I never thought of myself as having an Irish heritage

My maiden name is Irish in origin and it's possible my first name is basically Irish for "Little (my Mom's middle name)". 

That's a very recent epiphany that occurred some weeks ago at the tender age of sixty. 

My father mostly didn't speak of his Cherokee heritage. His heritage was a largely invisible influence on my life and the silence with which he treated it made things related to it invisible to me.

That's from a piece on this blog called Making the Invisible Visible, originally published on a blog called Native Influence. At some point, I also blogged about some of my childhood friends who seemed to have few or no other friends except me, one of whom was half Cherokee and one of whom was one quarter Cherokee. I don't believe I ever republished those pieces anywhere.

If my father was tight lipped about his Cherokee heritage, he more or less ghosted on his Irish heritage. A little like me realizing only after he died that he told funny stories about Vietnam and NO stories about World War II, my Irish heritage is even more invisible than my Native heritage.

I grew up bugging my mother about "How do you say this in German???" and she would answer my questions but also actively discouraged my interest in German, saying "It's not like you live there."

I did manage to live there for nearly four years in my twenties and met some of my German relatives on my mother's side of the family. And somehow felt more whole after that, like I had regained some piece of myself denied me my whole life.

I knew my father's side of the family even less well and never thought to bug my father about cultural tidbits from his heritage. He was American and I was growing up in America and I deludedly didn't feel cut off from my heritage on my father's side of the family like I did from my family heritage on my mother's side of the family.

It never occurred to me to wonder if he knew anything about Irish culture or language. As far as I knew, my Irish maiden name was my only connection to Ireland and presumably that happened so long ago it wasn't really pertinent to my father's life nor to mine.

But if I was named "Little Dorothea" after my mother, perhaps I'm wrong about that.

The Irish came to the US in large numbers due to the Irish Potato Famine. They weren't exactly welcomed here and weren't initially treated as "white" people. They were unwelcome outsiders and othered.

My older sister told me "Get your Irish up" is slang for getting angry. Perhaps not unrelatedly, my father once told a family story, I think about some feisty uncle who was left for dead and permanently disfigured, floating facedown in the river where flies laid eggs in his mangled lips. Even the flies thought he was dead.

I was told it was the fly eggs in his lips that left him permanently disfigured. I think after that he finally figured out how to not get in a fight every time he turned around.

I've always been fond of certain songs from Irish bands. Zombie by The Cranberries comes to mind.

I have no idea anymore where I heard the expression Black 47, possibly the band by that name or perhaps some song line. I bothered to look it up though and learned that it refers to the worst year of the Irish Potato Famine, 1847.

I imagine a lot of Americans don't know that. We just think a lot of stuff from English speaking bands from various countries that fall in some "like us" nebulous box in the minds of Americans are interesting for being "like us, but with a twist" and only care about the part we read -- or misread -- as similar without bothering to learn about whatever it is about them that gives that refreshing twist of flavor, as if it's superficial entertainment and not people bleeding for their supper and calling it song.

I look at Irish bands or things in some way associated with Ireland and feel a strange pang, like it's a long lost cousin whose name I was never told and don't quite feel entitled to introduce myself to. 

I never took a strong interest in my Native heritage until after my father died and I saw some photo of Gary Farmer that looked uncannily like my father. I'm annoyed that Natives seem so hostile to me being interested in my Native heritage from my father's side of the family.

It's a legitimate interest and there's nothing nefarious about it or somehow harmful to Natives.

I don't really feel I have a right to be curious about Ireland and Irish culture based on the strength of "I used to have a surname that originated there, before I got married and traded it in for some anglicized French surname."

And I don't know how to feel about it at all with realizing Doreen may not have anything to do with the Greek language I once took two classes in and might, instead, be another Irish name given to me by my father and secretly recording his special fondness for a surprise package baby he was told years earlier he had no hope of getting and how I reminded him of my mother, whom I know he adored.