A long lost relative had reemerged via a strange form letter sent to all members of my family. Phones were a buzz when aunts and uncles exchanged calls all wondering who this Francis was and what did he want with my family?

Turns out, the geneology bug doesn't just bite Americans looking for roots, but sometimes your roots come looking for you. Francis was a long lost Irish relative on my father's side of the family...the mutt side. I was thrilled because I could trace, very directly, my mother's family to county Cork, making me a very legitimate entry in a bar on the infamous March holiday. In fact, our story is so overproduced and traditional (great grandma came over on a boat during the famine, worked as a domestic in Boston for an older lady and married a railroader (three, actually) and made her way across the country to the Midwest) that it's comforting in some ways to have the traditional immigrant experience under your belt. You feel connected to a story told many times over and feel safe in calling it your own.

But now, Francis enters the picture and another link to County Cork comes calling and it turns out I can live the ultimate punchline: Both sides of my family are from the same county in Ireland. I rock.

So, it's the perfect excuse to make my first non-border town international excursion and with a good friend in tow, we hit Chicago's airport for my first over -ocean flight to meet up with Francis and his two beautiful daughters. We circled the country, toured it top to bottom, but perhaps our time spent with his daughters was most revealing.

The girls stared at us, afraid of what to say, constantly nudged forward by their mother, my cousin Lucia. Finally, the impass in international relations broke down when after dinner, the 8 year old and 6 year old showed us their rooms and breached the divide with the one question they must have been churning with all afternoon. "Do you know Britney Spears?" Never in my life have I been so saddened that I had to answer "no." They had such hope in their eyes that they could return to school the next week and report that their link to America was indeed, TRULY linked to all that is America. Their own sets of myths and fantasies insisted that all Americans knew one another and all women sang and danced and met with youthful success as Britney did.

Our travels were stunning and all wonderful, from pub to ancient cathedral, the trains, the people, even the fish were fantastic.

The best of the journey, however, was our chance to live a myth in real time. It was St. Patrick's Day eve and we ventured to a small suburban town outside of Dublin with a new friend and traveling companion. We crammed ourselves into his friend's subcompact and braving potholed, unpaved roads to the Stoop Your Head pub (aptly named because a large beam in the center of the aged building loomed low and everyone cracked their head on it after a few pints...causing the locals to holler out "Stoop your head!" Really, the frankness of the Irish people is refreshing.).

We sat in a traditional Irish pub, in Ireland on the eve of the over celebrated (in America, anyway) holiday. We drank pints of Irish beer (that truly does taste better when consumed on the Isle) and as it came time for the clocks to turn their dates over to the 17th, the bar amped its energy. Drunken men and women with ruddy faces and dopey grins sloshed pints and smacked heads and sang. A small set of musicians playing traditional Irish instruments and fare grew bawdier and stunningly, instruments started to appear--whistles, drums, even more mandolins and crowd regulars joined in. A rousing rendition of all songs Irish suddenly became a enhanced by a chorale of all pub goers, sloshing and singing as one.

And then, it was St. Patrick's day. We were high on Guiness. We were singing and had strangely, in a matter of a  few hours, picked up the charming accent, and my friend and I turned to one another, toasted our glasses high in the air and shouted "We're in an Irish pub, in Ireland, on St. Patrick's Day and it looks just like a movie!"

It did, it was. The image is crystalized in my mind and I'm ever thankful for that. I still know how to mumble through the too-fast pace of a drunken Mary Mac and how to hold my pint high to honor The Night Paddy Murphy died, but mostly I will remember, whether you Stoop Your Head or not, some images and traditions of culture are pleasant, flattering and bejeweled in the accuracy of how wonderful a moment of unity with a roomful of people you desperately want to be connected to can feel. Slainte!