Love

We were having breakfast at our Limerick hotel. The lovely young waitress heard my cousins’ accents and asked them if they were from New York.

They responded affirmatively.

She said, “My Granny and Granda met in New York.”

We smiled because our own grandparents also met and married in New York. Before they headed back to Ireland with their growing family.

None of us would have been sitting in that hotel restaurant if it weren’t for New York.

She told us that her Granny was sent to America to work at the age of fourteen. Must have been so scary. She was the eldest of twelve children and was promised that some of her siblings would follow her.

That didn’t happen. She was living with a cruel aunt who took her earnings. So was totally on her own.

She then met the man who would become her husband. Had some children before returning to Ireland.

The young girl, in her lilting voice, said, “So you see, Granda rescued her, like. And they never, ever would have met in Ireland. Granny was from Clare and Granda was from Sligo.”

She continued in an awed tone, “So, when I think of love. I think of that.”

Just the way she said it made my eyes fill up.

I just love stories with happy endings.