the rix mix

I'm from lace-curtain Irish. Whatever my grandmother & aunts had experienced in the Irish neighborhoods of Philadephia, they wanted out, & they got out, via marriage or education. Although all of them were devout Catholics, & all had what could be considered Irish temperaments - proudly so on occasion, there was little ethnic Irishness about them, none of what goes on display in the New York & Boston parades on St. Patrick's Day. They kept their own families small. & showed not a little snobbery also toward the culture of urban Irish Americans, who were, in Nana's lace curtain mantra, "more Irish than the Irish." There's a lot of truth in it. As their language & traditions disappeared under centuries of British oppression, even the Irish in Ireland had to work harder at being Irish.

But none of the large Irish-Catholic families I knew were into rescuing Gaelic culture. My first really serious girlfriend, the oldest of six in a very noisy home, took ballet classes four days each week. No hopping up & down with arms pressed to sides for her. You didn't move your piece of the clan to suburban Roselle Park to preserve an insular & increasingly artificial city Irishness; you moved to escape it. All they brought along was their own version of the True Faith: St. Joseph The Carpenter Church in Roselle, which had priests with Irish surnames. Nana gave no more thought to joining the other, predominantly Italian local parish than she gave to becoming a Presbyterian.

So whatever Irishness I & my siblings had we were born with, osmosed, or adopted later. I think it was clear to both sides of the family that if the midwestern protestants had won the religious battle, the Irish-Catholics had the edge in our behavior, a small victory, really. For me, it also included decades of undeniable attraction to Catholic girls, particularly those of Irish ancestry however watered down.

In memories my old family matriarchs became more Irish with every year that passed, something I could laugh about & idealize. When memories weren't enough, like any dutiful Irish bard I just went ahead & made them up or stole them:

Not so very long ago

Kathleen's parents bought a brand new house and they all moved there. Kathleen had her own room with green walls - her favorite color - and on the walls she hung pictures of rainbows and unicorns and a lot of paper shamrocks. It was a nice room except that every night she heard music and little feet tippy-tapping on the roof as if little people were dancing up there. She could hardly sleep or paint more pictures of rainbows or do her homework. Kathleen went to her mother and said, "I think there are little people dancing on the roof. What can I do?" [from The Roof Dancers]