As I was growing up, I eventually came to understand what it meant to say, “My parents were born in Ireland.” Being raised by immigrant parents did not seem to have much of an impact on me, my sister, or my brother as we grew up in an “Irish-Italian neighborhood” in Queens in the 1970s and ’80s. The strongest memories I have of what it meant to be raised by parents born in Ireland were, once a year, on March 17, we were obliged to miss school (which made me very happy) so that we could join my parents and the “County Mayo Society” as we marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. There are other memories of family members from Ireland who talked funny, arriving at our house or being picked up at JFK airport when they came for a visit. There were also a couple of trips that we made to Ireland, which, at the time, I did not particularly enjoy because I would rather have stayed home to play baseball and stickball.