When I think about what has been handed to me, only my mother’s ancestors seem real, their Irish ness resonates because I love the idea of a culture that clings to art and music as a way to stave off the hardship of the land, the cold, rainy weather, the isolation and poverty.
Not that my mother’s generation really knew poverty, but I love hearing about the poverty of the use-to-be-rich, the horse and buggy and two changes of clothing while living in a huge house with a gardener and cook and peacocks. It alll feels very I Capture the Castle or Pride and Prejudice. Still genteel but also scrabbling against desperation, need and longing and wondering what the next generation will bring to the equation.
When I think about my father’s family, it’s so much more remote of a feeling. My grandfather was adopted into a rich, well-educated family. Whatever he achieved wasn’t due to his genetic heritage, and from what I hear he always felt like an outsider in his own family. There’s still a generational feeling of shame that no one measured up to my illustrious great grandparents, who were renowned scholars and founders of intellectual movements. I am very far from an intellectual movement. Then again, I don’t have a huge fortune to help make a movement happen, which my grandparents had at their disposal. In a way, I feel like there’s a beholden quality to what they gave the next generation: they gave away most of their money and then said to their children: okay, bring about your own fortune and fate.
What’s interesting to realize, as I write this, that even though I feel closer to my Irish heritage, what really formed me was the one main legacy my father’s side gave the next generation, which is land next to a lake in Vermont. If I didn’t have this land, this connection to the lake, who would I be? Clearly much less than I am. I almost feel like this lake has saved my life, has given me a center. If I didn’t have this place that is so beautiful, so fairytale-like, I’d be much less of a person. Even though I only spend one month of every year there, I know it’s where my heart is. When I go to Ireland, I feel an affinity for the land but it’s not the same, it’s not my land, those ancestors are my blood but they are not the ones who gave me something to strive for.
What’s really been handed to me is America. I know it’s not the best country in the world, but there’s such a beauty in the striving. That feeling that you should be trying for something more. I often felt like when I was raising my children in Europe that they weren’t getting that sense of striving in the Netherlands, in Switzerland. Those countries were about status quo. There’s something about growing up in an atmosphere of striving that makes me always hopeful things will get better, that problems can be turned into opportunities.
— siobhan
Not that my mother’s generation really knew poverty, but I love hearing about the poverty of the use-to-be-rich, the horse and buggy and two changes of clothing while living in a huge house with a gardener and cook and peacocks. It alll feels very I Capture the Castle or Pride and Prejudice. Still genteel but also scrabbling against desperation, need and longing and wondering what the next generation will bring to the equation.
When I think about my father’s family, it’s so much more remote of a feeling. My grandfather was adopted into a rich, well-educated family. Whatever he achieved wasn’t due to his genetic heritage, and from what I hear he always felt like an outsider in his own family. There’s still a generational feeling of shame that no one measured up to my illustrious great grandparents, who were renowned scholars and founders of intellectual movements. I am very far from an intellectual movement. Then again, I don’t have a huge fortune to help make a movement happen, which my grandparents had at their disposal. In a way, I feel like there’s a beholden quality to what they gave the next generation: they gave away most of their money and then said to their children: okay, bring about your own fortune and fate.
What’s interesting to realize, as I write this, that even though I feel closer to my Irish heritage, what really formed me was the one main legacy my father’s side gave the next generation, which is land next to a lake in Vermont. If I didn’t have this land, this connection to the lake, who would I be? Clearly much less than I am. I almost feel like this lake has saved my life, has given me a center. If I didn’t have this place that is so beautiful, so fairytale-like, I’d be much less of a person. Even though I only spend one month of every year there, I know it’s where my heart is. When I go to Ireland, I feel an affinity for the land but it’s not the same, it’s not my land, those ancestors are my blood but they are not the ones who gave me something to strive for.
What’s really been handed to me is America. I know it’s not the best country in the world, but there’s such a beauty in the striving. That feeling that you should be trying for something more. I often felt like when I was raising my children in Europe that they weren’t getting that sense of striving in the Netherlands, in Switzerland. Those countries were about status quo. There’s something about growing up in an atmosphere of striving that makes me always hopeful things will get better, that problems can be turned into opportunities.
— siobhan
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