“This is a race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever,’’ said brain-shrink pioneer Sigmund Freud.
“ This one from poet Marianne Moore: “I’m troubled, I’m dissatisfied. I’m Irish.”
“ And then I recalled how someone once told me that an Irish person is not happy unless he is miserable.
“ Oh my. To that, I give a deep Irish sigh to relieve that constant heaviness of heart.
“ Now that we are all being bombarded with shamrocks, green beer and little leprechauns with pots of gold this month, I decided to reflect upon my heritage.
“ My ethnicity is 50-percent Irish. The other half is some mixture of German, Alsatian (French or German depending on which country owned that lot of land at the time) and possibly Swiss. I am guessing those people came here in the 1800s.
“ In terms of having any connection with the Old World, I feel closer to Ireland, because my grandmother Bridget Curnyn of County Cavan didn’t land on these shores until 1922 at the tender age of 19.
“ Her husband, my grandfather, Edmund Carroll, was first- or second- generation Irish, and born in Harlem, N.Y., in 1899. They had eight kids (Catholic) and eked out a living in New York City. Ultimately, sick of the city’s congestion, they moved, to Abbottstown, Pa., in 1948, where my mother, 13, freaked out at seeing her first cow.
“ As a little girl, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents on their little farmette. Of course, “Nanny,’’ as we called her, was the main caregiver, generous of spirit, tender and tolerant.
“ We’d say the Rosary together and light candles after church.
“ She would give me steaming cups of tea with lots of milk and sugar and it tasted like heaven. At breakfast, I always had my soft-boiled egg in an egg cup. Everything just so. I had no idea at the time, but in retrospect we might have been back on her farm in rural County Cavan. Though her kids suffered culture shock, Nanny knew exactly what farm life was all about.
“ It wasn’t until later in life that I realized how tough she had it.
“ How at 19, just 90 pounds after recovering from a serious illness, she boarded the steamer Mauretania to join her sisters and other family in this country.
“ It wasn’t an easy trip, according to a taped interview I had with her in 1987, a few years before she died.
“ With the brogue she never lost, she described the crashing waves and the rolling seas, and then the quarantine period off Ellis Island. She was scared to death she would be sent back by the immigration doctors because of her weight.“
She made it through.
She worked as a housekeeper in New York City. Then she married my grandfather, who had some promising job (I am not sure what it was) on Wall Street, which all ended with the Crash.
It was hard trying to feed all those kids, but they did it. No disrespect to my grandfather, but Nanny was the matriarch, the glue of the family.
Dr. Freud, she would not have had time for psychoanalysis. Ms. Moore, she was probably troubled and dissatisfied, but she was stoic about it.
And I know in my heart of hearts, she was sad unless those around her were happy. I know this not because of what she said, but because of those occasional deep Irish sighs.
Erin go bragh, Nanny.
Patricia Poist is a staff reporter for the Living section. Write to her at: ppoist@lnpnews.com.
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