Can one have a genetic memory? I mean on a cellular level, am I Irish? That's one of the questions Pete McCarthy poses in his plunge of a book, McCarthy's Bar. I read it cover-to-cover, couldn't put it down, the cats went hungry and the beds unmade. It's that good. So I say to myself, I have to know more about this funny fellow. To google I go. And I am too late.
Pete McCarthy died five years ago at the age of 52. To read more on this talented, loving man, click here.
Some years ago I said to my patient husband that I was Scotch as well as Irish and maybe a little Viking thrown in. And he said it didn't matter that the Irish genes were the heavy weights; that I was Irish. Growing up in neighborhood full of Kelly's and Kiely's and Kilkers, I'd hear lovely lilting voices commenting on the first generation kids..."Oi now, didn't she scalp the angels on the way down!" Or, "Now doesn't he have the map of Oirland on his face?" And the one that sent me running home in tears from Mrs. Hogan's kindergarten..."Why look at little Annie, she's as Irish as Paddy's Pig!"
To be Irish is to be in on the secret: The world's a wonder, full of mystery and magic. Life embraces you if you travel McCarthy's way, with more hope than itinerary.
And yes, Mr. McCarthy, it does seem that these days everyone wants to be Irish. A friend and poet, Juliet Clancy, and I were in a writer's group. A new woman arrived an hour and half late, but in time to hear a tale from another new member, an Asian woman. Speaking in her thickly accented English, she said she knew this incarnation was not correct, that she should have been born a Celt. Juliet, raised in Dublin, lifted an eyebrow in my direction. I was biting my lip to keep from laughing in the woman's earnest face.
But then the woman newly arrived blurted that she had just returned from the West of Ireland and intended to change her name. "What?" I asked. She said her first name was Connie and she was changing her last name to Mara, so she'd be called Connemara.
"Really?" I queried. "Oh, yes indeed," she replied as serious as the grave.
Juliet and I exploded with laughter, rude, yes. But unavoidably, Irish!