See Me Squeegee

“Norm!” – everyone at Cheers

“What I love most about Dublin is the diversity, the blend of cultures.” – Patrick Hughes, Dublin tour guide

I came here searching the former, but at first it was all the latter.  And, believe me, this isn’t a pro-Trump (or pro-Cruz) post, but I was disappointed.  Enter Seinfeld: not that there’s anything wrong with that, variety is the spice of life, etc.  But a huge part of my excitement to travel to Ireland was to discover my ancestry, to go to a place where most people were just like me.  If I wanted to see people of all walks of life gather together to bump into each other while looking at their phones walking past TGI Friday’s, I could have gone virtually anywhere else.  But here I was, Irish in spirit but more of a mutt in practice, in a city that pretty well echoed that same composition.

But travel is the primary way to spend money and end up richer.  And I did both.

As I wandered around the city of Dublin, past Thai and sushi restaurants, past bars advertising Budweiser and Carlsberg, past hordes of non-redhead, not-befreckled humans, I felt like something was missing.  And as I walked I realized what it was: my O’Bama’s Irish Pub t-shirt, of course, guaranteed that it wasn’t abject hatred of multiculturalism, but it was indeed a longing for an increased sense of belonging and exclusivity: this was the land of my ancestors, and I wanted to fit right in.  Nevermind that my most recent direct forebear left more than a hundred years ago (when the land I walked upon was still called “England,” but I’ll get to that), or that at least a quarter of my blood was non-Irish.  I – far from “pure Irish”- wanted a pure Irish experience.  So I soldiered on, and discovered:

There’s no such thing.  That “Viking Tours” duckboat I had scowled at? Perfectly at home: the Vikings are a huge part of the early foundation of Ireland.  As were the Gauls and Normans: Galway, from where I type this?  “Gaul” meant “foreigner” to the early Irish…this was French/Norman/Gaul territory in the 1200s.  So I wonder about the prefix to my last name, Galvin…  Then, of course, there are the British, who are responsible for the majority of nice-looking Irish architecture (but then again also the potato famine…Irish farms were producing tons and tons of other cash crops, but the Crown would only allow the Irish people the potatoes).  My middle name, Patrick – named after Patrick Benton – is as Irish as a name gets…right?  Except for that St. Patrick was English, and only returned to Ireland – after having escaped jail here – upon God’s request to convert and save the Irish people.

As I learned about the crooked family trees of Irish bloodlines and of my own, I thought more about my place in all of this.  Even at its purest, Ireland was the land my ancestors left because of starvation and poverty; why had I glorified it so much in my mind?  And, as with most nationalities, “Irish” is a blend of several bloodlines and influences; the Ireland of the 1000-1500 era saw immigration like the United States did centuries later.  So why my – and “our” – fascination with Ireland?

The more I get to travel internationally, the more I realize this: we’re all very similar.  I like being Irish the same way that on any of these trips I make a point to pack a Detroit Tigers hat and a Michigan shirt…I want to belong to something, and to be in a position where someone will recognize that we both belong to the same “exclusive” club. Our families and towns are a bit too small; the world itself is way too big (unless aliens attack, of course, and then we’ll all band together). We’re all looking to belong to something bigger than ourselves but smaller and more exclusive than the whole. Here in Ireland, “we” (can I say that?) identify by the counties our ancestors are from (Tipperary and Clare for me…at least I think); in the States we identify by our primary nationalities, by the colleges we went to, by the regions we’re from..

Which brings me back to my first day here.  I came seeking belonging, a place where “everyone knows my name” (and they do…I’ve seen it on buses and signs!). And I’ve found that, but differently and more so.  My Irish roots are far from “roots” – I belong here as much as I belong in Michigan, where I grew up, and in England, where I know at least some of my Irish ancestors are from. And today some locals mentioned that the Bentons – my grandmother’s father’s family that we assumed had some English origin – of County Tipperary were a Jewish family.  So my roots may extend even further out of Catholic Ireland through Protestant England to Jewish…who knows where? Patrick Benton escaped Irish poverty the way that someone farther back than him escaped religious persecution, and before that I’m sure there were plenty more instances where my ancestors moved around for a better life.  Your family lineage – whoever you may be and wherever you may be from – is probably similarly erratic.

Every time I travel to a new place, I’m reminded that we’re all global citizens, much more alike than we are different. In different places I see similarities; this time I went to a place where I thought there would be more similarities and learned about differences in my homeland and ancestry.  As I continue this journey, I’m proud to be Irish – I still need that belonging – but just as proud to be whatever else I am along the way. And while I can’t smile walking past a freaking TGI Friday’s in Dublin, I can certainly smile at whomever is walking the other direction…whether we’re long lost relatives or just complete strangers, we have a lot in common.