My given name and surname would offer no indication that I am fully half of Irish descent.
My given name, in particular, was a source of great confusion to the nuns of my Catholic grammar and high school. I could almost guarantee that in going through any attendance list, Mother so and so would be rolling along with the children's names until she stopped abruptly at mine. an Arabic inspired first name and Greek last name. The first name was an adaptation from the title of a poem by Victor Hugo, about the "Djinns", who are often mischievous spirits in Arabian mythology. I usually did not admit to anyone that I could not be baptized under my first name because no saint ever bore it. These days however you will find the name all over the net, it having become somehow, somewhat, cool.
But I digress. I don't know much about the immigration of my grandparents from Ireland. I have heard that it was around 1912, although some members of grand-dad's side had come earlier, in the mid 1800s, helped to build some of New York's brownstones and then gone back to the old sod for a while. My grandfather, as I have written, died the year after I was born, about 70 years old, if that, but looking a great deal older, no doubt the result of hard life experience. Grandma lived about thirty years longer, dying only a few months after one of her daughters at too young an age, my mother.
I only remember my grandmother as old, white haired, clad in a perpetual house dress, speaking in a brogue accented English very little. Occasionally, she and my maiden aunt, my mother's eldest sister, would baby sit me. I went to their sparse one bedroom apartment in the building attached to my own. In a mind bending revelation only a few years ago, it turned out that my aunt actually did not have her residence in that apartment, but when she "visited" my grandmother, she would usurp the bedroom leaving Grandma to the convertible couch in the main room.
They hardly spoke to one another and whatever else I did not know, I knew they did not much like each other. There was never anything in the refrigerator, except maybe a carton of milk, some bread, and condiments. I found I really enjoyed mustard sandwiches, which I made while waiting for "Gunsmoke" to come on after the tedious (for a child) "Lawrence Welk" and his bubbles. I was grateful I did not have to be left with them often. They were kind enough, but cool.
I saw more of my grandmother when I went to Monticello in the summers to join my cousins. She stayed with her other daughter, Rita, and her family for those months. She'd putter about the grass in her bare bunioned feet. She seemed more relaxed in that atmosphere than in the Bronx, but again, the interaction was remote, except for the occasional moment when she would call us kids out for being a bit rowdy.
Funny, that these are the people with whom I spent my formative years, and I did not know them at all.
Some years ago, my maiden Aunt Kathleen sent me a photograph of Grandma when she was young.
There is something in her face that is determined. I recognize the family mouth, resolute.
I see a great deal of my mother in this younger picture, something I never did when each was older.
I know as little of my mother as I do of my grandmother. I asked one of my other aunts, Teri, to record her memories of their childhood and their relationships in an effort to learn about the interior life of my mother. Over two tapes, she recorded many events, but nothing that explained the individuals, in particular, my other who I knew as a child. I wonder sometimes if my mother had lived to her old age (she would be close to 90), whether she would have finally revealed the reasons for her sadness and dissatisfaction.
I have so little information that I cannot really even speculate about it, though, of course, I have tried.
Once upon a time there were four girls, the daughters of a lovely Irish lass. One of them was my mother.
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