Today is Hibernian Heritage Day, popularly known as St. Patrick’s Day. Jews don’t have saints, so I celebrate Hibernian Heritage Day. There are a couple thousand Jews in Ireland none of whom are related to me.
I used to think St. Patrick’s Day was a great day if you were Irish, and just an excuse to get drunk if you weren’t. I grew up thinking I was German Catholic. Then, one day, knowing I’d learn The Truth if I got a copy of my birth certificate, I went to City Hall in Buffalo, NY and asked for a copy of my birth certificate. They could’t find it. Finally, I was asked if I ever had a birth certificate. Yes, and I lost it. I was asked if it was green. Yes. I was told my birth certificate was in Albany. Why would it be there if I was born in Buffalo? “You’re adopted.”
I felt as if someone had slammed me into a brick wall. I remember thinking that even my toes hurt. When I was able to move again, I walked the three blocks to the library, asked for microfilm of the Buffalo News from August and September 1952 and began searching. Eventually, I saw that a baby girl was born to Mr. & Mrs. Donald G. Harmon and lived at my grandmother’s address. My father wasn’t the drunk who terrorized me. My father was Donald Harmon whose middle name was Lee rather than anything starting with G. My mother made it up as she went along.
It took five months, but I found my father in Houston, Texas. He was Scott-Irish which explained why so many people asked me if I were Irish.
After I learned my father’s heritage, I celebrated my first St. Patrick’s Day as a Hibernian. It was wonderful. I was right. St. Patrick’s Day is a wonderful day if you are Irish. I ate corned beef and cabbage and washed it down with a plastic cup filled with Guinness.
Eventually, I worked on a family history and discovered my maternal grandmother’s family weren’t German Lutherans. (My mother had married a Catholic so I ended up Catholic for a while.) They were from Dittersdorf, East Prussia. On his citizenship papers, her grandfather renounced loyalty to the king of Prussia. My grandmother told mer her grandmother spoke Hoch Duetsch. She would tell me what her grandmother would say and announce it was Hoch Duetsch. Five semesters of German in college taught me that what my grandmother said was absolutely not Hoch Duetsch. Eventually, I discovered it was Yiddish. Who spoke Yiddish in East Prussia in 1888? Not German Lutherans. I am a Polish Jew on my mother’s side. I am a Jew by both heritage and choice. For several years, I had a Jewish psychologist. He asked me who taught me to be Jewish and I asked him what he was talking about. Turns out, my grandmother, who insisted she was Lutheran, taught me how to be Jewish.
Celebrating Hibernian Heritage Day in southern New Mexico is difficult. No one serves corned beef and cabbage although I probably could find some bar that serves green beer if that sort of thing appealed to me. There’s no parade. Mercifully, there are no green bagels. Sadly, there are no decent bagels. I may make Irish scones later today. I have no Guinness or Harp so no beer today.
Is Éireannach mé. It means I’m Irish.
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