Ireland should have felt alien,
but it never did during our visit,
nor had Scotland years earlier.
And it wasn’t that I loved Scotch
and Irish Whiskey and Guinness
although I did all of those, and
traditional Celtic music to boot.
What I didn’t know then, what
I wouldn’t learn for a decade
was that my taste for things
Irish and Scottish was woven,
twisted into my genes and I
was helpless to feel otherwise.
So now I raise a glass to my
long dead biological father
for giving me the gift of a clan
and a heritage I had only
long wished I could claim.