My parents grew up three streets away from each other. Florence Riordan met Patrick Sheehan at the local high school. They were both the kids of emigrant parents. Their families had arrived from County Limerick and County Louth respectively at the kick-off of the last century. Their grandparents started out on the East Coast, then their parents headed west to the alleged golden land. Mother and Father were both born in Good Samaritan Hospital in South Central. Neither of them ever left this corner of the city. Dad trained as an electrician and got a job as a ‘cable and lights guy’ (his turn of phrase) at Paramount. He stayed in the same job for forty-one years. Mom stayed at home with her three children. I was the last in the pecking order. We all did what was expected of us. We pushed ourselves into the middle class. There was a brother who was an accountant. He died of cancer ten years back. A quiet, decent man. We were close – even if Sean steered far away from any displays of emotion. But at life’s darker moments we were always in each other’s corner. Our sister, Helen, became a senior ER nurse. She went east for work and now lives in a retirement community on the Delaware shore. Like Sean, like everyone in our family, she too was raised to be respectful, reserved. She has a retired cop husband and no kids. We talk a few times a year on the phone. It’s always a reasonable chat – even if, truth be told, we don’t have much to say to each other.

And then there’s me: the electrical engineer turned salesman.