Leprechauns, Fairy Rings, and Family Under the Umbrella of Serendipity

When I was a child and my mother was in a rare playful mood, she would feign her own hybrid strain of a Scots/Irish brogue and talk of the magic of leprechauns and flower fairies. At some point in my elementary years, a lanky leprechaun with bendable limbs began appearing in random sightings around the house. Sometimes propped on the bookshelves, other times lounging on a bed pillow or tucked into the crook of a living room wing chair, the green felted fellow with a silly grin and mischievous twinkle in his eye would bear a fortune or a sweet, something to keep us on the look out for his next magical appearance around the house.

I'm sure this clandestine endeavor, being the magic engine of the wee world, gave my mother great pleasure for the brief time that it lasted. When pulling the puppet strings of magic grew tiresome, however, the leprechaun was retired, and I was left to find my own serendipitous signs. Magic in the natural world and in the realms that rise up from the pages of books have kept me company from an early age when much of my time was spent in solitary play out and about exploring the circumference of a small village. I grew up along the Ohio River in the rolling hills of southwestern Pennsylvania. I am a country girl at the core despite living my last three decades in an outer borough of New York City. I grew up hearing my mother's feigned brogue lilt in flirtatious riffs when her mercurial mania prompted her proud declarations of Scotch-Irish blood.

As it turns out, my mother's family (Tryon) hails from Bilbury, England as far back as 1645. It is my father's family that is more firmly rooted in the Emerald Isle although my father had no need to boast his heritage during my mother's lilting litanies. He simply passed along the detailed genealogy research an odd distant cousin of his had spent years tracking down. All of it is neatly contained in a manila file folder tagged in my father's purposeful hand: Welch Genealogy. Point of origin: Derry County, Ireland, 1700's.

On Saturday, my daughter and I are off to Ireland for two weeks to explore the land of leprechauns, fairies, brogues and family heritage, not to mention beauty and the secrets only the wind can tell. I've got my rain gear and a shamrock umbrella gifted to me from the Land of Lost Not Found. I'm all set!