Harvesting the Heart Read Free Page A

He has come up with many things over the
years, but it has been his misfortune usually to be a step behind.
Like the time when he invented that tie clip with a roll-down plastic
screen, to protect the fabric during business lunches. He called it
the Tidy-Tie and was sure it would be his key to success, but then he
learned that something remarkably similar already had a patent
pending. The same things happened with the fogless bathroom
mirror, the floating key chain, the pacifier that unscrewed to hold
liquid medicine. When I think of my father, I think of Alice, and the
White Rabbit, and of always being one step behind.
    My
father was born in Ireland and spent most of his life trying to
escape the stigmas attached. He wasn't embarrassed to be Irish—
in fact, it was the crowning glory of his life; he was just
embarrassed to be an Irish immigrant. When
he was eighteen he'd moved from Bridgeport, the Irish section of
Chicago, to a small neighborhood off Taylor Street made up mostly of
Italians. He never drank. For a time, he tried, unsuccessfully, to
cultivate a midwestern twang. But religion for my father was not
something you had a choice about. He believed with the zealousness of
an evangelist, as if spirituality were something that ran through
your veins and not through your mind. I have wondered if, had it
not been for my mother, he would have chosen to be a priest.
    My
father always believed that America was just a temporary stop on his
way back to Ireland, although he never let us know how long he
planned on staying. His parents had brought him over to Chicago when
he was just five, and although he was really city bred, he had never
put the farm country of County Donegal out of his mind. I always
questioned how much was memory and how much was imagination, but
I was swept away anyway by my father's stories. The year my mother
left, he taught me how to read, using simple primers based on Irish
mythology. While other little kids knew of Bert and Ernie and Dick
and Jane, I learned about Cuchulainn, the famous Irish hero, and his
adventures. I read about Saint Patrick, who rid the island of snakes;
Donn, the God of the Dead, who gave souls their directions to the
underworld; the Basilisk, whose stale, killing breath I hid from at
night beneath my covers.
    My
father's favorite story was about Oisin, the son of Finn Mac Cool. He
was a legendary warrior and poet who fell in love with Niamh, a
daughter of the sea god. They lived happily for several years on a
jewel of an ocean island, but Oisin could not get thoughts of his
homeland out of his mind. Ireland, my
father used to say, keeps
runnin' through your blood. When
Oisin told his wife he wanted to return, she loaned him a magic
horse, warning him not to dismount because three hundred years had
passed. But Oisin fell from the horse and turned into a very old man.
And still, Saint Patrick was there to welcome him, just like, my
father said, he would one day welcome the three—and then the
two—of us.
    For
the balance of my life after my mother left, my father tried to raise
me in the best way he knew. That meant parochial school, and
confession every Saturday, and a picture of Jesus on the Cross, which
hung over my bed like a talisman. He did not see the contradictions
in Catholicism. Father Draher had told us to love thy neighbor
but not to trust the Jews. Sister Evangeline preached to us about
having impure thoughts, and yet we all knew that she'd been a
married man's mistress for fifteen years before entering the
convent. And of course there was confession, which said you could do
whatever you wanted but always come away clean after a few Hail Marys
and Our Fathers. I had believed this for quite some time, but I came
to know, firsthand, that there were certain marks on your soul that
no one could ever erase.
    My
favorite place in all Chicago was my father's workshop. It was dusty
and smelled of wood shavings and airplane glue, and in it were
treasures like