Last week, I wrote here about my Granny’s birthday. She was just one of many in my family to have a birthday in August. My mother’s birthday was August 24th, and my father died on the same date in 1999. It was hardly deliberate on his part, but it can’t be denied that he liked the limelight. And he succeeded every August 24th thereafter in stealing some of the attention from the indisputable fact that it was Mam’s birthday first and for many years before that. Then, his death was sudden. He died as everyone should, peacefully and in his sleep.
My late brother Pearse’s birthday was August 27th and so many McGarry birthdays of the next generations also take place in August. Most of the latter McGarrys are in the US. Indeed, were it to be assessed by number, you would now have to conclude that the McGarry’s are an American family with originals of the species still in the “Auld Sod”. This is all thanks to the dedicated efforts of two brothers of mine who emigrated to the US in the 1980s.
Their commitment, and that of their children now too, to the biblical injunction to increase and multiply cannot be doubted. They continued in the US a family tradition which was not necessarily always admired at home. Back in the day a former girlfriend of one brother here in Ireland was warned by her father “ ... watch that fella. All them McGarrys is good for is breeding.”
There was some truth in it too. It being the way of karma, that same man’s name has now died out as he had a family of girls, and a son who had one child, a daughter. We’re still breeding.
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Judging by the number of August birthdays in our wider family it would seem November is a particularly favoured month for indulging the family passion. Very understandable too. It is a welcome distraction from the encroaching darkness of winter, with only more of the same to come.
Still, I won’t have a word said against November. My birthday is towards the safe (Sagittarian!) end of that month (who would want to be a Scorpio?). It means I am a child of light, of lengthening days, hope and Spring, being conceived towards the end of February.
Karma, from Sanskrit, meaning “fate”.
