When Irish eyes are lumpy

My aunt and uncle celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary party yesterday at the New York Irish Center in Queens. I envisioned a rolling hill with a rainbow and a pot of gold at the end of it. Instead, a red-brick storefront straight out of a Hopper painting, spartanly decorated with the word Fáilte (Welcome), greeted us. After all, this was Queens.

I came with my mother, brother and sister-in-law, and nephew. We missed the mass and arrived in time for the reception. My aunt and uncle's oldest son toasted his parents, teary-eyed. Everyone else was a little weepy too when he invoked a traditional Irish toast:

May the road rise to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
May the rain fall soft upon your fields
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.

Of all my dad's siblings, only his brother married a non-Irish person. Even in the 1960s this was considered a bit of a scandal. Although some of my cousins continued to marry within their ethnicity, I suspect their choice was driven more by availability than by orthodoxy. One cousin married an Italian, one a Latina, one a Russian.

At the end of his toast, my cousin invited us to partake of the copious amounts of food on the buffet table by uttering another traditional toast: Mangia! Lining up at the buffet under the flag of Ireland, we examined the lone tray of sad mashed potatoes, the tuber that brought many Irish people to these shores, and then moved on to food that contemporary Irish New Yorkers are more familiar with: chicken parmigiana, baked ziti, and eggplant rollatini.