Author Description

Choosing Ireland I’m a typical American-British mutt. With my DNA, I could easily choose any home country to call my motherland: England, Wales, Ireland. I could probably scare up a Scottish ancestor if I needed to. My name is Welsh; my mother’s family, English. I felt free to choose. But there was never any choice for me. It was always Ireland. I wasn’t raised Irish-American – far from it. I grew up in the American South, Virginia to be specific, and I didn’t go to a Saint Patrick’s Day parade until I was an adult. As children, we were told that our great-grandmother was Irish, perhaps from around Cork, or maybe that was what her papers said because she came to America on a ship from Cork. Turns out, she was actually born in the great Irish city of Philadelphia. She lies there still in the cathedral cemetery, with her mother’s people, the O’Connors, although in fact she was a Connolly. Lots of sad, Irish stories about my great-grandmother. But she died long before I was born and never factored in my decision. No, if I chose Ireland as a second, spiritual home, it was probably because of my great uncle Frank O’Brien, who, despite his name, really wasn’t all that Irish – he was raised in Virginia, too, although his father did work on the railroad – typical Irish-American occupation. Frank technically wasn’t even blood; he was my great aunt’s husband, but he was a grandfather to my brother and me. More importantly, he was a tenor, and he and my grandmother taught me all the Irish songs before I was old enough to even remember. These poems, written over a span of time, are my tribute to the Ireland I love so much.