A Mayo woman's diary: The American in all of us

by Barbara Daly

I THINK most people were moved by the emotion in Joe Biden’s recent visit to Mayo.

The way in which Irish Americans hug their ancestry to them like a blanket is remarkable. It has been allowed to shape their lives.

My family are from Louth and Monaghan for as long back as we can check. However, like many other Irish families and their stories of emigration, America had an influence on my family’s life.

Back in the 1920s, a young girl from Latton in Co. Monaghan fell in love with an older man from the same area. His parents did not approve so they sent him off to his siblings in New York to end the relationship.

But they did not reckon on the spirit or strength of that young girl. At 16 years of age she defied her family and followed her love to America, on her own.

They married in New York and lost their first baby there. After a second child, a boy, was born, they returned to Ireland in the 1930s. That couple were my grandparents and the baby they brought home was my father.

My grandfather died of a perforated ulcer at the age of 43 in 1943. My grandmother was still strongly disapproved of by her in-laws but they stepped up and paid for education for her six children.

That disapproval followed her through her life and she was never accepted by them.

I wonder why my grandparents returned to Ireland from the ‘land of opportunity’ when they did. How their lives might have been different had they not.

My grandfather might never have died so young and unnecessarily. My father became the man of the house after his father died and this had a profound effect on him and his life.

My grandmother developed dementia in her 80s and often sat in our sitting room singing along to the John McCormack records we played for her.

She didn’t know who we were, but she would tell us as we passed how she had seen McCormack sing in Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1925.

My father never visited America in his life though he was American by birth. His one little connection was that he drank coffee when few others did. He said his mother used to make coffee after her return from America in the '30s.

I guess the American is in us all, after all.