is from Stuttgart, in Germany, where they lived for five years before moving to Manhattan. They now live in Brooklyn with Fionn. Formerly a teacher in Germany, Böhm speaks French and German, has a BA in English and French from University College Cork, and has an MA in English from Queen’s University Belfast
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