Gradh Geal mo Groide

Somehow before I wrote this post I got to thinking about this Irish folk song. Although you can never go wrong with auld Ronnie Drew (God rest his soul) there is a Theresa Duffy version which is a bit more sprightly than the one posted here. Anyway let’s get down to business,.. stick with me if you can...

92 years ago my grandmother, Nina Jacobsson, was born in Gothenburg into a prosperous Swedish family. She had four brothers, Olle, Jack, Folke and Lars. Olle moved to England before the war where he met and married Peggy, an English woman. Nina had visited him on holiday when the Second World War broke out and as a result stayed in England for the rest of the war and then remainder of her life, having met and married Charles McLeavy, my grandfather, an Irishman born in Port Said, Egypt, and whose own father, also Irish, was born in New York. Nina’s other brothers moved to Utah and Virginia.

Sweden, England, America, Ireland, Egypt. I remember as a child being fascinated by this story which seemed to me then as set in stone as any accepted fact.

Everything adults did seem possessed with certainty, that’s how I remember viewing life when I was young.

This family history of mine has been more in my mind recently as the past few months have been important ones in my family. My younger brother has met and married an American, Kathryn, and they now have started their lives together in Washington D.C. My older brother has also married, to Georgiana, and I of course have moved abroad to live in Poland. Our family has rather spread its wings – considering that in London we lived within five minutes of each other and worked even closer- and all this will one day seem like an accepted fact to our grandchildren, should we be lucky enough to have them. But the doubts and the joys will be missed if that alone is the narrative.

And this gets me on to why I was thinking of this particular folk song: It sings of the “gradh geal mo groide” (the water that divides us). Unlike my grandmother’s generation, my family are now so lucky to be divided by seas but still linked via the internet. We can share our lives with our loved ones and friends. It’s with that in mind that I introduce you to my brother’s new blog: Red Coat Ramblings: An Englishman in DC. You can tell it’s written by my brother, as the first post was about vegetables. I hope you enjoy his blog as much as you may, or may not, enjoy mine. Either way, reading us is free and designed to refine the mind.

Mosquito Bite Count: Five

UPDATE: Decoy in the comments points out that I'm completely wrong in my translation of the Gaelic. But I'm too lazy/indolent/embarrassed/lacksidaisacal [delete as appropriate later, Paddy] to amend, so let this stand and don't go about telling people you heard about the water that divides us from me, alright?!