flahoolick, seanahai, Gaelic, Traeloch

There is a story in the San Francisco Chronicle today about Irish coffee, which SF, I just learned, considers a San Francisco treat.  The article references the word flahoolick as an Irish word.  I have always thought the language spoken by fewer and fewer Irishmen was Gaelic, although the words Irish and Gaelic might be interchangeable.

A few years ago, I had some dental surgery done by an hot young Irish dentist who was training in America to do implants.  There was no place in Ireland to learn implants and Traeloch, the first name of my cute studmuffin dentist, said that the future was implants.  I kept hearing the businessman in the movie 'The Graduate' telling the Dustin Hoffman character that the future was in plastics.

Traeloch went to dental school straight out of high school.  That's how it goes there. Kids choose professions around age 18. Then he worked in his dad's dental practice a few years until he bit the bullet and came to America to learn implants. His ma was worried that an American gal would scoop him up and he would not return home but he loved Ireland, he told me, in his lilting, sexy broque, and how could he be living his life anywhere else? American girls were fine lasses, but he would not allow himself to fall in love until he had returned home.   I didn't say what I was thinking, that love can sometimes come upon us without our planning or choice.

Traeloch told me that his first language was Gaelic. And he very graciously accepted me into the tribe of being Irish.

My point:  Traeloch was adamant:  his first language was not Irish. It was Gaelic.

I just read, maybe on Wikipedia, that only 72,000 Irish folks speak Gaelic in their daily langauge transactions. Traeloch must be one of them. He told me he speaks Gaelic at home, always had but, of course, he spoke English with me.

The Chron informs us that flahoolick is Gaelic for generous.  My da was flahoolick.  I received my gifts from my dad.  I think his generosity was one of his finest.  One of my favorite stories about my da is what he said when I told him  had become engaged.  He said "I learned a long time ago that you can't tell your kids what to do, they are going to do what they want, and I have tried not to talk about any of the people my kids have dated, but this guy, Tree, are you sure about him? The one thing I'll say against him is that he is cheap. I could say more but let's just leave it at cheap. I'd hate to see you going through life with a guy who is going to make you pinch every nickel before you spend it."

That's the only time I have ever heard someone characterize the trait of being cheap by saying the cheap person pinches every nickel. I still hear my father's Irish milieu as a young man, when he would have interacted almost exclusively with other first generation Irish American men. If they were me dad's pals, they were gamblers, too. Gamblers aren't cheap, not my dad's kind. And my ex-husband was cheap. He never made me pinch a nickel but he did seem to hate spending every cent he ever spent and he was sure that whatever he spent could have bought more.

Contrast this story about my ex with the above story about my long gone father, who was very flawed and abused me in many ways, but, like all humans, he has lots of good streams in him. My dad's finest stream was his love for his children.

The ex-husband story.  Once, when we were still dating, not yet engaged, the ex and I met at a restaurant downtown, during happy hour, of course, for the cheap drinks. We got there at the beginning of happy hour, we drank a lot cause he always drank a lot. And he was sure to order a last round during the last minute of happy hour for that last extra bargain. And then we ordered food. We sat at that table for at least three hours.  He paid the bill. This was the seventies, what can I say. The guy paid on dates, esp. my guy. Even if I covered my part of the bill, or even if I paid the whole thing, he insisted on making a show of paying, being the guy paying. So he pays the bill and we leave. This was a very early date. This also tells you something about me cause I kept on dating him. As we walked to our car, nearly a block from the restaurant, the waiter caught up with us, his face red with anger, but, I sensed, his anger warming him in the winter cold. He waived his fist as he spoke. He said "I can't believe you completely stiffed me. You sat at my table for three hours and you don't leave me anything?"  My ex, dressed in his first-lawyer-job suit was probably embarassed but I didn't know him well then and did not yet know that when he became embarrassed, he got angry and then abusive. Not that knowing this would make it more acceptable. I just observe how naive I was. He shook his fist back at the waiter and said "I venture to guess that your manager will be disappointed to hear that you have come out here to yell at his customers. You are out of place. I am going to report you."

All these years later, I still remember that phrase,  'I venture to guess'. He used that phrase whenever he was feeling pompous. And dang if the asshole didn't march up to the payphone at the parking lot entrance (pre-cell phone life!) and call the restaurant to complain. And, I am sorry to say, the manager made the waiter call the ex later to apologize.

I longed to go back to that restaurant and leave the guy some money and apologize. I remember considering doing that. And a  part of me wants to turn that longing into the memory of having actuall done that, having actually made some amends.

After that, I always hung back after the bill was paid when I was out with my ex and snuck tips on the table.

Not long after, maybe at his graduation weekend (he had graduated a semester early so he didn't walk n his gown until he had been working six months as a lawyer), we went out with his mom and sister.  They chose one of those food buffets, all you can eat. At one point when my ex had gone to the men's room, I told them the story about the waiter angry with no tip.  Get this. While I recounted the story, my ex-mother-in-law and ex-sister-in-law, who was a surgery resident and is now, of course, a surgeon who owns several clinics and makes millions annually, they were stuffing their purses with fried chicken so my ex could eat off the all-you-can-eat-buffet after they had gone home to Hicksville.  I should have put the purloined chicken together with the no tip.  My ex-mother-in-law, who was just my boyfriend's mother at the time, said, in her bad grammar English that still makes me winces when I just hear it in memories, said "I tell you what, hon, I say anyone stupid enough to work for a dollar an hour deserves a dollar an hour. If the best job they can get is waiter, they must be no good. They don't deserve more. I aint gonna pay someone to do their job. That's their problem, not mine."  I actually pointed out that prices in restaurants were based on the fact that the restaurant's overhead did not include the full salary of the waitstaff, that the price of restaurant meals should always be assumed to include a freely given payment for the service. Those women laughed at me. They also concluded that I was not a good match for their boy. They were right, of course, but I did not admit that defeat for several years and one baby later.

Fast forward a couple years to the birth of our daughter. My dad came to visit, go to the races at Aksarben Race Track and see the College World Series.  He insisted on taking us all out for a fancy Sunday brunch at a fancy downtown hotel but then my husband, Mr. Bigshot, insisted on paying, which was okay with my dad. He would have been happy to pay and he was also happy to accept my husband's gift. My dad was always generous when he had any ready, and always ashamed when he didn't. Dad didn't mind being broke. He minded being unable to be generous. . He also knew that my husband had an overdeveloped self-conscious pride in what defined his manhood and he knew that my husband needed to pay that brunch bill to show off. A little bit of a manly pissing match only my husband didn't realize he was the only one competing.

So dad let him pay. Then, as usual, I excused myself to go to the restroom but my real agenda was to sneak back to the table to leave a tip. My dad also excused himself to use the restroom. The womans room was around one side, the men's room around the other and behind them both was the dining room.  So my dad and I saw one another as we both approached the table with our tip. We laughed and left both our tips, leaving the waiter a lot of tip money cause me and dad were both always big tippers. My best brother is a waiter and my dad had always been very insistent on tipping well. Sometimes he would just get coffee in a shop but leave several dollars in tips when coffee cost a quarter cause he knew his time at the counter cost the waitress other men's tips.  I loved my dad so much for leaving that tip. And I loved us both for leaving that double tip. How much did you leave, I asked him, laughing, as we walked back to the husband. How much did you leave, he laughed, as we realized we had both overcompensated a lot.  Then we settled down, hiding our laugh so the husband wouldn't demand to know what we were laughing about.

My dad had a hole in him.  He didn't get something he needed as a child, I think, and that wound drifted with him through life.  The only real happiness he ever had was loving his kids. And my mom.  He lived twenty years after she left him. He never got over it.  My mom loved my dad. I think she left him because she wanted to leave the life she was living, with too many kids, not enough money.  She chose just as wrongly as I did.  She never really wanted to have kids but in nineteen fifties small town South Dakota, especially if you were Catholic, about all you could do was get married and have kids. She wanted to be an artist but this culture discourages most young people with such an impractical ambition. Artists starve.  Writers starve.

Now I am feeling sad again. It was more fun thinking about Traeloch and Gaelic coffee.

Oh, I almost forgot. Senahai is Gaelic for storyteller. I am a seanahai. I am not sure how to spell it.