Kiss Me, I'm Irish American or maybe I think too much about St. Patrick's Day

I used to have a conversation with a friend about how Americans identify themselves by the countries from which grandparents and great grandparents came. You’ve probably done it.  I do it all the time – saying I’m Irish, French Canadian, and Swedish (a typical Worcester blend).  I stopped doing it for a little while because it was pointed out that no other country speaks this way.  If you are from Ireland, you say you are Irish.  So, technically, I should say I am American. 

Maybe I’ve written something about this before. Probably.  It seems the sort of cynicism to which I was prone ten years ago.  I know my disdain for St. Patrick’s Day held that thought.

Now I’m older – maybe not wiser.  But, as I have also written, I’ve plunged into historical research of Irish American (and by association some others) immigrants in Central Mass.  I find the stories fascinating, especially the ones I’ve pieced together through my own ancestry.  I also hear the rhetoric blasted daily about how awful and terrifying immigrants are today and think… really?  Aren’t you going to wear green this weekend and drink beer… because you’re Irish?

I like to make that claim – even though it is only a quarter of my DNA.  I like to say it is the dominant gene pool.  I have reflected on that and wonder what those compounds passed through blood over 200 years have informed my being.  I look at old pictures and think the squareness of my jaw is a Conroy feature.  I wonder if both the Conroy and Brennan DNA drained the color from my hair.  We don’t have a lot of pictures of the Brennans – any really.  I’m not sure what features they possessed that dominated the French Canadians.  But maybe in there is a taste for alcohol and the melancholy that comes with it.  What about my love of poetry and telling a tale?  Or that childlike glee I feel every time the plane starts to take off to take me back to Ireland? Or the ache I feel when it starts to fade away beneath the clouds?  Is that what it means to be Irish?

It is more apt to say Irish American.  I guess.  Maybe that is what forgives the cheesy anachronisms and romanticizing of our mother country and heritage.  Why wearing green glitter and plastic qualifies as honoring a culture.  A day that is about a Welshman who drove the snakes (matriarchy and magic) from Ireland.  Maybe the cynicism is part of the DNA. 

I love our annual celebration.  I look forward to it and grieve the fact I allowed theater to interfere with it a few times over the last couple years.  St. Patrick’s Day in our family is on a par with Thanksgiving and Christmas, even as the Fourth and Easter have faded from regular celebration.  It is fun and full of good food, as the Brennan clan often produces.  I want to say that before I go ahead and indulge that cynicism.  I recognize that it is a day to celebrate and have good memories with family – even if I really don’t understand what wearing green shamrock glasses has to do with being Irish or understanding that heritage.

We aren’t the only people who will be doing that.  But I wonder how many people who wear green this weekend are the ones who spew xenophobia and share hateful speech and ignorant memes about people who weren’t born on American soil.  How many will swallow a gulp of good or bad beer and say “Kiss me, I’m Irish?”  Even though most of the things that are said about people crossing our borders now were said to some degree about the Irish a century or two ago?

The thing is, some of them deserved it.  Yes, there were Irish who were sent here by indenture.  Which means they were prisoners and coming here was a way to escape the gallows.  Some of those crimes were misdemeanors – or perhaps acts of desperation fueled by hunger or poverty.  Some of those crimes were acts against the British government.  Rebels.  Or freedom fighters.  Or terrorists.  Depends who tells the story.  There is a false narrative that likes to creep across the internet about Irish slavery.  But indenture was not equal to the slavery of Africans.  If you believe that, do a little more research than Facebook click bait.  Part of what makes them different is the fact the contract was finite.  And while there are certainly complications and cruelties to the terms of indenture contracts (eventually I’ll finish the novel where I write about that), there was an opportunity to buy land and build a new life here.  Indeed, there were several Irishmen who built plantations and became the oppressors that they once rebelled against. 

My research doesn’t really explore plantations, though.  The Irish came to Massachusetts by the thousands – which in the 19^th century is a massive exodus.  They came first as indentures (mostly the Ulster Protestants) and settled new towns, like the one I live in now.  But some did quite well in the growing city of Worcester, where a network of canals required their labor.  And then the canals gave way to the railroad.  So there was work and a way of life in the country that successfully kicked the British out (another thing to contemplate but not linger too long is the failed attempt of Ireland in the late 18^th century to overthrow the government as the American Colonies did.  British soldiers weren’t as distracted and that revolution failed miserably – making life in Ireland worse than before.  I have thought about how my ancestors were part of that revolution – not the one that started in the Commonwealth… but anyway, I digress from my point.).

Then the great migration began.  The famine.  It’s something that was always muttered about in history classes.  Maybe a sentence or two.  There are touristy stops in Ireland – if starvation is something you consider touristy.  But, the truth is, it was a horrible humanitarian crisis.  One that was preventable.  One that illustrates how cruel people are in every generation.  But, again, it depends on the lens through which we glance at these moments in time.  I remember looking up the James MacAvoy character in the film Becoming Jane – because that was a rather romantic movie.  Turns out in real life he was one of the bastards who did very little to help the dying hungry Irish.  I can’t watch that movie any more.

I have thought a bit about the famine in the last week.  Partly because I’ve been listening to a podcast about it.  But partly because I think of the irony of our gluttony in our St. Patrick’s Day celebration.  My ancestors came in the mid 19^th century.  I don’t know for sure if they came because of the famine – but the timing and their location in the west of Ireland leads to a reasonable conclusion that starvation was a motivating factor.  Does consuming multiple varieties of corned beef (when a cut of beef was an impossible luxury to a population living mostly on potatoes and buttermilk) say I understand the Irish in my blood?  Does green sugar on a cookie honor their empty stomachs and pain of watching a child go without? 

I do think it is interesting to note that the famine refugees were looked down upon by the Irish that were already here.  They didn’t always claim them as their kinsmen.  They were Catholic and uneducated… and dirty and diseased.  In Worcester they lived on the Island, where the canals ended.  There were gangs – gangs of the different generations of Irish.  Gangs that were violent and wreaked havoc on the city because of the classism even within that Hibernian culture.  In 1847, a group raided St. John’s Church and beat the priest because he showed sympathetic leanings to the wealthier Irish.  I suspect if I owned a business that behavior might prompt me to put out a sign that Irish need not apply.

My ancestors did well though.  The Conroys moved to the Brookfields and got jobs in the local factory that made boots for Civil War soldiers.  Timothy Brennan became an apothecary and had his own shop not far from the Island at the end of the 19^th century.  But he died young – around the age I am now.  He died from a kidney disease that may or may not have resulted from the consumption of too much pain medication.  His widow died less than a year later because of a swelling in her brain, leaving their son an orphan.  He was sent to live with a relative priest.  Who knows what happened there – but he isn’t talked about with much pride in our family, having fathered children outside the family and compelling my great grandmother to divorce him when divorce wasn’t an acceptable thing.

But they were part of the tight knit Irish American culture of Central Mass.  The pride of that community was impressive.  Especially as they cemented their roots and started to unite against the French Canadians… and later Swedes, who competed for the good manufacturing jobs in Worcester.  It’s almost funny to think there were Swedish gangs.  But there were.  And they didn’t mix well with the Irish.

Sometimes I think that is the tradition we carry on best.  Better than whatever meal is boiled or baked on March 17^th.  The one of disliking the other.  The one of deflecting the oppression of our forbears by perpetuating the suffering of the next one.

Is that because we actually do remember what the Irish did?  Infiltrating public offices – from police to fire to government?  They became a majority.  I mean even people who aren’t even remotely Irish are going to jump on that bandwagon this weekend.  Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day is so mainstream, every supermarket has displays of potatoes and cabbages in full view, while piping in a bodhran and penny whistle over the speakers.  What might all those ‘original’ Anglo Germanic Americans think of that?

On the other hand, I come back to my own family’s traditions.  And I think again of that tight knit Irish Catholic community that came together to have meals, go on day trips, and raise money for causes.  There is something to be said for that unity and camaraderie.  And that is a tradition I think my family continues  on this weekend every year.  Even as we spread apart, we remember our roots and come back to have a day to just enjoy the happiness of one another’s company and… yes, the sweetness of green dyed sugar.

But for me – obviously by the many paragraphs I’ve written – I will continue to use this as a day to remember the immigrants who came here and built a life and community into which I was born.  Being Irish American is part of my DNA, with all its ugly and sadness and triumph and joy.