We Spotted the Ocean

Walk on the Ocean
by Toad the Wet Sprocket

We spotted the ocean
at the head of the trail.
Where are we going
so far away?

Walk on the ocean
Step on the stone
Flesh becomes water
Wood becomes bone

Half an hour later
We packed up our things
We said we'd send letters
And all of those little things.

They knew we were lying
but they smiled just the same
It seems they'd already
forgotten we came.

Now back at the homestead
Where the air makes you choke
People don't know you
Trust is a joke

Don't even have pictures
Just memories to hold
Get sweeter each season
As we slowly grow old.

Kyle was playing this cd in the car on the way to school this morning.  It has always, always reminded me of my Irish ancestors who emigrated to the US back in the 1880s.  I will never know how they left. As far as I know, Jane, my great-grandmother, only went back once.  How did she leave?  How did they let her go?

I was looking them up in Ancestry.com yesterday.  Every now and then, I just get on a tear and want to find out all that I can about them.  I can only go as far back as my great-great grandparents, and then they just fall off the map.  I'm not even sure what one of my gr-gr grandmother's maiden name was.  Mimi wrote it down as Kate Ryan in Dad's baby book, but I can't find a Kate Ryan married to Michael Wilson.  I can find a Catherine (Kate) Heffernan married to Michael Wilson, and they have many of the same children as Grandma Jane's brothers and sisters as far as I can find, but I can't find Grandma Jane listed among them.  There is a Kate Ryan married to a William Wilson, which is the name of Jane's brother.  It's all so confusing, and none of it is centrally organized because the British didn't keep good records of the Catholics.  Each individual church has records but none all in one place.  Anyway, I keep looking for information on Kate and Michael and William and Margaret.

All this to say, that as I was driving home today, and listening to this song and thinking about Jane and John and their leaving of Ireland, I also thought of Elisha and Rebecca and John and Sarah and Lucy and George.  They all left what they knew to come to Kentucky when it was young.   Especially Rebecca came to my mind.  She had 14 children, five of them sons.  Again, I think of my own son, and how different, how protected his life is now.

Last weekend, I let Kyle go out with Will on Saturday night.  They met up with some girls and went to Cherokee Park and then out to get food and then back to one of the girls' houses.  He texted me twice where he was and was home by midnight.  I was still nervous until he walked in the door.

Rebecca's sons, on the other hand, would have been out and maybe on their own by age 16.  Certainly they would have been out.  With a gun.  Loaded.  In territory still inhabited by Native Americans who were hostile to the takeover of their lands by white settlers.  With bears and bobcats and snakes around.  And outlaws.  They would probably be gone for days, weeks at a time.  With no phone calls or texts to let her know they were okay.  No GPS to get them home if they got lost.  How did she stand it?  Did she love her children less than I do mine?  Did she maybe not get as attached since their lives were so precarious anyway?  How does a mother raise up a child and then let them go?  I just don't understand.

And how did Catherine and Margaret let their children leave Ireland?  How did Catherine watch most of her dozen kids sail away to distant lands knowing she would probably never see them again?  Certainly the ones who went to Australia were gone forever.  Maybe the ones in America would be back someday, but maybe not.

As my own children get closer and closer to leaving home, I look to my female ancestors and wonder how they did it.  I try to draw strength from them and remember that it is not like it was.  We have phones and internet and cars and planes.  Life is easy.  It is connected.  Distance is not forever anymore.  Even so, how do I let go?