When Irish eyes are smiling

Yes!" I said, without hesitation, when my sister Barbara Ann said over the phone, "Roy thinks you and I should take a trip to Ireland together." That would be easier said then done. My sister is a busy professor at Northwestern University school of Engineering in the United States (Roy is her American husband) and I am a busy, sometime-actress and producer of children’s theater in the Philippines and, yes we were born of the same parents so don’t ask why the polarity in careers. She has the brains and I have... whatever. Anyway, it would be several months before we could find a common window – she – after spending summer holidays with her children and grandchildren in California and before starting classes again and I – after opening Picocchio and before starting rehearsals of Cabaret.

Why Ireland? Because some of our roots grow out of Irish soil. I had first visited Ireland in the late Sixties and will never forget the warmth and love with which I had been greeted by what its members call "The Family." My sister had never been there.

"The Family" are the descendants of James Stewart, a farmer, of Moneydaragh, Annalong, in County Down, Northern Ireland, and his wife Mary Ann Russell. The original Stewart farm where three Stewart sons and six Stewart daughters were born and raised is the gathering place for visits from generations of Stewarts from all over the world. Since 1968 I had kept in constant communication with an uncle (my mother’s first cousin) and his wife. When they passed on I stayed in touch with his daughter, Maureen. She put me in touch with a cousin, Bernagh, who lives just outside of Belfast, who set up a marvelous series of visits and activities and made sure we made maximum use of the week we were there. A nice surprise was that Maureen flew over from Scotland to be with us. She and Bernagh were on hand to meet us at the train station (we had come from Dublin) and to take us to the car rental agency where her partner Michael, who is a university professor, was waiting. He had the foresight to see that my sister would have to be taught how to drive a car with the steering wheel on the right side – on the left side of the road! I was supposed to help with the driving but I chickened out.

With Michael in the front seat guiding, and only a few near-mishaps, we got to their house for a delicious lunch that Maureen prepared – taking time from her busy schedule as the person in charge of children’s programs at the BBC. They helped us plan a week that would see us visiting a castle; walking through a forest with its tumbling streams and ancient trees; struggling in the wind as we walked on a rock formation that was millions of years old; walking through a country fair, drinking Guinness in a pub; driving along the breathtaking northern coast of Ireland and drinking in the contrasting beauty of the white-capped sea with its windswept beaches and rocky cliffs and the gently rolling, emerald green stone-fenced fields dotted with sheep and cows and pretty farmhouses; and learning about Irish history and politics. Much of this was in the company of Bernagh, Michael and Maureen. But best of all was getting to know our relatives and exchanging information about the family and about ourselves.

The Steward family apparently was an intellectual and adventurous one. My grandmother, Grace, went to South Africa as a British civil servant. She met and married my grandfather who was, as we discovered from old pictures in the farmhouse, a friend of her brother who also went to South Africa. We are still trying to piece together how and when she met my grandfather (a protestant minister from England) and why she had gone to South Africa. (My mother was born in South Africa but her parents moved to the United States where she grew up and eventually met my father. She then came to the Philippines where she lived the rest of her life). Another sister, Cha, a teacher, traveled to South Africa, to Canada, to Greenland (as a volunteer during the big flu epidemic of 1918) and then to France. She went back to Ireland to take care of the two young children of her newly widowed oldest brother James. These children, Russell and Joan, are now in their ’90s and still live on the farm. Another sister, Louie, studied to be a lawyer but, being a woman, was not allowed to practice. So she went back to the farm and grew a beautiful flower garden. Two other sisters, Elizabeth and Minnie, married two brothers and Maureen and Bernagh, her sister Gillian (who gave us lunch at their vacation home overlooking the Irish sea), and Barry, who we also met, are their grandchildren. These families lived at various times in Ireland, New Zealand, England, Canada, the United States and Scotland. According to Maureen and Bernagh, when they were children they often would vacation in Moneydaragh and the cousins remain close. Some of their parents built retirement homes in Annalong. Thus the highlight of this trip to Ireland was the visit to Moneydaragh..

With James I and Mary Ann looking on from a photograph on the wall, and pictures of the sisters and brothers and young descendants scattered around, we sat in the bright sitting room looking over photos that Joan – diminutive and deceptively frail-looking – had taken the trouble to dig up. Russell, slowed by age and illness, but with the dignity befitting a host, sat quietly in a wing-chair by the fireplace occasionally dishing out a bit of Irish humor or engaging in a bit of banter with Maureen and Michael. We tried to piece together histories from memories suddenly stirred by the photos andthe conversation. We discovered, for example, that Bernagh’s mother had been born in my grandmother’s house in the United States and that my grandmother, her brother and her father died in the same year – possibly as the result of the great flu epidemic of 1918.

Outside, we had a photo shoot – the house, the old barn that had once been the scene of many barn dances when the cousins were in their teens, a chicken house now crumbling and overgrown with weeds, and other farm buildings now closed and silent. Then, led by Joan, we walked down Stewart’s Road which is the official name of the road which fronts the house. It was pure heaven for me walking down the graveled road, feeling the soft, gentle rain and wind on my face and breathing the cold, country air that had just a hint of the smell of manure from the cows and sheep that still grazed on stone-fenced fields – the majestic, misty, Mourne Mountains always in our view. Once in a while, since it was still summer, the sun would shrine and the sky would suddenly turn from grey to blue - very typical of Irish weather.

When we returned we gathered around the table, in the same bookcase-lined room that had always been the family dining room, for a delicious dinner that Bernagh said our grandmother would have served – Gammon ham, roasted potatoes bursting from their skin – so naturally light and fluffy – boiled carrots and parsnips, cabbae, and, of course, plenty of fresh bread (three kinds including the ever-present Wheatern Bread) and butter – accompanied by apple cider. Then there was apple crumble with fresh créme for dessert. After dinner we reluctantly said good-bye to Russell and Joan and Moneydaragh.

My deepest roots are imbedded in Philippine soil – most of them intertwining with and finding strength in the sturdy, robust roots of my husband’s family tree. My father’s Visayan roots I have yet to trace and remain a promise. But I am like a tree sitting on a ledge, with the roots of one side growing straight down into deep, fertile soil and the roots on the other side stretching over shallow top soil looking for a place to anchor. Whether it is purely in my romantic imagination or because circumstance has actually given me no other ancestral home, Moneydaragh seems to give me this anchor. By reconstructing the past and making that past meaningful through warm personal contact with relatives, I strengthen my roots on all sides. This makes me a stronger tree.