I’m proud of my Irish heritage and my courageous great-grandmother who emigrated to the United States by herself as a teenager. She built a life in Philadelphia and returned to her home in Carrigart, Co, only once after she became a mother. My grandmother travelled back with her as an 11-year-old, and most of my early impressions of Ireland came from the stories she told.
We usually hunker down and aren’t too bothered by a couple of days without power. This time the threat of the storm escalated quickly, and we opted to get out of harm’s way while there was still time The neighbourhood’s Irish culture persists today, with multiple Irish pubs and the annual St Patrick’s Day parade that rolls by our house. The historical connection to Ireland is charming, but the main reason we settled in this part of the city is because it sits on high ground along the river and is not prone to flooding during storms.
If we had waited a day we would have been in trouble. Despite being far from the path of the storm, gas stations were chaotic, and there was tension on the road as other evacuees rushed out of Louisiana