It was Irish Dance for me.

What people don’t know- but probably should assume, is that Santa Monica, CA is full of older Irish/Scottish ex-pats.

I say they should assume because Santa Monica is the exact opposite of whatever cold and likely grey town everyone’s Granny is from. It certainly was the case for mine. She came to Venice in 1973 from Belfast and promptly settled in with a group of immigrant friends with names like McManus, McCluskey, Thompson and McGovern. She went home a few times, but never in the winter.

It’s been said that Irish women are always freezing and I don’t disagree with that statement. I’m sitting in my boyfriend’s apartment in Mar Vista and it’s 70 degrees and sunny and I am frozen.

Being the first generation to be born and raised here without interruption, it was my responsibility to keep tradition and culture- which mostly meant accepting gifts of beautiful knit sweaters from Great-Aunts back home and learning how to make sausage rolls. I did not mind my role as cultural ambassador in the least, especially when I realized it meant that the manager of the Tudor House (one of only two ethnic eateries on the 3rd street promenade and place where my dad proposed to my mom) would sometimes let me take an extra bickie home with me from the bake shop. I was also fascinated with the psychic that came to read people’s cards at tea. She had beautiful auburn hair and silver rings on all her fingers and thick accent.

I should also mention that this was 1997 the height of Riverdance fever in suburban America. I asked to be, and was promptly enrolledin, the Cleary School of Irish dance. The uniforms were black pants and a purple shirt with the “Celtic Friendship Knot” on the back, though I’m not entirely sure how accurate that interpretation is. My pants were from Gap kids, made of a windbreaker material with glittery racing stripes up the side. My shoes were from an Irish import store filled with dusty calendars featuring a variety of terrifying green cliffs and cans of Heinz vegetarian beans (in the teal can).

I remember being good at Irish dance but not great at showing up to practice. I remember a lot of nights spent in the dance studio on Lincoln Boulevard next to an Arby’s that is now a Wendy’s- and, being a child unaware of my crippling salt allergies, I’d beg my mother for a french dip sandwich after despite the blinding migraines that always accompanied them. I remember when Mrs. Clearly started arranging appearances at local Feis (pronounced fesh).

They wanted us to wear those curly wigs when we danced and I flat-out refused. I said it was “racist” (being 7 and unaware of the term “culturally insensitive”) because I was as Irish as aggressive hospitality and tragic irony yet my hair hung down my back, stick-straight and brown; There wasn’t a ginger ringlet on my or my mother’s head. It should also be noted that I refused to eat Lucky Charms “on principle” and I hated Seamus Finnegan in Harry Potter- I mean, he was always trying to turn something into rum and that name and, ugh. Why not just name him Potato McStereotype, Jo?

Anyway, I wasn’t picked for the Feis, but my classmate Erika Brauer was. Erika wore a dirndl to culture day at school because her family was German- but Erika was willing to wear the curly wig. I quit shortly after.

A year later I had transferred to the Catholic school I would spend the rest my academic career in. The Cleary School of Irish Dance performed at our school carnival (A tradition later ended by our principal, a woman who looked like a mean bird and told students her last name was Italian for “widow”.) and Erika was there, wig and all. I didn’t watch them perform. I pretended I was stuck in line to get teriyaki BBQ cooked by my new best friend, Michelle’s, dad.

My mom asked me later if I regretted quitting Irish dance. I told her, truthfully, that I wasn’t. While I couldn’t articulate it then, I understood that being Irish wasn’t what I did, what I ate or even if I had ever been to the Motherland. It was what I am. It’s in my Granny’s eyes she gave to me, in my humor, in the fact that I am always freezing and the crippling Catholic guilt I can’t seem to shake. Plus, if there is one thing American kids aren’t great at accepting, it’s “weird ethnic stuff they don’t 100% understand”.

All of that being said, however, I will still dance if I’ve had a little too much to drink and someone starts clapping. I’m not great at it, but it’s just for the craic.