Now I can't reach the tops of their shoulders. John (left) and Thomas. I hope our ancestors somehow knew we'd come back to Ireland. I've learned so much about them in the years since that it only serves to make me admire them more. I'd like nothing so much as to think there's something in me they would recognize and something about my life that would make them proud of me. Our lives, after all, flow in the same river, and the current will carry me to them someday.