The person behind the letters
I grew up in the shadow of Cobh.
Where Ireland said goodbye to a million souls. Now I'm writing back to their grandchildren.
I'm Katie. I live in County Cork, on the south coast of Ireland, and I have red hair, freckles, and a lifelong love affair with the United States.
It started in Cobh. Growing up near the harbour where so many Irish emigrants took their last look at Ireland before crossing the Atlantic, I spent summers talking to American tourists who had come back looking for something. A connection. A place. A sense of where they came from. Even as a small girl, I was struck by how much Ireland meant to them — often more than it meant to people who'd never left.
I've been to America more times than I can count. I have friends there. I've driven across it, eaten in its diners, sat in its Irish bars listening to people talk about Cork and Kerry and Galway as if they'd been there yesterday — when really it was their grandmother who had been there, eighty years ago.
The moment that stays with me most happened at my cousin's wedding in Florida. I was asked to read Go néirí an bóthar leat — May the Road Rise Up to Meet You — first in Irish, then in English. Afterwards, person after person came up to me with tears in their eyes. Some had never heard Irish spoken aloud before. Some didn't know the words but felt something in them anyway. One woman told me her grandmother had said that blessing every morning of her life without ever explaining what it meant.
"Person after person came up to me with tears in their eyes. Some had never heard Irish spoken aloud before. They just felt something."
That's when I understood. The connection is there. It's deep and it's real. It just needs someone to tend to it.
That's what I do. Every month I sit down somewhere in Ireland — at my kitchen table in Cork, on a harbour wall in West Cork, in a townland I've driven out to specifically because someone's family name comes from there — and I write. A real letter. About the place. About the history. About what Ireland looks and sounds and smells like today.
Then I walk to my local post office and I send it to you in America. With an Irish stamp. With love from Ireland.
A few things about me:
- — I'm from coastal County Cork, in the south of Ireland
- — I travel all over Ireland regularly — every county, every coast
- — I've been visiting the United States for years and have friends across the country
- — I grew up near Cobh — the last port of call for most Irish emigrants
- — I have red hair and freckles (it's very Irish, I know)
- — I read Irish at weddings and watch grown adults cry
- — I believe Ireland has been meaning to write to its diaspora for a very long time
Katie
County Cork, Ireland
