St. Patrick's Day

By Susan O'Doherty. As I have described here before, all of my Irish Catholic relatives (and there were a lot of them; both my maternal grandfather and my father came from large families) disowned my family because we were heathens and going straight to hell. I grew up not identifying as Irish at all. The extended family that did embrace my brother and me was my maternal grandmother's. They were of French and English descent and could trace their American roots to the Revolutionary War. That was the heritage I identified with, since that was the world that welcomed me. Read more...