Blooming
     Part 1
by Erin Flaherty

My parents are odd sorts. Their Irish heritage runs thick, as they're only one generation removed from immigrants. They, however, have divorced themselves from their cultural legacy. I never could understand it. Their pride in being "normal" American citizens far outweighs anything in the past. It's very important to them, this normalcy, and it carried over to how they raised me, their daughter.

When I was young, their pride in me being "normal" was tangible, palpable. It didn't matter that my hair and eyes belied our relatives across the pond. They were just happy that here was their daughter, perfectly normal. Not too short, not too tall, no accent, and no clue whatsoever where her family lived before America. It gave them great pleasure, even though it always seemed like they were watching me, looking for something, afraid they'd be proven wrong. It was like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop. I didn't understand this either.

Puberty. Oh, man, I wish they'd tried to prepare me for it, given me some clue as to what was happening. The hair and body changes were nothing. Those you could look at other girls and do the math, and that didn't prepare me any for the real business of it. I woke up one morning, my body cramped to hell and stumbled to the bathroom. My lower body was tied in knots as I set down, and I felt what seemed like an unnatural slickness, and I looked down to see blood. I thought I had cancer. That's what people did in my family. They got cancer. My grandparents were already dead from it.

So what did I get out of that from my parents? Mostly just a "no you don't have cancer" talk. The weird thing was, they looked proud of me even then. God, what I wouldn't have given to be big enough to hit them, or yell, or scream, or something. What I did do was cry very often, always when they weren't around. They were very pleased I was still normal, though, and they seemed very relieved. They stopped watching me so closely, like what they were looking for had already happened, or was definitely not going to happen. Go figure.

In the years following my painful "introduction to womanhood" I got to play the part of their perfect little girl again, step for step, line for line. It was like it was a part that was written for me. Sway your hips. Wink. Smile coyly. Break hearts. Step, step, step, step, turn, smile. It made them happy. It made me feel fake.

I was eighteen when I first kissed a girl on the lips, and it wasn't long after that I told my parents that I'd enjoyed it. It was my little declaration that I wouldn't play along anymore. There was a lot of shouting and hurtful words said, but none of it sunk in because of one important fact: I was off to college.

If my parents had intentionally orphaned themselves, college was for finding my roots. I became the world's worst gaelophile, with knotwork everything, books on Gaelic, the whole haphazard slapdash works. I was a patently embarrassing person on St. Patrick's Day. This lasted for about a year.

Even after I'd managed to calm myself down a bit, my desire to find out about myself remained. I got letters of recommendation from professors. I traced my genealogy. By the summer before my Junior year, I, Kathy O'Brien, had landed myself a semester abroad with distant cousins in Ireland.

Getting off the plane in Dublin, it was raining outside the terminal. I listened to the staccato beat of raindrops on the roof of the big accordion bridge as I walked, stepping out of the gate. I was supposed to meet my second cousin Eileen there. Looking around, I spotted her, frantically waving a sign. She looked a lot like the photo she sent me when we wrote each other, and the family resemblance was, as I knew, uncanny. She was about four inches shorter than me, and wore glasses. Her face was so much like mine it was scary. She was skinnier than me, with a wiry, rangy build, athletic in a wild and nimble way. I was wearing my hair in a ponytail that day, but Eileen let hers sprawl in a look that was altogether not unlike a dandelion gone to seed.

This made sense to me. Some of her letters had made me wonder if my parents had been right to distance themselves from our Irish relatives. Eileen was a wild woman; that much was certain. She was strange, confounding, and, at that moment everything I needed.

I smiled and walked over to her, putting my arms out for an enormous hug. She did likewise, and I was startled as she managed to pull me off my feet momentarily. Flustered, giggling nervously, I found my balance again and we went to claim my baggage.

Many exasperating lines later, we were good to go, and Eileen led me to the car for the drive out.

If my parents care so much about being normal, I'm sure they would rest assured that our relatives in Ireland would make them seem so by comparison. Big as all out doors. Inscrutable as hell. Above all else, they were all free spirits.

Months passed without so much as a word from most of them. They didn't even really seem to care where I was save at mealtimes, and the classes I was attending went smoothly. Many terse meals, many odd, penetrating looks, and many, many conversations with Eileen.

Increasingly, as the time passed, she was my fresh air. Though surrounded by dour, eccentric relatives, she took the time to show me the country and its charm, from one end to the other. If it wasn't for her, Ireland would be a cold and rainy place to me, in more ways than just the literal sense.

Before I knew it, the semester was almost over.

It was my last week in Ireland, and I couldn't help but feel somehow disappointed. Months there and I still didn't understand my family, or why my parents wanted to forget Ireland. As strange as my cousins were, I just couldn't justify how my parents seemed to clam up whenever I had brought up the subject. I made up my mind and asked Eileen about it.

"Well, Kate, maybe it's the fact that we've got convicts in the family. Then again, maybe it's the fact that Uncle Diarmuid's been known to dance in his birthday suit in the woods and sacrifice a hen every now and again. But maybe, just maybe..."

She trailed off.

"Maybe what, Eileen? Come on, just tell me."

"Well, Kate, maybe they don't want you to find out about the flowers..."

To be continued...