Ireland, My Ireland

from: ILR JOURNAL INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING IN RETIREMENT. Volume 13
by: Maryjane Snyder


Down we went and pulled up in front of a whitewashed thatched roofed cottage straight off the cover of a tourist calendar. By now I was a complete basket case, and no way was I going to go into the home of a stranger. Not so, my husband.

He knocked on the door and explained to the woman who answered that his wife’s mother might just have come from these parts, and we wondered…

“No,” she said carefully. “We don’t have any Yanks in the family. But do come in and have a spot of tea.” I hesitantly climbed out of the car and we entered a large room with a hard dirt floor, a huge fireplace burning peat, and a row of socks strung across it to dry. I sat down and she fussed around and brought tea and scones while we began to talk to lighten the sudden tension.

“You know,” she finally said cautiously, “there is a picture in the loft we were looking at last month. No one knows who it is, and we almost threw it out. But we didn’t.” She pulled a chair over, piled it on a table so she could climb up, put her hand in the hole that was the loft—and brought down the picture and put it in my hand.

Fortunately I was seated or I might very well have fainted. For there was my grandfather, my grandmother, my mother, aged about ten, and her sister and brother. The date was confirmed when Clark pulled out his magnifier and read the inscription on a pin, “Buffalo Exposition 1902.”

With this turn of events Mrs. Nestor began to get more nervous. “We’d better get Himself,” she said, and called the little boy, who was watching all this open-mouthed, “to run to Grandma’s and fetch Dada.”

Himself arrived and slowly the story came out. Mrs. Nestor had been afraid to tell the truth. They did indeed know they had family in the States – an aunt and an uncle. The aunt was the oldest. In Ireland, at that time, unlike many other countries, primogeniture passed down not just through the sons, but through the daughters. The oldest daughter to the oldest daughter and on and on. Mary Nestor was not in that line, but I was of the line of the missing oldest daughter.

Mary and Johnny Nestor had lived all their married life with the real fear that someone would one day arrive from the States and claim their ten acres, cottage, garden and all. They had even thought of advertising in all the papers in the States to see if anyone was forthcoming but decided it would be too expensive. And here we were.

I was horrified. Of all the things I was interested in, ten acres in West Galway were not among them. I assured them, in my innocence, that once we returned to the States, I would call my lawyer and we would straighten it all out. We took pictures of the cottage where Grandma had been born and grew up.

We took pictures of the views she must have seen across the peat bogs and borrowed the family portrait picture, assuring them we would send copies. We finished our trip to Ireland, thunderstruck by what we had just been through.

When we returned home, I called my lawyer who knew nothing about Irish law but undertook to find out. Matters were not that simple. It seems that I couldn’t give the Nestors the land nor sell it to them for a dollar nor in any way give up the lineage. I could assure them of my lack of interest, but my daughter would inherit those rights and her daughters, etc., and who knew?

However, I wrote such a firm letter of dismissal of interest that the Nestors decided that the risk was slight and had the courage to build a real house where we were royally entertained (with tumblers of whiskey) when we returned.

When we went back—and we did, things were more relaxed, and Johnny undertook to explain the magnitude of my grandmother’s sin. Double sin. She married an Englishman, and worse than that—an Anglican!

To understand the horror you must understand that these are the descendants of people who lived in Northern Ireland and who were driven off their fertile acres by Cromwell in the 1600s. Any thoughts you might cherish about there being forgiveness of the English, erase them. I, all these generations later, found I could not bear to read Leon Uris’ Trinity. To this day the people he writes of were my people who were pushed off our land. A pox on Cromwell.

The Other Son

Quote from ILR JOURNAL: INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING IN RETIREMENT
by Joyce Yohai


We were struggling to move from the family home on Long Island to Chicago, where our daughter, Janine, had just given birth to triplet boys. Our medical-student son, Robert, had come back from Northwestern University for the weekend to help weed out the awesome accumulation of our twenty-five years of rat-packing. Rudy and I had saved everything. The attic and basement were filled with infant clothes, tricycles, painted rocks, pedal cars, and pictures—thousands of pictures of our children squinting into the sun on sailboats and ski slopes. To my everlasting gratitude Rob was ruthless with the whole mess.

Sunday afternoon found my husband sitting cross-legged on the floor of his closet facing the bottom drawer of a built-in dresser. Slowly, reverently, he was removing its contents as Rob and I watched. I think most men must have such a drawer or a box or a shelf somewhere, filled with pre-marriage, taletelling treasures. Rudy had been pulling out photos of young army buddies never again seen or spoken to. Some of them included Rudy and a very shapely, very blonde girl who my husband always insisted was the other guy’s date. There were pictures of his beloved first car, a beat-up, powder-blue Lincoln convertible, old army uniform patches, and childhood awards from Camp Mahopac for Best All-Around Camper. Stuff and more stuff!

Then he lifted out a half-rusted chain of metal beads with medallions dangling from it.

“My old dog tags, type AB blood,” he read aloud, not looking up. Rob, leaning against the door frame next to me, started and began, “But that’s imposs…” and stopped short. “Hmm?” I asked. He poked me hard in the side, clearly signifying that I was to be quiet. Lost in reverie Rudy never noticed the exchange.

“What was that all about?” I asked when Rob and I were alone. Peering deep into my eyes, my beloved son replied, “Well, if Dad’s blood type is AB, and I know mine is O, he can’t possibly be my father!” I definitely did not like the look on Robert’s face. In basic New Yorkese I snapped, “Listen, kid, know one thing. If Rudy Yohai is not your father, then I sure as hell am not your mother!”

No sooner were the mean words out of my mouth, than I realized the implications of what I’d said. The what ifs overwhelmed me. What if Robert was not really our child? (He never did look like either one of us.) What if they had switched babies at the hospital? And oh, dear God, what if my natural child had been turned over to destitute or abusive parents? What if he needed me?

It was then that my mind began to create, little by little, the image of my perfect biological son, my angel, one who would never have grown marijuana on his bedroom window sill as a teenager, nor, at eight, have thrown a ball hard, with malice intended, at a little girl who had upset him at school. Even the principal’s pleas couldn’t get him to apologize.

At this point you are probably wondering why I didn’t just ask Rudy to take a blood test. How could I? He was having a terrible time leaving New York. He loved his big old house. He loved his friends and neighbors. He loved his patio and his summer evening gin and tonics when people stopped by. It was I who was obsessed with this need to be with “my” babies and with my daughter and son as well. My whole family was now in Chicago. Why should I be in New York?

There were so many decisions to be made and so much physical exertion required, and Rudy was already so depressed about the move that I couldn’t think of laying another problem on him.

On Monday I called Mike Cohen, our family doctor, and asked him for Rudy’s blood type. To my surprise, he answered, “We don’t keep that information on file anymore, Joyce. It’s so simple to determine when needed. But why do you want to know?”

I told him. Mike sounded odd. What he said was, “Just forget the whole thing. Robert is your son, your only son, the one you’ve loved and raised, and he’s a wonderful young man.

Don’t say anything to Rudy. It would just cause unnecessary turmoil.” He’s crazy, I thought, as I hung up and dialed my mother’s number, looking for comfort and better advice.

She sounded strange, too. “Just forget the whole thing,” she said, parroting everything that Mike had said but adding, “That boy is in medical school. He’s going to be a doctor. The training is so expensive. Heavens knows what Rudy might decide to do if he discovers Rob is not his.” I hung up in despair. My mother’s gone crazy, too, I thought. Didn’t anyone care that there might be a son of ours out there somewhere who needed us?

Not that I would ever, in any way, give up the littlest bit of Robert. MINE!, MINE! They were both MINE!, the boy I’d adored for all his life and the one taking shape in my mind’s eye. I could almost see him—his dark blonde hair and soft brown eyes. Of course he was tall. All my family were tall.

Anyway, for Rudy’s sake I decided to wait and say nothing until our lives calmed down and we were comfortable in our new city. Oddly enough, Robert never mentioned the matter again. Recently he said he’d assumed it was all some sort of mistake, but I wonder now, was he a little frightened too?

Somehow we finally moved. I was having nightmares about abandoned children crying for me. After five months, it was more than time. I had to know. Did the hospital make a mistake or did the Army? In my naiveté I thought the latter was close to impossible. So at last I sat Rudy down and told him the whole story. He responded with surprising calm and arranged for a blood test two days later.

Of course you know the result. The United States Army had goofed. They’d engraved the wrong blood type on Rudy’s dog tags. He was not type AB blood at all. Type AB is a universal recipient, but since he was not AB, if transfused, my husband might well have had a severe reaction, might even have died.

So there it was. Rudy was Robert’s father. I was Robert’s mother. Out in the world there was not and never had been another son of ours. Yet, he’d become so real to me over those months that sometimes, even now, I think of him and feel bereft, and I’m lonely for the phantom son I never had.