“The people here look familiar,” said Mom, a few hours after we’d landed at Dun Laoghaire off the ferry from Holyhead, Wales. At first I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. But after a few days in Dublin I began to understand. The people looked like a lot of the Irish Catholics we knew back home, people like the Bryants, a family with 10 children who lived on Providence Avenue across the street from Christ the King School and Church. They had freckles and round faces and a pleasant way about them.

A week later, down a long lane in County Clare, Mom and I found her cousins, a pair of bachelor uncles who lived in a cottage without electricity. They served us tea in thin china cups that they produced with great ceremony, and they reminisced about meeting my mother’s aunts when they were little boys.

A few days after that, in County Galway, we came across a man named Paddy Concannon, whose connection to us was unknown except that he was the spitting image of my grandfather, Martin Joseph Concannon.

I’ve visited Ireland only once. But I have to remind myself of that fact; it seems like I’ve been there at least a half a dozen times.