[CherylNYC]

I've been having a good, long laugh about a possible wrinkle in my family history. She wasn't that successful in my case, but my mother took great pains to imbue pride in us that we were descended from proud Sephardic and Russian Jews on her side. I think she was less impressed with the combination of Romanian and Polish Jews on my father's side.

Well, it turns out that my father may have been the son of an Irishman! And a really famous one, at that. My cousins matter-of-factly mentioned this to my sister on a recent visit. My uncle was an impressive man whose word I trust. They had always known this story from him, and assumed we did, too. Nope. It was quite an amusing surprise.

My Romanian grandmother was an obscene old woman. I would tend to believe any, uhh, interesting story told about her. She and her sister Flossie were supposedly great beauties and rivals. Flossie was Joe Kennedy's mistress. (Yes, THAT Joe Kennedy.) My uncle used to go to the Kennedy office every Friday and pick up a brown envelope for his aunt. (Payday!?!) My grandmother let it be known that she thought Joe Kennedy was a fine man. One day she and her sister had a falling out and never spoke again. My uncle was small and pale like the rest of his family, and no one seemed to pay any attention to him on Fridays. That always changed whenever my uncle brought his tall, dark and handsome younger brother, (my father- who did NOT look like anyone else in his family), with him. Mr Kennedy would allegedly say to my father, "Come here, boy! Let me have a look at you. You're growing up nice and tall, I see." Yes, really. My uncle and everyone else in his family always assumed that Joe Kennedy had a lot to do with my father. Of course the part that twists my head a little is that, if it's true it would mean that he had something to do with me. Whoa.

Now I feel far less of a tourist about my interest in Irish spirituality.