My eighth grade reunion...

...is this Sunday, and I'm not saying how many years it's been. (Forty.) It's in New Jersey (on the shore, no less) so I won't be in attendance. But it turns out that another member of my class has a book out, Jaywalking With the Irish, and I just started reading it. Actually, it was written by her husband, David Monagan, but it's about their family's reverse migration to Ireland. In the year 2000, Monagan and his wife Jamie, nee Donnelly, chucked their all-American life in Connecticut and moved with their three kids to Cork. Cool, huh?

Here's an excerpt:

Ireland had always promised a separate reality, a place where we could let down our guard and slide into the amble of conversation, both feeling like we somehow just fit. This conceit may have been no more than a holiday-steeped dream, but its sway held. We contemplated moving to certain seashore towns closer to home, but they seemed too similar to what we already had, promising more of the same dull earnestness and fastidiously programmed lives that we wanted to escape, if only for one more fling at youth or freedom before it was too late. One night in March we looked at each other and said let's finally do it; let's embrace one great adventure before the children grow any older and our next rendezvous with excitement will have to be postponed to our denture days.