Return to Portmagee

Last week, I was in Dublin for a writers’ workshop. After five days of writing and roaming around Dublin, the group headed west for a few days, which included a run around The Ring of Kerry, with a scheduled stop for lunch in Portmagee. As you may recall, I was in Portmagee 27 years ago with my mother and my aunt - one stop on a grand genealogical tour my mother had arranged. Lost at Cousin Jackie’s will refresh your memory.

Lunch in Portmagee? Twenty seven years later? But, how to find Cousin Jackie? I had no luck from the US and was thinking of giving up until I thought to call the local post office (located in O’Connell’s Grocery Store) when I got to Ireland.

Hello, my name is Kate Sullivan and I’m looking for my cousin, Jackie O’Sullivan. The response came back in a thick, rapid fire Kerry accent. I couldn’t make out a word except Doora. I tried to slow him down, but it was all a bit much. I thanked him, hung up, found the word Doora on the Portmagee map and thought, this is hopeless. After an hour, I called again, started to re-introduce myself. You called before, came the response. Yes, I did! I’m hoping I can get in touch with Jackie. Could you give me his phone number? And he did!

My great grandfather, Florence T. Sullivan was born in Tullig in 1879. He and Mary Shea had seven children in this order. Patrick, Timothy, Mary, Michael, Kate, John and Dan.

Jackie is the son of Dan, the youngest. My father was the son of Timothy, the second. In those days, the oldest boy always got the farm. The other boys were left to figure out life on their own. The girls, of course, were an afterthought - probably headed for marriage or the convent. Good luck to them all. My grandfather Tim emigrated to New Haven, Connecticut, where he drove a trolley.

And so, Jackie is my father’s first cousin, even though they are separated in age by 32 years. Below is a 1966 picture of my father and mother visiting the O’Sullivans. My father was in heaven, with his wellies and his memories.

I held my breath and dialed. HELLOOOO? answered the thick Kerry voice. I introduced myself, said I had visited with my mother and aunt Joan 27 years ago. He seemed to remember, or faked remembering, and after telling him I would be in Portmagee at lunchtime on Saturday, he said he’d drive down the hill, and yes, we could ride up to the house so I could see it all again. All those years ago, I had joked with Jackie that I’d like to come back and marry him and fix up the old family house, which he had left vacant.

Funny how these blood connections become sacred as we get older. We are so aware of how short life is, how time passes, we are oddly connected to ages gone by. We finally realize that we are a part of a grand, spinning universe. And so, this family that grew up on the hill in Tullig was my family.

Jackie drove me up the hill, lined now with trim little houses instead of fields full of cows. We drove past the old family house, which he now uses as a shed. Over a cup of tea and a few slices of store-bought fruitcake, Jackie and I sat in his little kitchen and tried to unravel it all. Jackie never married, never had kids. His cousin Patrick has the old house in Tullig now.

As we were driving back down the hill, I said, Jackie, so will you give me the shed? Oh sure I will, he said. I have to decide if I’m too old now to fix it up.