Bernadette Walsh's Blog - Posts Tagged "irish-immigrants"
Message in a bottle -- or an email
I don't know about you, but I haven't been bitten by the genealogy bug. No 23 and Me tests for me. I know who I am. I know where I come from. As I told one particularly obnoxious office mate years ago who chastised me for not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day, I didn't need to. I was green on the inside.
Growing up, being Irish -- or rather Irish-American -- was not something I needed to celebrate once a year. It was something I simply was. And the seeds of that "Irishness" were sown by the songs my father blasted on his eight-track cassettes, my mother's stories of "home," the meals we ate on a Sunday and the afternoons spent in the VFW hall learning the jig and the reel. Some people feel conflicted about their ethnic background but thankfully I've never shared that particular affliction. I have more than one family member who has twisted themselves in knots distancing themselves from their immigrant roots. For those who dove head-first into the inevitable melting pot by wrapping themselves in a spouse's WASP armor thus leaving the Tricolour far behind, I feel only pity.
But how much do we owe to those that first climbed on those immigrant ships, hoping for a better life? A better life that sadly few of them ever saw. The more salient question for me is, how much do I want to know about those first in line?
A distant possible cousin of my father who is a genealogy buff reached out to us via email with details gleaned from public records. The bald facts of my great-grandparents' lives were beyond heartbreaking and stayed with me long after I closed this cousin's email. Premature deaths. Orphans handed out like unwanted kittens. Grinding poverty and prejudice. No Irish need apply. But from that morass of poverty and pain sprouted college educated professionals. Homeowners. Followers of the American dream, most of whom proudly don green on St. Patrick's Day. I suppose, in retrospect, the prior generations' sacrifices were worth it.
But how can I ever live up to the weight of their sacrifice? Prior to receiving the message in a bottle -- or rather email -- the names and faces of these forbears were not familiar to me. As I ate my mother's ham and cabbage and won a medal for a particularly lively jig, I certainly wasn't aware of those banished from their four green fields to live out their too short lives in a squalid Philadelphia tenement. But now that I know their stories and can look at their faces staring out from my computer screen, I owe them something, don't I? Even if its just a quick moment of silence now and then as I sit in my five bedroom colonial that they, in a sense, bought me with their years of sacrifice.
Like those that spilled their blood for our country, I believe on this Memorial Day I also need to honor those that brought me to the shores of what is still, in my opinion, the greatest country on earth.
Happy Memorial Day.
Growing up, being Irish -- or rather Irish-American -- was not something I needed to celebrate once a year. It was something I simply was. And the seeds of that "Irishness" were sown by the songs my father blasted on his eight-track cassettes, my mother's stories of "home," the meals we ate on a Sunday and the afternoons spent in the VFW hall learning the jig and the reel. Some people feel conflicted about their ethnic background but thankfully I've never shared that particular affliction. I have more than one family member who has twisted themselves in knots distancing themselves from their immigrant roots. For those who dove head-first into the inevitable melting pot by wrapping themselves in a spouse's WASP armor thus leaving the Tricolour far behind, I feel only pity.
But how much do we owe to those that first climbed on those immigrant ships, hoping for a better life? A better life that sadly few of them ever saw. The more salient question for me is, how much do I want to know about those first in line?
A distant possible cousin of my father who is a genealogy buff reached out to us via email with details gleaned from public records. The bald facts of my great-grandparents' lives were beyond heartbreaking and stayed with me long after I closed this cousin's email. Premature deaths. Orphans handed out like unwanted kittens. Grinding poverty and prejudice. No Irish need apply. But from that morass of poverty and pain sprouted college educated professionals. Homeowners. Followers of the American dream, most of whom proudly don green on St. Patrick's Day. I suppose, in retrospect, the prior generations' sacrifices were worth it.
But how can I ever live up to the weight of their sacrifice? Prior to receiving the message in a bottle -- or rather email -- the names and faces of these forbears were not familiar to me. As I ate my mother's ham and cabbage and won a medal for a particularly lively jig, I certainly wasn't aware of those banished from their four green fields to live out their too short lives in a squalid Philadelphia tenement. But now that I know their stories and can look at their faces staring out from my computer screen, I owe them something, don't I? Even if its just a quick moment of silence now and then as I sit in my five bedroom colonial that they, in a sense, bought me with their years of sacrifice.
Like those that spilled their blood for our country, I believe on this Memorial Day I also need to honor those that brought me to the shores of what is still, in my opinion, the greatest country on earth.
Happy Memorial Day.
