Embarrassingly enough, I may just be the only Irish citizen over the age of 3 to never set foot on Irish soil. So, of course Ireland! It must be sought out, breathed in, walked bare foot upon, drunk down, and pissed out again. Anything less would be disrespectful.
I consider 14 December 2002 the start of it all. The Consulate General had just written with news of my "birth": Dear Mr. O'Brien, we are pleased to inform you that your name has now been entered into the Foreign Births Entry Book. Congratulations, ya bastard, and what took ya so long?
The Irish government allows citizenship to any who can legitimately prove lineage from an Irish-born parent or, in my case, grandparent. My dad's dad, John William O'Brien was born 23 February 1906 in Queenstown, now Cobh, in the County Cork. 15 years later he was on a steamer headed for New York, and how that came to pass is an interesting bit of family lore.
My great-grandmother - one forbidding figure of a woman, large and with a large face that was so serious that when she looked at you, an examination of conscience took place - ostensibly ran a small general store in the town of Cobh; in reality, she was running guns for the Irish Republican Army. She had three sons: John, my grandfather, and his two elder brothers, Harry and David; both generals in the IRA; both accused of plotting and carrying out assassinations of British officials.
David was imprisoned in Britain, but his hunger strike forced the British to send him to the United States rather than make him another IRA martyr. Harry was also expelled. John, much younger than his brothers, relates tales of the British troops bashing down the front entrance to his mother's house while she sent him out the back to hide the guns in the woods.
At 15 my grandfather took an exam for scholarship to the University of Britain. Although he placed among the top three, he was denied entrance because of his brothers' IRA leadership. In compensation for this great disappointment, his mother bought him passage to New York to join his brothers.
David and Harry both worked for the NY Transit Authority on the subway system. John was an electrician's apprentice, and very active in the arts in Harlem where they lived. He directed plays for All Saints church, went to Carnegie Hall as often as he could afford, listened to opera, took his family to museums and read like mad. As a member of the Gaelic Society, John was a manager of a small band in which my grandmother, Margaret, played a mean piano by ear. He was an impoverished, liberal and intellectual immigrant. I'd like to think that I will be taking some of that character back to Ireland with us.