Photography by Peggy MacHale.

Back in foggy January, I decided I was going to be an au pair this summer. And, after too many hours labouring over a bilingual, hyperbolic, and regrettably sycophantic account of my will to care for children, followed by months of whatsapping back and forth with a couple of potential families, I did it. In fact, I am writing this from the beagle-hair-covered sofa of a minimally-decorated, pinewood sitting room in number 7, the middle of nowhere, Bavaria. 

I spend a lot of time dreaming up plans and never following through. I thought that my living in Germany for summer was about as likely to exist outside of my thoughts as my intentions to make a portfolio and go to art school. But somehow this one stuck, and after agreeing to the paltry amount of €280 a month and spending hundreds on flights (luggage), I flew to Munich airport and began my “Summer of a Lifetime”, like hundreds, if not thousands of other Irish students do every year at a variety of exchanges, unpaid summer jobs and camps.

Au pairing has been life-changing. I’ve overcome a lifelong fear that I’m inadequate for motherhood. I’ve become a wake up at 6 and feed the chickens kind of person and I’ve confirmed that nothing in this world makes me smile like seeing my mum’s face—even if it’s only hazily transmitted through video chat. 

But alongside what I’ve gained is the gaping and unquantifiable loss of the me that I know and the summer she could have had. It turns out that living with a family, eating breakfast with them, and attending their school graduations, it doesn’t make you a family member. You are there to learn a language, experience a culture, run away from home, and they have taken you in to lighten their load and give their kids a bit of culture—without having to pay someone a proper wage or fork out cash for holidays abroad. 

I know it could be different if I was more gregarious, was more proficient with the Bavarian dialect, if I insisted on getting my day off every week or maybe even just if circumstances allowed me to stay longer than two short months. But it isn’t different, and from the point of view of my last day here, what I have learned is shadowed by a growing unfamiliarity with myself and who I am when I am not in my familiar Barry’s tea-coloured waters. 

My days have had no free time for me to put on my usual eyeliner and brow gel, and my room has no mirror to remind me why I feel the need to. And whenever my hair is freshly washed it is quickly ruined by an eight-year-old asking if I want to go for a swim.

All of my possessions seem to look more worn—some beyond repair thanks to the family dog— and with every sock browned by running after the kids into the garden and every pair of sliders shrivelled to nothing by the sun, it just got harder and harder that I had no one around to talk to properly— who I could vent to, or cry to, or explain things I haven’t quite worked out to. 

In Flann O’Brien’s ‘At Swim Two Birds’, the protagonist lists the contents of his bedroom— a list of things that he “deemed essential for existence.” As the life I created back home began to bare no correlation to the one I find myself in now, I realised that there is nothing on this earth that can be taken from me other than food and water (although that’s different here too) and a roof over my head (also different) that will stop me from living. And while showing me that nothing is essential, it also showed me that taking me or any young hopeful embarking on the summer of a lifetime, from the life we are used to, the people we love, the free time where we rest, and the rituals we have accumulated, that does stop us from being ourselves.

 

Of course, this may not be a bad thing. Lose yourself to find yourself, or something along those lines. But the exploitative nature of many soul-searching, CV-filling summer adventures that come with the abandoning of all things you, is a lot for someone to take on, and then to be expected to come back in September with anecdotes, a tan, and a perfected skill, but otherwise pretty much the same as before, well that’s impossible. 

As I’ve tried to say before, I’m very grateful for my summer abroad this year. I think I’ve gotten my freckle-y glow and my language skills are honed. I’m proud of myself in a million ways. And don’t get me wrong I am very fond of the family I spent it with. It’s just that raving and sharing anecdotes feels unnatural after it all. 

Whether it was my fault or not, it makes you quiet down: whole days where practically no speech is directed at you outside of requests to help, and bored children shrieking your name. You may be running around but your mind is still. 

Finding yourself asking the same questions all the time, to be met with the same answers. Because when you don’t know a child but are responsible for them, what else is there to say other than ‘are you hungry?’. What can you do when your proficiency in a language doesn’t allow you to express yourself and have proper conversations, but the lack of proper flowing conversation is what’s holding back your language learning the most. 

Learning to live in a way where you voice almost nothing that you think of. Where conversations never seem to leave your head. Where words build up like a tension headache behind your eyes and you have nowhere to squeeze them out. And they press and press until they seem to dissipate. And after a couple of weeks your thoughts have now rerouted and as they appear, learned to hover somewhere vague and unapproachable until they disappear just like your will to express yourself. 

But it’s only temporary, I think, so yes, take that internship, go work in that camp, be that au pair, because I’m hopeful that a summer of silence leads to a winter of words.