I wonder if they have fireflies in Ireland.  

Supper’s long finished, and I’ve slipped out to the screen porch to catch a glimpse of the display.  From the kitchen sink Bob bemoans that the Kyrgyz exchange students who flew back home two days’ prior missed the show.  Erin Lavigne is missing it, too.

Erin’s husband, Matt, was my brother’s best friend growing up.  For the first few years of our lives, we even lived next door to each other.  The sheer number of hours we spent together as children empowered us to over-rule biology and proclaim each other siblings.  That makes Erin my sister-in-law.  That makes their two children, Evie and Tick, Saoirse and Ula’s closest cousins.  

Erin and Matt Lavigne are both tech people by trade.  When I try to figure out what, exactly, they do, I can only surmise that Matt is a systems architect; and Erin is in administration and creates new technology.  They’ve lived here and commuted into Albany for their jobs for the past decade.   Every local business owner knows them on a first-name basis, because each Saturday they drive a route, visiting all of us, using their corporate paychecks to support every local business they value.

For some, like us, they went even farther.  They believed in Sap Bush Cafe so strongly, Erin gave up her weekends to come help me get it underway.  I had never worked in a restaurant before, much less managed one. With her height, stature and personnel management experience, Erin saw what I didn’t see.  She managed all of us; helped us focus, learn to do our jobs, then learn to do them better.  

And then, when the inevitable family and business dramas unfolded, she and Matt would take turns scooping us up, taking us out for lunch, or pouring us a drink, or just insisting we go out for a drive.  In turn, our house became Evie and Tick’s landing pad; the quirky place where the adults and kids enjoyed employing the dinner table as a drum, performance arena, craft center, or stadium for screaming contests.

It was a few weeks before Christmas when Erin broke the news that she’d be starting a new job in Ireland after the first of the year.  Once the school year finished, Matt and the kids would follow.  She popped her head back into the kitchen and administered the information surgically —  quickly and directly —  as though that would minimize the pain.    

Sociologists talk about the rural brain drain as observed from the outside:  a sterile intellectual and economic phenomenon, barely perceptible except for the slow decline that results in the population of the schools, the tax base, the civic engagement, the local commerce.    From the inside, it hurts like hell.  

I didn’t know the phenomenon had a name when I was a kid.  I just remember listening to well-meaning teachers* helping our community shoot itself in the foot:  urging us to talk to military recruiters, to go to college as far away as possible. It was a simple formula we were taught:  The greater the distance, the greater the opportunities for success.  We lived at ground zero for life failure.   I remember one teacher spelling it out plainly to his class:  If you’re going to make something of yourself, the closest opportunities are at least an hour from here.  The better ones are even farther.  After the bell rang, I remember walking down the central staircase of my high school, staring out at a sea of kids, seeing the green trees beyond the windows and recognizing for the first time that my drive to make a mark on the world might necessitate leaving my world behind.  

In college, learning the phenomenon had a name was my first chance to fight it.  Bob and I have dedicated our lives to doing just that.

But that night after Erin broke her news to me, we closed the cafe and I came home to sit in front of the fire. I didn’t have the strength to fight it just then.  I could only mourn, trying to wrap my head around the coming absence.  From upstairs, I heard only sniffles from Saoirse and Ula.  It would be simpler if the pain was just the loss of Matt and Erin and their kids.  But it’s not.  Our tears are for the losses that we’ve endured already.  This isn’t the first time we’ve been through this, losing our friends and family to greater opportunity.  It won’t be the last.

Brain drain isn’t just a slow leak of intellectual capital and economic resources.  It’s a searing pain:  One minute there are people in your life who you talk to, think about, call on for help and advice, celebrate birthdays with, share inside jokes with.  These are the people standing at the back of the funeral parlor, here for you, watching as you say goodbye to your family members, waiting to hold you up as you walk away from the coffin.  They are the people who love you even when you fail, whose shared history with you is so thick, it forms a blanket of identity with far more texture than simply occupations, titles or business associations.  And then —

**poof**

They’re gone.  They’re someplace else, building new relationships, finding new friends, making new history.  And here, in our little corner of rural America, there’s a gaping hole that gets harder and harder to patch.  

This is Matt and Tick’s last weekend here in Schoharie County.  Their house is all packed up, and they will be staying in our spare room in the final days before their flight.  Evie will stay at our house for a few more weeks so that she can attend summer camp here in West Fulton.  Then Erin will come home one last time and take her to her new home.  I’m pretty sure from the dates on the calendar that she’ll miss the fireflies.  We’ll make sure Matt and Evie and Tick don’t.  

Erin promises me they’ll come back.  She offers open tickets to Saoirse and Ula to come to Ireland.  She and Matt know how painful this is for our family.  It hurts for them, too.  They were part of the fabric of this place.  Now, they have to start all over again.

Saoirse, Ula and Bob join me on the porch.  We watch from behind the screens, then one by one migrate out into the yard, sitting down together on the stoop so we can see the moon come up.  We listen to the gulp of the bullfrogs, the chirring of the toads, and we let ourselves be transfixed by those fireflies.  My daughters repeatedly see people drift away in search of better opportunity, while we try to teach them that the best opportunity is here, right beside the fireflies and bullfrogs.  For all our lack of income by national standards, we’re phenomenally rich — We have land, community, businesses, abundant food, education and good family.  We’re trying our best to build the opportunity right here;  to make our hometown so vibrant and beautiful, that the Lavignes will want to keep coming back to visit.  And maybe, one of these times when they come back, they’ll be able to stay. 

*Not all, Jeanne Zachos & John Boyer!!