The Irish in Her

When I was 24 and Mom was 51 we took a long trip together. We visited England, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy — "the tour." And of course,  Ireland.

"Everyone looks familiar here," Mom said as soon as we stepped off the ferry at Dun Laoghaire. And in fact they did. You could round up the pedestrians in a Dublin block, plop them down in the pews of St. Peters on Barr Street in Lexington, and you'd hardly know the difference. There would be more tweed and piety, worse teeth, but the dark hair would be the same, and the wide smiles.

"All of my people are Irish," Mom said, proudly. She meant the Longs and the Scotts and the Donnellys and the Concannons. But she came to realize through the years that their union would compound the immigrant's distrust and fear. Turns out, her family would not quite survive its Irishness. Now there's only one Concannon girl left, my aunt of 94. She and Mom barely spoke at the end.

Mom would have been 92 this February 1. I don't have her Irishness, but I miss it — and her — especially today.