“Family—that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our innermost hearts, ever quite wish to.” (-Dodie Smith)

Top o’ the mornin’ to ye’!

Sure 'n it's St Patrick’s Day,...

...and today, I’m remembering my Scotch-Irish grandparents and my mom. St. Patrick's Day is one of those days that make me think of family and my ancestors and what they mean to me.

My grandmother always used to tell me, “Never forget your British Heritage.”

Some years ago, I sat in an amphitheatre outdoors at a local college, on a beautiful spring day, and met the wonderful poet, Seamus Heaney. I heard him reciting this poem that describes his father and grandfather. He recognized the enormity of their influence on his own life, and wrote about them often in his beautiful poems:

Digging

(-Seamus Heaney)

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

(Susan and Edward, my grandparents)

Happy St Paddy’s Day to you all!