Growing
Up Irish
“If
you're Irish, it doesn't matter where you go—you'll find family.”
Victoria
Smurfit
As
a child growing up in the North Carolina mountains, I was immersed in
Irish culture. My father's family immigrated to America during the
potato famine of the late 1840's and settled in the place that looked
most like home. They were story-tellers, hell-raisers and people of
great love and passion. The great aunts taught in a one-room school,
nurtured, gardened and cooked the best food in the civilized world.
My grandmother could ring the head off a chicken without the
slightest hesitation, then cook it up so tasty it would make you cry.
I remember her chicken and dumplings as sublime ambrosia.
The
mountain culture included fiddle music, hoedowns and country dances—and
taught them in school. We learned reels and square dances and if you
couldn't buck dance, there was simply something wrong with you. What
the transplanted Irish lacked in money, they made up for with the
sheer joy of living. And of course, their quintessential love of
tragedy wove a colorful tapestry. No one can cry about people they've
never met like the Irish. If my mother didn't have a good, juicy
tragedy of her own to tell, which she usually did, she'd dig one out
of the newspaper. She'd report ten car pile-ups on the highway like she'd been right in the middle of the whole deadly thing.
She'd say about a friend, “You know, she's had a very tragic
life...” as though that was the woman's greatest accomplishment.
On
St. Patrick's day, everyone is a little bit Irish. Go out there today
and embrace it; laugh, cry, tell tales, and above all, kick up your
heels!
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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