Ode to my Family

Even at a young age, I was aware, on some level, that American culture characterized the best of me as the worst of me, meaning my forthrightness, my sensitivity, my passion, my fight, while my Irish grandmother flipped the equation and encouraged me at age 10 to hold fast to all of these things "even when the rest of them don't want to talk about this, don't want to talk about that, they don't want to hear about this, don't want to hear about that, we can talk about this, we can talk about that" in her warm, insistent Irish lilt. 

And later in my childhood, even during my limited interactions with them in New York or Florida, I saw an openness, a lack of repression accompanied always by an irritation with insincerity (that I clearly share) in my Irish relatives raised outside America that gave me grounding, that help me to this day, that make me proud to be Irish, and of them, to this day.