Felicity Hayes-McCoy’s memoir, The House on an Irish Hillside, contains such poetic chapter headings as this one, and “Enough is Plenty,” “Nothing is Unimportant,” “Dancing Through Darkness,” and “The Music of What Happens.” Each of these phrases resonate for me. For most of my life I’ve been fascinated in probing where I came from, having always felt my present reality to be a great mystery. I intentionally left what I knew as home, ran as far as possible within my limited means, and eventually delved deeply into historic roots trying to truly find a literal and metaphoric right place.
Hayes-McCoy explained the importance of identity in Ireland. “When people meet,” she wrote, “they try to place each other and they’re not happy till they find links that join their story to yours. They want to know where you come from. If they can, they’ll find they’re related to you. But they’ll settle for knowing you were born a couple of roads from their mother’s cousin, or that you use the same broadband provider, or your best friend owns a a caravan near a beach where they once caught a cold.” Some part of me continually longs for this kind of community and mourns the impossibility of being in touch with those who make up the web of my emotional life, flung far between states and countries. I like to believe in reincarnation in order to trust that one day my spirit will know a simpler, more rooted way of existence, somewhere beautiful and slow-moving.
My early dreams of being a gardener in Vermont making my living supplying restaurants or having one of my own disappeared into a reality where decades later I avoid cooking at all. Perhaps we are made up of opposite tendencies or are forced into extreme contrasts in order to continue to grow. Maybe some other incarnation of mine knew that country life. Certainly my many Irish ancestors did. This incarnation, however, began with a different set of conditions. Maybe it’s in order to keep the big game moving forward that different entities live out the evolving stages, bringing the lessons from each into the next one. I may garden now, but only as a hobby and without real time for it, though the yearning to work in the land remains from many generations and incarnations past.
The journey of researching ancestry and finding a bridge between Connecticut and Ireland was fascinating for me and, thankfully, for others in Connecticut, Ireland and Australia. Finding the identities of so many interrelated individuals and placing them in time and in other countries kept my brain firing on many levels for half a dozen years. In another time this quest would not have needed to stop. It might have been the role that I played in the community. Here, in America, however, it did have to end. A book is out, a show is up, but it’s the big next thing that others anticipate — the artwork expected to return that must make up for all the time I spent wandering elsewhere. Much hangs on the fact that it must also be good.
Tolkien believed that not all who wander are lost, and so do I. The wandering is the best part! I resist arriving, especially when that simply leads to the questions, so, where will you go now, what will you do? I’d like to be still. I’d like to write another book, the one I already have going on the back burner. I’d like to find a better way to bring these stories to light and keep expanding the web of connections. I don’t want to pack my Irish library away and store my boxes of notes and folders. I’m not ready for it all to be over. But I am ready for the music of what happens when time opens up this summer.
Something has ended and something else must begin. What to keep, to reference, to enlarge, to layer, how to arrange it in the present is all about choice. I am lucky to have that. The layers of where I come from have become clear. That I have these hands, this mind, and a certain range of skills has also been expanded. This feels a bit like graduating, having earned an invisible degree. Like my students I’ll venture out to discover what lies ahead, bringing all of my recent experience into the foundation. Perhaps when I leave Ireland after another visit this summer I will not cry. Maybe it now and will always also belong to me.
©2013 Janet Maher / Sinéad Ní Mheachair
All Rights Reserved
Janet, I have been reading your work for as long as I’ve been online and following all you do, albeit mostly silently of late. I could not let this pass without a comment, or rather sending you the biggest virtual hug.
This to me, is the most beautiful and heartfelt piece of all. I felt as if we were in the same room and you were telling me personally about your feelings and your hopes and dreams, baring your soul, one on one.
I don’t have to tell you it is well written, you wouldn’t post it if it wasn’t, but it is far more, evocative, revealing, poignant and wrapped in dreams yet to realise, yet having the satisfaction of belonging, of knowing your heart. God Bless and thank you.
Thank you, so much, Chris. You know I appreciate your thoughts always. My friend since childhood, Ellen, had been here from the opening of the show into the first part of my spring break, and we’ve had lots of conversations and quality time together. We have Ellen to thank, I imagine, for what you sense, and a bit of my sadness at her leaving. I hope some day you and I will be in the same place at the same time too, and for now am grateful for your virtual friendship! All good wishes to you in Australia.
You’re welcome, Janet… I have posted links in a few places and Google +
I just hope all who are loving this post do comment other than on the pages I have mentioned it on.
Thank you, Ellen, for sharing so much with my virtual friend which has inspired this post. One day, Janet, we will be in the same place at the same time, I’m sure of it.
Janet, this is a beautiful, interesting piece and I’m very touched that The House on an Irish Hillside was the spark that ignited it. Thanks for posting it on the book’s Facebook page and for including the short link to your blog, which I’m looking forward to exploring properly. I wish I could be in Baltimore to see your show. We have friends whose home there we visited years ago and who’ve visited us since then in Ireland. So we’re due a trip back across the Atlantic to see them again sometime but it won’t be this year, I suspect. Thanks again for alerting me to your post. I love it. Best wishes, Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Thank You, Felicity! I intend to come to Ireland sometime this summer or fall. If it would be possible to meet you, I’d love to.
That’d be great. Do keep in touch.
Janet,
I am the granddaughter of Thomas Edward O’Brien, born in Ansonia Ct in 1887, the second of approximately 13 children of Thomas E. O’Brien(DOB 1862) and Annie Cahill O’Brien(DOB 1865), who were, I believe married in 1885. I am eager to learn more about my family history. Have you run across this family in your research and is there any information you can share with me about them?
Thank you.
Joan
Joan,
If you are just beginning, I recommend finding their graves, looking for records about them in the Derby Town Hall, and contacting Church of the Assumption in Ansonia and/or St. Mary’s Church in Derby to see if their baptism/marriage records might help you. You will need to become a member of one of several options of organizations, such as CT Society of Genealogists, in order to be able to do research in town halls. Accessing Ancestry.com (usually available in a library) will provide census and possibly other records. Regarding the name Cahill, you might look into the possibility of Annie’s being a relative of Col. Thomas Cahill, of the Civil War. Members of New Haven’s CT Irish-American Historical Society would also be of help. (http://www.ctiahs.com/) There is quite a bit of personal research that you need to put in place, beginning with whatever you and your family know and what evidence of them is in your family archive. Then you will have exact questions that can further you on your way. Census records will lead you to the families, then you can track them forward and gradually learn much more about them. I wish you well, and hope you will enjoy the process!
Janet
Janet, Thank you for all this excellent information. I will start today and look forward to learning more.
Best wishes,
Joan
Joan – All my best to you on this exciting journey. You’ll have a ball! On Saturday, Oct. 12, I’ll be up to give a talk in at the Naugatuck Valley Genealogy Club in CT. Will post here when I have more details. If you’re near, please stop by. You can fill me in on your progress!
Janet
Janet – just thought that you and the readers of your blog might like to see this. The images are from Corca Dhuibhne and the music’s played by Mary Rowsome, a brilliant traditional Irish musician whose uncle is my neighbour Jack, to whom The House on an Irish Hillside is dedicated. Mary was raised in Dublin but her roots are deep in Corca Dhuibhne, and she and her family come back here all the time. The tune she plays here is one she remembers her granny singing by the fireside in the farm kitchen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIwNdnhRVfU
Felicity, Thank you for sharing Mary Rowsome’s beautiful music. I look forward to revisitiing Corca Dhuibhne – this time with another level of understanding about the beautiful place, and this time meeting you!
I’m glad you enjoyed the video. Hope you’ll make your next visit to Corca Dhuibhne soon.