When I got on the No. 4 bus, near its starting point in Monkstown, it was empty and I could take my favourite seat, upstairs in the top right corner. That’s where you used to be able to look down through the window at the driver’s head below, but it’s now simply the best spot for a panoramic view over Dublin Bay as the bus trundles into town.

At the stop in Booterstown I saw some women with children and strollers and bags prepare to get on. They looked a little stunned, as if they weren’t yet used to the routine of boarding a Dublin bus, beeping their Leap cards, folding up the stroller, finding seats. They split in two and one mother came upstairs with two identical little girls, squeezing into a couple of seats down on the left side. They spoke quietly, in a language I recognised to be not quite Russian, the girls sounding a bit disgruntled. Without thinking, I turned around, stood up and nodded towards my choice seat at the front. The mother – who looked no older than 25 – smiled at me and nudged the squirming girls out of their seats and over to the front, while I went to sit further down the bus.

Sure enough, within a minute of settling into their new spot, I could hear their little voices brighten as they started to take in the city unfolding before them – the trees brushing against the windows, cyclists weaving around cars and trucks, people walking. Around Ballsbridge another No. 4 bus headed towards us and the excitement mounted: “babu babu” I heard – could that be Ukrainian for bus? The number four? The colour yellow? I’ll have to look it up sometime.

As much as the twin girls chattered and exclaimed – as only five year olds do best – their mother stayed quiet and barely moved her head. In the space given her, where her children could be distracted by the world, her thoughts must have aired themselves, her mind set free to loosen its worries.

And as much as her hair was straight and black, her daughters had heads of blonde under their matching glittery grey caps: hair they surely inherited from their father. Wherever their father was, just at that moment, I didn’t want to begin to imagine.

I too have been a mother with children on a bus in an unfamiliar country, in a new home that I was now meant to call home and live my life. I know the sense of dread that I might put the stroller in the wrong place, get off at the wrong stop, misunderstand and be embarrassed if someone speaks to me in a language I don’t yet speak.

14 years ago we moved to Oslo with my husband’s job and our second daughter was born there. Four days after she was born, we had to take the tram to the hospital for a checkup. Even before we left our cocoon of an apartment, I knew we’d be late and could miss our appointment. The February snow was heavy and seemed to blow straight in our eyes more than usual. The tram, when we stomped on board, was packed. I felt exhausted and weighed down by this new little creature I had strapped to my chest. There was no seat free, and not one person noticed me and offered me one. Heads were bent into phones, collars were up and hats were half pulled over faces. I held onto a pole, my legs weak and hot within my heavy coat.

My head started to swim with a feeling of being out of place, not wanted, not helped. I was too shy to ask for a seat or even stare anyone out of one. As some students got off, I fell into a seat. And I started to cry.

I’ll never forget that intense sadness and feeling of displacement, and it’s a chord deep inside me that was struck anew while I sat on that No. 4 bus last week as it made its way through the Spring-green avenues of south Dublin city.

My experience can barely begin to compare with the situation of the black-haired woman and her twins sitting ahead of me. Wasn’t I living in a country I had chosen to move to from another peaceful country, my husband was with me, we both had jobs and an apartment. I had a choice about being there. And freedom.

But it served as the barest frame of reference, to offer me some imagination to grasp what might be going on in the head, and heart, of this young mother, of all the mothers sitting on buses and Luases, pushing strollers to volunteer centres, cashing in Dunnes vouchers, settling babies down in stuffy hotel rooms, in Dublin, Waterford, Berlin, Warsaw, Tbilisi.

And I hope that my tiny action, of sharing my favourite seat might help for 20 minutes even one other mum, and two beautiful little girls. Girls who, I think, will surely be speaking Dublin English within the year.

At Merrion Square, as they made their way down the stairs, clutching hands as the bus swayed, I looked out the window. Even if the young mother were to look at me, I didn’t need to know.

“Ya eejit!”. So says my eight-year old to anyone she can, whenever she can, since she heard it at the Rapunzel pantomime last week at the Gaiety. This was our first ever family trip to the panto and our knowledge of Irish culture has now shifted up a notch. I’m a Dubliner and I’m sure I went a few times as a child, as you did. But my husband’s non Irish and our two kids have only lived abroad – until this summer, when we moved to Dublin to give it a go, and although we’ve usually come for Christmas we’ve never had time to do the panto before.

About five minutes in, a throwaway remark from the blue-eye-shadowed King allows me, and the rest of the crowd, to let loose with our first “oh no he’s not”. “Shhh”, says my youngest, and on my other side, her father gives me a look. “You’re supposed to do that”, I tell them

Within five minutes they’re at it too, and soon the girls’ faces are glowing some more, fitting in with all the other expectant faces around the balconies and stalls, going with the flow, the silliness and shouting “boo!” to the witch and “oh yes they are!” and by the end of the two-plus hours they’re happily singing and dancing (as do all the mums and dads).

“Is that a man?” they ask about the fabulous, wig-and-multiple-skirts-wearing leading dame, Ninny Nanny Noonah, having no idea that this same actor, Joe Conlon, has been playing more or less the same role, with just different lines, for the last 28 years. During the course of this “drama” involving metres of hair, air-guitar-playing heroes, dopey country fellas, a drunken pub scene and farting rabbits, I have to translate a few Dublin expressions that are new to my family: “have some grub”, “like a Fair City kidnap plot” and “Scarleh I was”.

High up in the second balcony (indeed, last minute tickets) we get a top-down view over the satisfied audience, of the terrific band working hard in the pit, the dancers waiting in the wings, and a head-on view of the family of eight in the balcony across the way who are all wearing Santa hats and jumpers, sharing with them the relief of not sitting in the front rows where you get sprayed by water and have your hairstyle publicly insulted.

During the interval I encourage the kids to explore the nooks and crannies of this beloved old theatre, to peek over the other balconies, look at the old programmes up and down those dark wooden staircases, buy something from the bar beside the glittering Christmas tree. “Sure you might as well get the big popcorn”, says the nice woman behind the bar, telling them to enjoy their first panto. She tells me she has four kids of her own, in their teens and twenties. One of them has a little boy, just 10 months old: “he’s so gorgeous, he just doesn’t know how much joy he brings into our lives”.

As for my husband (who’ll go to see a Shakespeare play at the drop of a hat) he was dead impressed by the Gaiety and his first panto: all that singing and dancing and embarrassment and joking that says nothing more complicated than “we will entertain you”. And that’s what all those hard-working people up on the stage of gaiety did for us.

Our eldest girl is so impressed that she wants to go around the back to the stage door off Grafton Street and try to meet some of the actors. We join one other family huddling in the alley and after about ten minutes she gets to greet the two younger stars, Ciara Lyons and Johnny Ward; I don’t think we’d recognise the older stalwarts out of makeup and costumes. We’re not really sure how famous they are but they were great, and they autograph our programme and give words of encouragement for her own now-bolstered dreams of the stage.

Next to the alley entrance there is a street soup-kitchen, popped up in place for the night once the shops were closed. Needy customers loiter and chat, and the volunteers, dressed in yellow vests, do their darndest to make their evening a bit better. One volunteer comes over to our girls as they’re waiting at the stage door – would they like a hot chocolate? They decline politely, they know who the hot drinks are meant to be for. The woman insists: “they have marshmallows in them”. In their party dresses they are actually freezing so they gratefully accept, and in the two minutes it takes for her to come back with the steaming milky cups, they’ve grown up a bit more. A surprised volunteer takes the few bob I offer him, and we feel very lucky to head off to our warm bus and our warm home, having learnt a bit more about the realities of a Dublin Christmas.

This story was published in the Irish Times on December 26th.