On our own tour, we hooked up with a great-aunt, Bridget Scanlon Hayes, my grandfather's sister. She didn't remember him because he emigrated when she was a little kid. I didn't know him because he died before I was born. But this man that neither of us knew brought us together.
Left: Thatched-roof cottage in Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland.
My aunt's son Jack, a "spoiled priest" (a seminary dropout), had emigrated to the United States. He smoothed the way for us. We were treated like family - taken to the kitchen to sit beside a stove heated with turf. Across the room, a tiny black-and-white TV played an "I Love Lucy" rerun. As we traveled among the relatives, they asked, "How long are you home for?" I began to feel as though I had come home. But my husband wasn't keen about eating meat drawn up from the well out back.
Later at cousin Danny Scanlon's farm, we saw the remains of my grandfather's birthplace, now a barn, and met Danny's gang of barefoot kids. And then another farm, another cousin, Sarah Buckley, who had made good, her mother told us, marrying a man with 30 cows. When I asked to use the bathroom, she took me to a bucket in her bedroom. "Rich" is relative.
Then on to Listowel, a literary center in County Kerry, where the educated "Bridge Road crowd," as cousin Jack referred to them by their address, with their Victorian wallpaper and lampshades and Louis L'Amour Westerns, seemed less than enthusiastic at meeting Americans.
Many visits and many years later, when our daughter, Cristi, was doing an internship in the '90s on an Irish horse farm, we heard that, at least in her experience, the Irish had a howl mocking visiting Americans. She was very upset about it.
On that first visit, we traveled with a couple of sisters on their fourth trip to the Emerald Isle. We couldn't imagine why anyone would do that with the whole world to choose from. Then I began trekking over there every couple of years. I stopped counting at trip 13 because it was an unlucky number. I'm still inclined to go hang out in the west.
Often, I visited friends Pat and Harry Dolan, who bought a 300-year-old farmhouse in Dunquin at the tip of the Dingle Peninsula. Through them we met delightful Irish folk from the neighborhood and "blow-ins" (summer visitors) from Dublin and Cork. One is so convinced that Americans like a fatty diet that she makes entire meals of fried food. Even fried pineapple dessert.
Dunquin is an extraordinary spot. I'm not alone in my admiration of it. A National Geographic writer called it "the most beautiful place in the world." I sometimes walk around there, the only human in sight for miles, watching the Atlantic smash against the cliffs, watching the clouds carry in the next rainstorm, watching the mist move down the mountain, watching the sheep watching me, and I mutter and mutter, "Incredible. Incredible." That's what it is.
One day I read an article about how to obtain Irish citizenship, which you could do while maintaining U.S. citizenship. So back in 1993, I decided to pursue dual citizenship. Not that I'm not a loyal American; I believe that there's no country like it in the world. But the country has disappointed me from the triple assassinations of the 1960s - J.F.K., M.L.K., R.F.K. - through My Lai, the Supreme Court appointment of George W. Bush as president, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo. The election of Barack Obama, who has roots in Ireland like 28 former U.S. presidents, made me feel really good about the nation again.
Left: Reunion of friends at Murphy's Pub in Ballyferriter with, from left: Maura Cunneen from Dublin, Pat Dolan from Pittsburgh, and Molly O'Connor and Eileen O'Shea from Dunquin, Ireland.
The process of obtaining my Irish citizenship was relatively simple. All I had to do was trace - on paper - one grandparent back to Ireland. If I actually had a parent born in Ireland, the Irish Republic would consider me a citizen. There are no doubt hundreds of Pittsburghers that Ireland would recognize as citizens. Many may not even know that.
I began with the only grandparent I ever knew - trying to find a baptismal certificate for her in her neighborhood in County Kerry. To no avail. That's when I began to wonder what she meant when she said she was carried out of Ireland.
I switched the search to her husband, my grandfather. No problem. I was in with his baptismal certificate from Pullough, also in County Kerry. The Irish Consulate in New York sent the good news effective Aug. 10, 1993, recognizing me as a foreign-born Irish person: No. 226F. I have yet to press the issue by applying for an Irish passport.
Of course, all this delving into roots can lead to unexpected discoveries. That's why everyone warns you not to explore your genealogy for fear of what you might find out. Who knows? That might even include a direct line to Judas Iscariot or to Oliver Cromwell, that 17th-century British regicidal dictator and conqueror of Ireland. (My family once named a rather goofy dog after Cromwell.) I can affirm that there are dangers in the genealogical game. But family secrets are family secrets. I'll never tell.
Ann Curran, a Pittsburgh magazine contributing editor, is author of Placement Test, a book of poems set in Pittsburgh and Ireland.