Bloodlines

 

Bloodlines

Noel Laflin

3-17-22

 

Ancestral records indicate that the first Laflins (our branch of the family anyway) set sail from Ireland and set up home on America's East Coast nearly three hundred years ago. They became fond of Vermont, in particular.

 

Over the next century, grandsons and great-grandsons of the original clan moved further west, finally settling in the Red River region of Minnesota.

 

But my dad, fast forward to a new century, grew tired of shoving snow (or so he said many times during my youth) and pushed on to sunny California, extending our rapidly diluted Irish bloodline all the way to the West Coast.

 

And here we are, in yet another new century, contemplating St. Patrick's Day far from the original motherland, diluted bloodline and all

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But Jesus, Joseph and Mary, it's still a pretty fine day in Orange. I wish we had a town named Green adjoining city limits, but alas, the closest hamlet in that color range is Old Olive.

And come May 17th, we'll fly the Norwegian flag, break out the lefse, and appease my mother's ghost

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Otherwise, she might call upon nasty nisse (mythological creatures from Nordic folklore) to sour the cream, or so she warned us back in childhood. And how would we make Irish coffee then, by Jaysus!