On the Inside

My mother grew up behind a bar in Shinrone. Her father, William King--Bill--had her sampling booze when she was still in pigtails. "Good to know what it is, Aine!" she recounts he'd boom. I don't know whether or not he drank, though his complexion in photos rather suggests it. She certainly does. Her mother didn't; her mother had a stern, tight look, attributed to hard times and five children. But could've been the booze, and the burden of sobriety. Who knows?

My grandfather died the year I was born; they delayed my baptism because he was in the hospital. I've always been envious of my sister, who has photos of him cradling her and looking down lovingly; he was a tall, strong man with a wide, open face and easy smile: the consummate grandfatherly type. He and my mother were extremely close.

My grandmother was not the type to gaze lovingly at a child; she would bark: "You rotten goons--look at this mess you've left for your poor mother!" Etc. Not that she didn't also have her gentler moments; she raised more than half of her grandkids. The more sensitive among us took her name calling to heart, but all of us knew that there was a certain clan identification--a certain belonging--in being a rotten goon. We were insiders. The Irish are big on that.

Three of my mothers four siblings drink, too. Only one doesn't--the youngest one; the one who fought tooth and nail with her father until the day he died, when her two brothers and my father sat on her in the middle of Grandma's living room floor to keep her from throwing herself through the glass door. When she came out of the psych ward she chose God, not booze.

I'm put in mind of this today because my aunts and uncles and my siblings are talking about the Guinness emblem bearing our family name, and they're ordering large-size, framed, matted versions to hang in prominent places in their homes. One of my cousins was given one as a baby shower gift. I've seen it in another cousin's kitchen, an uncle's living room. Now there's a volume-discount order in discussion, and they ask if I want one. I don't; it's a mixed-bag legacy, for sure, and I don't want my kids seeing it every day. But I feel the old-time tug: the pull to pick up my own membership card.

Later: Man, what a butchered piece of grammar and spelling! Love that edit function...