Their journey's end was only the beginning
by Stephanie Piper
They came from France and from Ireland, from vineyards and potato fields, vistas of mist, old stone, and copper-colored grape leaves.
One was a wine compounder with a packet of handwritten trade secrets. One was a clerk with a passion for books.
They walked the same New York streets, rode the same trolleys. They might have brushed shoulders in Battery Park, or knelt, unknowing, side by side in St. Patrick's.
They never met. They both died young of consumption. Both left young wives, young families, a legacy of hard work, a burning need to learn, to prosper, to get on. They had nothing in common, and everything.
Their names were Henri Beaudouin and Thomas Curtin, my immigrant ancestors. I know little of them. There were glimpses from my grandmother and my ancient great aunt, sepia-toned verbal snapshots of two men who left the old world behind.
My French great-grandfather came from Burgundy and taught Americans to make wine. His notebook was a family treasure, handed down from son to son and finally lost in a house fire in the vineyards of central New York state. The memories remained. He loved good food, a well-set table. There was no scrimping on detail, my grandmother said. The silver and linen had to be just so, the meal served in courses. At holidays, there were jeroboams of Champagne.
My Irish grandfather came from County Cork and worked for a Wall Street lawyer who was the patron of William Butler Yeats and John Synge. His books have come to me, frail first editions on thin paper, inscribed in a fine copperplate hand. I turn their pages and wonder what else I've inherited, what other gifts come from these men I never knew. I think about what they left behind, what they came to find. Their paths never crossed, yet their lives converge in me.
Sometimes I'm convinced it's the Irish side that rules, the quick temper, the love of a story, the easy tears. But I set my own table with care. I hate clumsy meals that end too soon, dinners without candles or conversation. In school, French came easily to me. It always sounded vaguely familiar.
I say their names and try to see their faces. One day a century and a half ago, they boarded ships in Cherbourg and Cork and took to the open sea. They came to New York to make their fortunes.
One day a century and a half ago, they decided we would be Americans. They stood on windy docks at the edge of the old world and took the risk, choosing once for us all.
And though France fills me with a strange longing, though I am drawn to Ireland's terrible beauty, I like to think that some of that courage, that life-changing vision, lives in me.
I like to think that I am here in the place they chose for me. I believe they chose well.
July 3, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 27
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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