Happy St. Patrick's Day

I have a love/hate relationship with St. Patrick's Day, since my great-grandmother was, as she said (according to my Dad--I never knew her), "Scotch-Irish." This means, I believe, that she was Protestant and probably didn't like Catholics.

I'm only surmising that she didn't like Catholics, but it's not a far-fetched assumption, since (my dad said) she always insisted on being identified as Scotch-Irish, not Irish. And, my dad also told me, that she insisted the correct term was Scotch-Irish, not Scots-Irish. My dad and I had this big discussion about it once when I, in my most politically correct manner, informed him that we should use the term "Scots-Irish." Boy, did he get his dander up, insisting that his grandmother used the term "Scotch-Irish" and not "Scots-Irish."

The other reason that I assume that she may have had an anti-Catholic bias is because, let's face it, most Southerners did in the early to mid-20th century. I work to accept my ancestors the way they were, not the way that I wish they had been. There is every possibility that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about and that my great-grandmother had nary a prejudiced bone in her body, but that would be unusual, given the time and place.

I don't know where my great-grandmother was originally from, if she was born in Ireland or in the U.S., but her daughter, my grandmother, was raised in Dublin, Georgia, then married my grandfather, who was raised in Barnesville, Georgia. (Dublin and Barnesville are not right next door to each other. I wonder how they met? I'll have to ask my Uncle Floyd. He knows most of the family history.)

And boy, do I have a family history. I know much of it. I love my family reunions. But it all needs to be written down, and written down soon, before everyone who really remembers dies....

Despite my great-grandmother's insistence on "Scotch-Irish," I think my tenuous connection to Ireland is cool, and I always wear a touch o' the green. Today, that takes the form of a (fake) jade bracelet and (fake) abalone ring. But, to balance it, I'm wearing an orange shirt...yep, I playing both sides of the line in the Irish culture wars.

I am wondering about whether or not to make the leading man in my new novel Catholic or Protestant...he's definitely Irish!