NARRATIVE
W
ell. That took a little longer than intended. And sorry so long - I wrote during build cycles. And sorry if it’s disjointed as I kept jumping between writing code and prose. I don’t think I put any for loops in here… Not sure how interesting my story is. I had two tough acts to follow as my mom spent the first decade of her emigrant experience in the U.S. as Sister Francis Kevin. And that was the decade my dad robbed a bank. All I did was move to a suburb of Boston - Glasnevin. Prior to being my mom and kicking the habit, Bernadett McCormack grew up just outside of Ballymahon, Co. Longford. Six of my grandparent’s kids lived to adulthood and of those, one was given to a childless relative in Westmeath, three emigrated to America as teenagers and finally my mom emigrated at the age of 20. Six months after she left she found out her father died; she wouldn’t make it back to Ireland for a decade. By the time she had me she had a pretty good nursing job and an American husband. And she could afford to go back home more often. I think her past made her desire to visit “home” regularly stronger than for her siblings. I was born in March, 1971. The picture here was taken in May, 1971 - I suspect passport officials would
be unimpressed by it these days. And my first trip to Ireland was to Dublin in August, 1971. I don’t recall it, but my Irish relatives were rather taken with my dad and the fact that he carried me around in a papoose-like thing. My mom was carrying a penguin passport at that point so I kind of wonder if that might have been part of the motivation for that. Ireland is a small country - a woman with a passport picture in a habit while carrying a baby might be talked around the place. Trips to Ireland happened every few years ever since then. For holidays and the odd wedding. And likewise we had Irish relatives visit in America. Bar the odd few months here and there I’ve always had a passport. Though none with a picture as cute as my guest appearance in my dad’s passport. Moving to Ireland first occurred to me after university in 1992. I went to SUNY at Buffalo and I wasn’t all that interested in staying there. The economy wasn’t great in Ireland though and I didn’t yet know I was an Irish citizen. Instead
KEVIN LYDA
“And I…was I returning? Or was I emigrating?”
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