I often tell my friends that the only way I'll ever make it to Ireland is to win the Lottery or to write the great Irish-American Novel. I am disabled, and on a limited income, so there's very little chance to save up for something like this. If I go to Ireland I would like to take my 78 y.o. Mother for the mother/daughter trip of a lifetime. I would like to give her the trip that she and my Grandmother had always hoped to make to my Great-Grandmother’s home. I remember my Great-Grandmother. I was astonished when at the age of six my mother told me the story of how Great-Grammie walked all night, bare-footed in order to save her shoes, from Carraroe to catch the train to catch the boat to Boston. She was 16 years old, an orphan, and on her own. She traveled to Boston and then on to Maine where she raised a family of ten children on various Islands off the coast with her lighthouse-keeper husband. They lived off the land and sea much as she had growing up in the Wild West of Ireland. Grammie crocheted Irish Lace to earn her passage. There were five girls in her family, and once Grammie landed in the states she sent money back to bring her sisters here. They all spoke Irish. From the age of six I have wanted to make the trip full circle, from the Mid-Atlantic, to the Rocky Coast of Maine, to the Wild West of Ireland. The Literature, the Language, the Music and Dance cannot entirely capture the true spirit of Ireland unless I can also feel the wind on my face, and meet the people who live and work there. I long to experience it all, my own family history first hand together with my Mother.

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