Knowing

I chose to see 'Brooklyn' alone. I sensed that I would have a visceral reaction to the story shown through film and indeed I did. From the moment that Eilis waved goodbye to her mother and sister on the ship bound for New York I was already quite emotionally involved. I'd read the book some time ago so I knew what was coming, but I never would have believed that the story could have been so well portrayed on the screen. 'Characters', I said to myself silently several times, 'it's characters that we remember' and Eilis is quite unforgettable.

It's a simple enough story. Eilis lives in a small town in southeast Ireland where she works in a local  corner shop for a nasty, unfeeling woman. There is no opportunity for her to better herself in the bleak Irish economy of the early 1950s and thus her beloved sister Rose arranges for her to go to live in New York - Brooklyn to be precise - with the aid of the Catholic Church. She is homesick and sad but the priest arranges for her to go to night school, Brooklyn College, where she learns bookkeeping on the path to becoming an accountant one day. She meets Tony, an Italian who happens to like Irish girls and they begin to date. Life is sweet, but she is drawn back to Ireland and ends up in a situation where she must choose a life in Ireland or to return to Tony in Brooklyn. I won't say any more because you really must see this film for yourselves.

Eilis is good, down to her bones. She's smart and self contained. She looks after herself and she does what she must. She works hard, causes no-one any trouble. She grows to loves Tony but she's not effusive in her expression of that love. It's simply not her way, not her style. He loves her, gets her. 'Don't go quiet on me,' he says to her a few times in the story because it can be so hard to read her. Saoirse Ronan plays Eilis, the story book character, exquisitely.

But, when Eilis returns to Ireland for a month or so, because she must, she is confronted with a new situation. She looks different, more sophisticated. She is asked to work at the company where Rose worked. She has a job where people respect her. She is introduced to a kind and well mannered Irish man with means. She doesn't feel closeted and stifled there, as her friends might think she would after her life in America. Rather she sees the Irish town life as gentle now; the long stretch of barren beach beautiful. 'If only it was like this before...' she says, to herself really. We do wonder what Eilis will do, how she can make a decision that seems so impossible to make.

It is not until she is confronted with the bad behaviour of Miss Kelly, her past employer at the shop (and I so wish I could talk about it in detail but please do go see the film) that she makes her decision. She's angry, yes. Certainly, her emotions are involved. But, it's more than that. Her terribly difficult decision is made in this moment when she is accused by the old busy body, this very moment of entrapment. Her sensibilities refuse to take this lying down. Her understanding of herself, of her future, of the fitness of things and what she must now do immediately overtake her heart, her soul and her mind. What seemed foggy a few minutes before is now crystal clear.

The gorgeous thing about this movie is that we know, through a previous scene, that we can be highly optimistic that Eilis will go on to have a spectacularly happy life, full of light and love; a husband, children; a career, if she wants that. In the final frame of the movie, I sobbed; put my hand over my face and let the tears fall. It was the exactly correct moment to end the movie. My son and I talk of this all the time, the exactly correct moment to end a story and the film makers nailed it.

Long ago, my husband and I went to live in America. Newly married, we travelled first to England and stayed with relatives on a strawberry farm in Scotland and other relatives on a dairy farm not far out of London. We visited with an elderly distant relative in Wales and brought him a bottle of Scotch. It was a lovely, gentle few weeks.

And then we landed at JFK Airport and took a Connecticut Limousine (it's a bus) to a Howard Johnson's motel where the company had made a reservation for us until we found a home. The journey there filled us with horror; burned out cars on the freeway; people dismantling abandoned cars in front of our eyes. It was the early 80s for those who can remember that it was not an easy time to be living on the East Coast.  We'd never seen anything quite like it and whilst my husband was at work I ventured not very far into the town of Darien, not at all sure where it was safe to go or not go. It all felt very alien.

Of course, as time went by we became acclimated to our new home, but after about nine months or so I wanted to go home, back to Australia for a month or so and visit with my family. It was that period of time when I couldn't really say where was 'home' in my mind. On the return trip back to the United States I rang my husband in California and said not to worry about me, that the arrival time was very, very late and I'd catch one of those Connecticut Limousines home. We agreed I'd do that.

It's a long flight from Australia to New York and by the time we reached JFK I was very tired. I walked off the plane and through the process of customs and immigration in something of a daze; looked out into the sea of faces waiting to reunite with loved ones thinking my own thoughts. Here I was again in this noisy, alien place, chocked full of people, feeling somewhat out of place. I looked up, and there in the distance I could see my husband waiting for me.

It was a huge surprise. He looked rather small in that big crowd, about as vulnerable in the waiting to be reunited with me as I felt waiting to be reunited with him. I felt an enormous wave of love rush over me; an understanding that comes deep within, from the soul and the heart, that this was home. Home was where he was, and if he was here, this was my home. It all fell into place in that moment as I rushed into his arms and held him tight. Home was in his arms, by his side, walking through life together.

Well, we did return to Australia about a year after that, and then we went back; back to America where he could pursue his dreams. We bought a house on a wing and a prayer. We didn't want to sell our Australian home (one of the best decisions we ever made) and we borrowed heaps to buy the lowest priced home sold in that Connecticut town for many years. In fact, before we left for Australia again we had to sell for a rather ordinary price, before the Connecticut prices escalated after 9/11, but it didn't matter too much that it wasn't the best investment we could have made, financially speaking.

Our little Cape Cod was done up to be a very comfortable home for our growing family and we all remember it with huge fondness. We lived in that town for nine years, a town that embraced us and allowed us to bring up our children in a beautiful setting; a town with a strong education system and respect for family  Deer majestically made their way through our garden and ate my tulips in the Spring and squirrels took any chance I gave them to bite through the netting, should I leave a window open when I went out, and make themselves at home in my kitchen. (Okay, the truth is I was known to shout at them, 'Get out of my home right now!') Truly, they were wonderful years.

I wonder from time to time why people make the decisions they make; what impulses drive them and what place emotions play in their decisions through life. Of course, people are driven my emotions. We can be happy, or sad, or mad, or glad, and all in the same hour. Our egos can drive us, or our humility can prevent us from making a bad decision.

More important than emotions however are what I call our sensibilities; the core of a person that prevents them from doing something that goes against what they believe to be right. From where do these sensibilities come? I can't say, but I'd refer you to a writer such as Shakespeare who understood the various 'characters' that make up this world, good men and flawed men. For me, I think it comes down to loyalty; to do that which is 'right' by those who deserve our loyalty, good will, honesty and impeccability. We can make all sorts of excuses for behaviour but deep down we know what is right; what is pure of heart. People like Maya Angelou speak of this instinct. We all have it. It is simply a matter of what we do with that knowledge.