Where would an old lane like this one pictured in Ireland take you? To stories told by genuine people I'm sure. When I visited Ireland a few years ago even though I was easily earmarked by the locals as a newcomer I still met genuine people everywhere I went.
On the first morning my brother and sister and I stopped for a break at a great coffee shop and we met a local couple. We told them our story, about how we were there because our mother had always wanted to go to Ireland but had never made it, so we were going for her. We told them how our family had left Ireland in 1850 due to the potato famine and arrived in New York city. We were hoping to maybe one day find some of our relatives from Ireland.
The woman reassured us by saying, "Augh… don't you worry now, by our standards talking about the year 1850 is just like talking about last weekend." She was so kind to make us feel so at home there, even though our family hadn't been back since 1850. I looked in the phone book in Dublin and found pages and pages of Halpins, our great great grandfather's name.
We had many similar moments of feeling like we were really home during our three weeks there. We heard an elderly man at a local ceilidh sing a very sad song acapella, about his true love that he'd had to leave at the chapel gates for, "he'd gone to Amerikay." That brought tears to my eyes, as I realized he was singing about a person from a family like mine, one who'd had to move away, emigrate, for whatever reason. For many of the Irish it was to leave the potato famine, for others who emigrate it is to leave persecution or war behind them.
I learned something on that trip, a deep connection to many of the deepest feelings I gleaned from my childhood. The countless dinners with potatoes, the countless St. Paddy Day celebrations, the marvel of a visit from a family friend who still spoke Gaelic, the countless masses, the gleaming white double damask Irish linen table cloths only used at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas dinner, the family stories from Flatbush, Brooklyn. What I really felt after that trip to Ireland was that I was born in the USA, I live in Canada, but my home is in Ireland.
Where do you call home? I hope that when you think of your home, it brings you some good, heart warming memories.
Thanks for share.
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