Growing up, I was lucky enough to know my great-grandma Mary Gordon (née Roche). The odd Saturday after dance class my mom would tell us we were going to Great Grandma’s, to the disbelief of the other dance moms who had lost their own grandmothers years ago.
My great-grandma Gordon lived to be 96. She was full of life right to the end, and stories, so many stories, a trait she passed down to her eldest, my grandmother.
I always knew there was importance in the stories she told. I’d sit at her feet rapt by the tales she spun from her armchair in her living room on Stella Avenue in the North End of Winnipeg, a long way from where she grew up in County Clare, Ireland.
When I was a child, she used to tell me that she wasn’t born, she was “found under a rock by a leprechaun.” She never failed to tell me this with a straight face and I never failed to laugh; I just thought she was playing into Irish stereotypes.
Five years after her passing, I set off to travel Europe on my own for a month. My first stop? Ireland. I learned so much about Irish history, including the Irish Civil War and the Great Famine.
On one of my last days, I popped into a gift shop. A stand of Irish family names caught my eye. I searched for Roche and found the familiar red and yellow crest with the three fish, framed with a write-up on the family’s origins. It read:
“originated in France as de la Roche, meaning ‘of the rock’.”
I read it again before a wry smile spread across my lips. I laughed, finally understanding the punchline of my great-grandma’s twisted Irish joke. After all these years, she really was telling me exactly who she was.