“Family—that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our innermost hearts, ever quite wish to.” (-Dodie Smith)

Top o’ the mornin’ to ye’!

Sure 'n it's St Patrick’s Day,...

...and today, I’m remembering my Scotch-Irish grandparents and my mom. St. Patrick's Day is one of those days that make me think of family and my ancestors and what they mean to me.

My grandmother always used to tell me, “Never forget your British Heritage.”

Some years ago, I sat in an amphitheatre outdoors at a local college, on a beautiful spring day, and met the wonderful poet, Seamus Heaney. I heard him reciting this poem that describes his father and grandfather. He recognized the enormity of their influence on his own life, and wrote about them often in his beautiful poems:

Digging

(-Seamus Heaney)

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.



Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down



Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.



The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.



By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.



My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner's bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.



The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I've no spade to follow men like them.



Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I'll dig with it.

(Susan and Edward, my grandparents)

Happy St Paddy’s Day to you all!

“If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?” (-Lily Tomlin)

When my grandparents came from Scotland to America, my grandfather Edward arrived first. He was going to find a place for them to live and help establish things before my grandmother Susan came to meet him here.

The two of them had been avid readers of a romance novel in Scotland that described so-called everyday life in America, and it made America sound like a wild frontier all over the country. The story's focus was on cowboys and the excitement of blazing new territories in this new, wild land. The main characters in the novel were “Saxon” and “Billy.”

Well, when my grandfather first came here, he found a house and expected to situate himself in the middle of the USA, in Kansas, and found a big white house with a wrap-around porch and airy land around it. My grandmother was not happy there, though, and they wound up living in New Jersey, much closer to the hustle and bustle of New York City.

Once, years later, my mom had bought a dozen yellow roses for my grandfather for his birthday, and I asked her why she was giving him that. She explained to me that they stood “for the yellow rose of Texas,” because that was a favorite song of his, and he never really got to live the life he had expected, as a cowboy, in America.

One of my prized possessions is a small autograph book, faded and old, dating from the early 1900's, that belonged to my grandmother and it has wonderful drawings and poems in it that tell a rich history of life back in Scotland. For example, there are images relating to World War I on the frontispiece in it, with sailors under a moon, at war, that is “the same moon shining over” the woman waiting behind at home. And there is a caricature of two men celebrating “Hogmanay” the New Year’s celebration in Scotland. My grandfather had a great sense of humor and some of the lines evoke that. One of his entries says: "No woman, on her way to buy a new hat, has ever been known to commit suicide." I cherish it and remember them whenever I look at it.

In it there are several lines written about Saxon and Billy, which is what my grandparents sometimes called each other…

“We need not think alike to love alike.”
(-Francis David)

Song for Susan

Song for Susan

Kettle whistles, “Habit now,”
Seems to sing its wistful tune
Sixty years, the ready sound
Sixty years, tea at noon…

(-sue)

My maternal grandparents were immigrants from Scotland, and they figured very prominently in my childhood. When I was young, I wrote a poem about Grandma Susan. Her inclination was to have a Tea Party every day of her life.

As a child, I loved visiting her, because she was an eccentric woman with artistic tendencies. She’d draw and write songs and poems, and entertained us for hours with the stories she made up, that literally lasted for weeks. They’d be continued on our next visit, while we longed to hear the end of her tales. During the winter, she’d bundle us up with her in a huge blanket, and sit with us on the rug, telling us we’d be like “the Babes in the Woods.” While we didn't really know who the babes in the woods were, when she said that, we knew we were about to be transported into her imaginary world of handsome lads and lovely lasses being swept away to balls, like something out of Jane Austen, through the machinations of the little old women who populated her stories.

But the thing I enjoyed the most with grandma was afternoon Tea. She baked every single day, and while the smells of oatmeal cookies and orange marmalade would emanate from her kitchen, she’d put a kettle on for a spot of tea. Her cups and saucers were lovely china, and she had utensils that had real ivory handles on them. The aromas and warm steam coming up from the cups are images and rituals I will always associate with her. She made me a tea lover for life.

"A Proper Tea is much nicer than a Very Nearly Tea, which is one you forget about afterwords." (-AA Milne)