From: smart_book2001@yahoo.com 
  
 Discovering Ireland.in New York 
  
 By Maura Conlon-McIvor, author of FBI Girl: How I Learned to Crack My 
 Father's Code 
  
 I was Maura long before my birth. My father, a New York-born FBI agent, had 
 savored the name since first hearing it in law school, hoping someday to 
 bequeath it upon a daughter. Maura was a fine gift, but not always 
 straightforward. "Nice meeting you, Mona. Is that Hawaiian?" People had a 
 hard time with my name, and when I was young I never had the nerve to 
 correct them. 
  
 We lived about a 40-minute drive from Hollywood, and 15-minutes to 
 Disneyland. I didn't measure the exact miles because when you're growing up 
 near the happiest place on earth and the town where movies are made, who 
 wants to hear that Maura is Irish for Mary? Why bother mentioning cultural 
 roots when I'm cycling to the noon showing of The Son of Flubber or dreaming 
 of Tinkerbell's cool outfits? Ireland wasn't even on the map. 
  
 That is, until my Irish-born grandmother, Molly, arrived from New York City. 
 Chuckling with her Celtic brogue, she handed me a beautifully illustrated 
 children's book about her homeland. I can still see my first images of 
 leprechauns, rainbows, pots of gold, double-decker buses, little girls with 
 red hair, and shamrocks. I suspected the thrills in Ireland surpassed every 
 highly coveted "E" ticket ride at Disneyland, and that the doors to this 
 emerald kingdom didn't close at midnight. Ireland was chockablock with 
 secrets awaiting discovery. 
  
 The clues seemed to reside back East. My grandmother, I learned, wasn't the 
 fairy tale sort who lived in a shoe with some old man Hubbard. She was a 
 County Clare-born farm girl who emigrated to the Bronx, the eldest of 
 several children, and part of a New York-based clan-an Irish clan-a concept 
 foreign to our sun-kissed housing tract. My parents, too, added their own 
 mysterious fuel: around our house, New York was never called New York, but 
 back home. It didn't matter that my parents had lived in California for 
 decades, and raised five kids there. 
  
 Life took an interesting turn when I traveled to New York as a teenager. No 
 longer was I spelling my name after introductions. I wasn't Laura, or Mona 
 the Hawaiian, but a veritable Irish-American princess. I visited relations 
 in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, startled and fascinated to meet others 
 with equally Celtic names. 
  
 I met young girls who did Irish step dance. I read Irish newspapers actually 
 published in Manhattan. I listened to my relatives sing Irish songs well 
 into the night, wistful as they told tales about the St. Patrick's Day 
 parade, and the many years they've marched through rain, sleet, sun or snow. 
 My Uncle Ed, a tall Catholic priest from Brooklyn, drove me in his Checker 
 cab throughout New York, pointing out the Irish neighborhoods, and the 
 places where my grandparents were reared, regaling me with clan history. 
  
 I learned about my Irish American grandfather, Michael Hogan, who with an 
 eighth grade education, worked as a stereographer for the old New York 
 World-Telegraph and later the Post. Perhaps my grandfather chose the 
 newspaper business because he loved words. By all accounts, he was a 
 gregarious storyteller. Our last photograph of him was taken on his final 
 trip to California, which coincided with St. Paddy's Day. In Los Angeles, we 
 got to be Irish every March 17th. The icing on our cupcakes turned green 
 with the help of food coloring, and the beef was corned, not roast. In New 
 York, however, it seemed you could be Irish everyday. 
  
 Years later I packed my bags, moved to Manhattan, and found a job, like my 
 grandfather, in the publishing business. I visited the old neighborhoods, 
 attended Irish cultural events, dined at the Pig and Whistle, always 
 enthusiastic to discover the waiter's county of origin. These Celtic 
 connections made back home my home. Such things I wrote in letters to my 
 father, thanking him for my lyrical name. 
  
  
 Author 
  
 Maura Conlon-McIvor graduated from The University of Iowa and has worked as 
 a journalist, editor, and producer on both coasts. She holds a doctorate in 
 Depth Psychology and lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon. 
  
  
 Maura Conlon-McIvor's memoir, FBI Girl: How I Learned to Crack My Father's 
 Code, is available from Warner books at all major booksellers in August 
 2004. 
  
  
 For more information, please visit www.fbigirl.com, or 
 www.writtenvoices.com. 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)