“Have you taken the Guinness tour?” the guide asks. A playwright with the Abbey Theater. Handsome, with an odd way of not looking right at you when he speaks. “No,” we say. “Not for us.” He nods, approvingly. “So, have you come on an ancestral quest?” Not exactly. Not in truth. “Guinness!” he shouts suddenly. “The hug your father never gave you!” And we all laugh, the kids especially, looking at me beneath long, blonde lashes. “Do Americans even like Guinness?” he asks sincerely. “No,” I say, remembering wakes and confirmations and long days in the pub. “I never have.”
Beth Anne Cooke-Cornell is a poet, former college professor, fiction writer, and very Irish-American.