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Illustration by Drew Shannon
What does it mean to be Irish? It was a question I’d never asked myself before. It had always just been something I was told I was. Something I was born into. Like a trust fund, but instead of piles of money it’s mashed potatoes with cabbage and bacon.
I had just let my temper get the better of me, and apologized to my wife noting “it’s the Irish in me” as an excuse. She wasn’t buying it. And it occurred to me that, at 30, I was entering an identity crisis.
I immediately subscribed to a popular ancestry website. Yes, I paid the price that initially alarmed you when you looked at it. But money was no issue when it came to my self-worth.
I began compiling a database of names, dates and places. Roots became branches, branches became limbs, limbs began reaching back centuries and centuries in time, slowly unveiling how I came to be.
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Online research took me to County Antrim in Northern Ireland, where both sides of my family trace back. From government records to handwritten journal entries, every artifact I found told a new story – like a bloodstained will recovered from my great uncle’s corpse at the Battle of the Somme, a newspaper tribute to our family’s prized laying hen, and quill and ink love letters my great-great-grandparents exchanged in the 1800s.
The broken-down, black and white photos revealed a Frankenstein-esque collection of my own genetics. I saw my dad’s squinty eyes, my grandpa’s wild brows and my mom’s button nose, only on faces who had died generations before them.
With words and images combined, these people were no longer mythological “ancestors.” They were real. They were resurrected. They were family. The connection we formed created something supernatural, continuously pushing my curiosity further.
Specifically – 5,891 kilometres further.
When my wife and I arrived in Belfast, we were met by my cousin, Valerie, and her husband, Andy. We’d only interacted through e-mail. But as soon as she waved us down in the train station, the air cleared and we naturally felt comfortable with each other. Just as families do.
“I used tee deliver floors” Andy said, as he was driving us around town.
“Oh yeah, floors. Like tiles and laminate and everything?” I answered.
“No, son. Not floors – floooors.”
Silence overtook the vehicle.
“Flow-urs.” He clarified.
“Ah, flowers! Right. Right.”
Andy and Valerie toured us around the city and its outskirts, showing us the houses my descendants lived in and the mill where they worked. We stood in the century-old churches where they wed then cleared cobwebs off an old fountain, dedicated to my great-great grandfather along the North Channel.
We left the Belfast area and drove through the hills of the countryside, where we pulled up to a small, red-brick bungalow. Among other smiling relatives we met a Scottish terrier named Alfie and the matriarch of my Northern Irish family – Ruth.
We were led into the house where we crowded together in a small living room. With one step over the threshold it became clear to me that borders do not define what a grandmother’s living room looks like. All are the same. Thermostat too high, couches too comfy, pictures of grandchildren too outdated.
I plopped my broad frame on the small, blush pink chesterfield beside Ruth, pushing her cardigan-cladded body against the armrest. In her melodic accent, she began telling me all about my relatives, both those who left to come to Canada and the ones that stayed behind. What clothes they wore, what they planted in their gardens, what they cooked for Sunday roast.
Minutes melted into hours as we visited over tea and biscuits. When I reluctantly got up to leave, I turned to face Ruth. She brushed my rosy cheeks, said I had her grandfather’s eyes and gave me a hug. After months of research, years of identity fraud and days of travel, she left me with the final piece of my puzzle.
“Welcome home,” she said.
Now, being Irish meant more than green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. Being Irish was a stew, made up of all the stories and crooked smiles of the people who came before me. The blood, the hardships the quill and ink. The ones on their own mission of self-worth – that eventually turned both them and me, into Canadians.
Zac Easton lives in Minnedosa, Man.
