Midlife Irish (33 page)

I moved into a room that at one time must have been the kitchen. There was a big pile of shelves that had collapsed. I saw
something shiny underneath them and I bent and grabbed the end of the shelf. I moved it back and saw that there were several
shiny things under there but they were covered with dirt and pieces of something that seemed to be sheetrock and I shifted
that over to the other side and I saw that there was another little stack of something, some square things with metal edges.
I moved the sheetrock and saw that there was a pile of stuff that looked like a stack of pictures in cheap metal frames.

So I got the pile of metal frames in my hand and pulled them out from underneath. I nicked my finger doing this and it started
bleeding. I ignored the blood from my finger, and I got the stack out and held it in my hands.

There on top, covered with dirt, there was something, a picture. So I brushed the dirt off and pulled it out and held it up
and took my sleeve and wiped it off and I saw what it was.

What it was shocked me. It was me, a picture of me. During the disco era, smiling a stupid-looking grin. I had big, thick,
grotesque sideburns. I had forgotten just how bad they looked. Now, three thousand miles from America, I was reminded.
I tried to figure out just where I had been when that unfortunate picture was taken. Where was I? Some wedding in New Jersey?
Yes, that was it. I couldn’t remember who got married, but I remembered the wedding. Who took it? My sister. What was it doing
here?

My mom had it enlarged and then sent it to her sister. A long time ago. Back when I was “stayin’ alive.”

Now, many years later, I stood there with the picture of me with the shirt with the widest collar in America in my mom’s half-fallen-apart
house in Loganboy. I looked at the picture and I thought about my mom and her handicapped sister and the three Forde girls,
and getting on the boat, and coming back with a Yank accent, and how brief and strange human life can be.

I thought about that out in this house in the middle of a field in County Mayo, Ireland, and that made a chill run up my back.

I try to think of my mom’s childhood. About Anne Forde and her sisters living in that little house and trying to make a living
off the little land they farmed. And the one sister they never talked about. Someone would always have to be taking care of
her. And my mom would be thinking of the future and its two choices. Go to America or become a nun. If she had become a nun
of course I wouldn’t even be here. Something happened to stop her every time. She thought that it was God stopping her. Maybe
it was. She was absolutely certain that God decided what would happen in her life. For a long time, she thought that God was
going to make my life very short. He didn’t have that in mind. But when my mom got cancer and died she was absolutely certain
that God decided it all, and she never questioned his judgment. She had sixty-plus years here and that was enough.

The last time I saw her alive, I told her how people often recover from cancer. She looked at me and said, “My life is over.”
She smiled.

Coda

We have done all right in the land of opportunity. Most of us have nice houses. My cousin Billy has a hotel with a pool on
the roof. I have a cousin who is a lawyer (doesn’t everybody). I also have a cousin who is a priest. If I were a priest, my
mom would be happier with me, but if she’s looking down at me she can see that I’m not doing anything seriously wrong. My
dad is probably happy that I have a job. I can hear him say, “Considering what you have for brains it could be worse.”

We’ve had a few tragedies. One cousin’s son got heavily involved in drugs and spent some time in prison. I have a nephew who
attempted suicide. I love him very much.

I have another nephew who became a big-shot in the motion picture business. Once I called him and his secretary told me he
“was between his office and his car.” If my mom were around she might refer to him as “Lord Muck from Shit Hill.” I love him
too.

A lot of the Irish blood is diluted. I married a girl whose dad is from France. As far as I know, only one of the first generation
married an Irish girl. We are just about melted into the melting pot. My son doesn’t even like U2; he prefers someone named
Andrew W. Kay. His music sounds like a car accident to me. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

I guess I’m an American. But I think a lot about the little house in Mayo and the little house near Athlone. I know
where I came from now, and I’m not forgetting until six of my friends are carrying me out to a big black car.

I went over to Ireland looking for my roots. I found them, but I also found something else. It sounds strange, but I’ll say
it: In Ireland I found God. When I got back to America, which is the only place that I can ever really call “home,” I found
that He came with me. How can I say something like that? How can I rationalize that one? The truth is, I can’t. If I sound
crazy to you, I understand. It sounds crazy to me too.

All I know is, things are permanently different now, and that is what the Old Country did to me. I don’t feel the ground I’m
walking on is all I’m going to experience anymore. I think that I’ve taken a number from the rack, and I’m waiting for it
to be called. But I’m not tense about it. I’m calm. Let me amuse myself until it’s my time. Maybe I’ll do a crossword puzzle
or raise children or write books. Let them call it when it’s time. I felt like that in Ireland—as if someone were in the next
room waiting for me—and the feeling came with me when I returned to America. I had never felt this way before, but I do now.
I feel like there is somebody waiting for me. I don’t go around screaming it. I don’t knock on doors and tell people, but
I feel it just the same. Maybe it’s a delusion, but if it is, it’s a darling illusion. It’s a brilliant illusion; it is…if
you want to feel this way, maybe you will. The plane is ready. Bring warm clothes. Good luck.

“Growing up, I knew that I was Irish in much the same way I knew I had asthma. I knew I had it but I didn’t know anything
about it…”

Immigrants Bernard and Annie Gannon never talked about their Irish past. So when Francis Xavier Gannon was growing up in 1950s
New Jersey, his parents’ native land was but a dim, distant mystery…

M
IDLIFE
I
RISH

Today Gannon is a middle-aged, irreverent Catholic who prefers Springsteen to
Celtic Moods,
can’t dance a jig, and hates eating potatoes. Does that make him a bad Irish American? Or a typical one? With both parents
dead, there’s only one place Gannon could go to answer this question and find the missing pieces of his own heritage—Planet
Green. Eire.

In a moving and uniquely entertaining memoir, popular essayist Frank Gannon uncovers a twenty-first-century Ireland full of
beauty and paradox. And he offers a stirring, poignant, yet often hilarious look at the bonds of family, and—from the Garden
State Parkway to the wave-battered cliffs of the Emerald Isle—the ties of home.

“An entertaining and often laugh-out-loud funny account.”

—
D
ENVER
P
OST

“A charming and poignant travelogue…an entertaining and enlightening mixture of humor, history, and heartbreak.”

—
A
TLANTA
J
OURNAL
-
C
ONSTITUTION