I’m “Home” Again, Kathleen: Trans Reflections on Mother Ireland.

She’s Joan Crawford with a brogue.

Lady Lavery as painted by John Lavery 1927

It’s that time of the year again.

The scuttering of shamrocks and shenanigans that is St Patrick’s Day. No longer the one day, mind. Now it’s a festival. It has flowered into four thunderous days of high jinks. New and improved with a dose of contagion free of charge. Covid handed out free passes to the local ICU for many of the revelers this year. Worst spike in infection since those grim days before the first lockdown.

But sure, what of that?

Kathleen Ni Houlihan, the flame-haired vixen that is Mother Ireland, is alive alive-oh again. She reclines upon the sea like it’s a chaise lounge, waving her mermaid’s wave at the rest of the world.

The lockdown has done her the world of good. She’s revivified and all dolled up to party again. The Goddess of hooleys and refugees. She is both cabaret and noble sanctuary again. Always was and forever will be.

Amen.

Ukrainian citizens seeking asylum rush to her buxom shores on gusts of shock and hurt. And she waits for them with the patience of a Raphaelite Madonna. Eyes downturned, demure for the cameras. The sea breezes attend to her like the birds who helped Cinderella titivate for her big moment. A stray wisp of red hair dances, the sudden billow of her cloak. They can feel her concern as far as Mariupol. She is a port for every species of storm you can think of.

The Cliffs of Moher as captured by Chandler Lovelle. Pininterest.

She has even become amenable to people like me.

I have to give her that, daft glorious wench that she is. Under her protection, I can blossom though I’m on the breadline, bloom between the cracks. Me, her prize penitent piglet, forever running back squealing to her heaving bosom. No longer the sow that eats her own farrow, she irradiates a vegan glow. Or is it a pallor? Despite her well-known taste for Christian makeovers, she isn’t made of stone, you know. When push comes to shove I am a sort of refugee too now that I’m broke and between genders. She can accept me in this form. She’s even a bit interested.

She likes to shock the neighbors too, the old minx. Her priggish reputation shatters in the shockwave of her new, spicy magnanimity.

Nowadays, I can transition on the medical card. I can change my sex for a song of sixpence. Imagine that, now. That’s a new string on her harp. Her Health system lumbers like a beast of burden but Oestrogel and hormone blockers for the penitent on isle two, if you please.

Crone? Which crone are you referring to? There are none here. Shawls and open-sleeved dresses are, like smallpox, so ooooverrrr. She’s had a checkered past, sure haven’t we all? She’s come a long way in a short time. From those days she scratched around on one of those godforsaken islands off the Galway coast. But she turned it all around fair play. Now she is a good time girl with a heart of gold. Everyone’s favorite, she is the toast of Europe.

Note to self: she must have had work done. I must try to get a peak behind her ears. Even national personifications need a bit of maintenance now and then.

The bane of a generation of Irish people. The author Peig Sayers.

She has a particular love for the seed that falls on rocky ground. Now she makes with silver linings like a coke dealer in a burst of philanthropy.

But her generosity is dubious, I’m afraid. Her little acts of charity are like trails of breadcrumbs straight into a poverty trap. Its jaws springed and taut as a snare but lacquered in honey. Tis a thing of great beauty and construction if you are not caught in it.

There you go now, mo croi, she croons, almost lunar with maternal largesse. Despite the facelifts, liposuctions, dermabrasions, breast augmentations and skin grafts, she still sounds the same. Bitter and mean. Not all the surgeries on the planet will feminize that rural accent of hers. It is thick with the innuendo of curses. The same with her eyes. She’d cut the legs from under you if you spoke out of turn. I’m clamped to her fecund tit by her milkmaid’s chokehold. I can’t see the bigger picture from here. Her regirdered Playboy dugs are in the way. A clammy billowing of juddering skin with its bouquet of spilled milk. A codependence that has flakes of sulfur in it. If you complain you are losing the will to rise and move on from her, she’ll cuss you out for base ingratitude.

Fucking whelp, she storms, aiming a slap at your scalp like you’re a pup who’s shat on her new doormat. A toxic form of mother love behind all the ethnic drag. Her teats, red and swollen like she has the milk fever. The vulnerable can only gape, weak and trembling for their turn to feed, blinkered with the hunger.

The neighbors think her a class act. They won’t hear a bad word said about her. They wait in line to talk to her. Maureen O Hara pales by comparison to this Celtic spitfire. They don’t see the stasis she cradles in her work strong arms. They’re bewitched by her metamorphosis.

What the bitch wont tell you is that she has hypoplasia. She hasn’t enough milk to feed us all. And she doesn’t care about it either.

Not. One. Jot.

She’s an excellent mother when on show.

Virtuous as a Rose of Tralee. The spare, nourishing squirt she has for you will not only have to do but it becomes important as lifeblood. It lulls you into your place with a caress that stunts you. I can’t live without her obsessive safeguarding of me. I long to marinate in it. The world is a bigger bitch than she. Didn’t I find that out by my dozy empiricism? Better the termagant you know.

She’s Joan Crawford with a brogue.

She reacts to the questioning of her parenting like you’ve taken to using wire hangers to hang up your party frocks.

Words speak louder than actions at her kitchen table. Be happy with the basics and forget those wild dreameens of yours. She’s the archetype of the common or garden Irish Mammy after all. She’s not that thrilled with the mynah bird she has on her hands but I’m better than nothing. It’s still her house, her rules. I must be grateful for her permission to be yet not to be. Not a step nor strand of hair is to be out of place.

Crazy old yoke, she’ll explode in rage for your complete submission to her buxom wiles. Then, like a lady of the manor, ask you to pass the teapot, please, fine girleen that you are. I don’t know where I stand with the crazed old hoor. Or perhaps I do. Right out in the middle of No Person’s Land.

We haven’t bonded you see, never have, and its ruined my life.

On the surface of it all vast patches of Roses sway in synch to breezes of smiles. But beneath it, her inability to love has devastated me. Right down to the hypothalamus, tiny and dry as a conifer cone in my brain. Her sense of duty and her coercive nature are no substitute for true affection. It has made me listless as a cirrus cloud. She drove me to drink in a desperate attempt to make up for the lack of oxytocin between us. It has cut me off from the herd. I am nothing outside her unventilated cuddles.

Kathleen you delightful old whore.

You provide me with a silver lining.

But you provided the cloud.