Transatlantic

The plane from Belfast left late — high winds gusting across Great Britain — and my connection in Terminal 5 was very tight, from the A gates to the B gates in less than an hour. I was carrying my giant Bag of Stuff and am not a runner even when I'm empty-handed, but I made it to the plane to Dulles with about 15 minutes to spare. I lugged my bag down the aisle, down the aisle, down the aisle . . . to my seat, 55E, a middle seat in the very last row of the plane.

"Hurray!" I said to no one. "It's the worst seat on the plane. What do I win?"

The voice in my head was my mother's: You get to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Talk about coming to grips with privilege. Among my mother's belongings is an old photograph of some distant ancestor — I think of her grandmother Molony's mother, whose married name was Cahill — with nothing on the back but the printed word BELFAST. My aunt Patricia might have known who the woman in the picture was, but she's gone now too.

I don't know the date of the photograph, but my guess is somewhere around 1880. People had their photographs made before leaving on the great journey, and for most of them it was the first time they'd ever had their picture taken. The exposure time required the subject to be still, so no one smiled. They might not have wanted to, anyway. However much they wanted to leave for America, it was almost certain they'd never be back. That young woman was about to spend six days in steerage on a ship crossing the north Atlantic, all so I could whine about a less-than-luxurious seat on a flying missile returning me home after a weekend of fun.

And this voice is my mother's too: Who do you think you are? The tactical nuclear weapon of the Irish mammy, however many generations removed from the homeland. On a good day, I can say it and laugh; on a bad day, it still sends me to my knees. But it's damn useful as a meditation, and serves a vast spectrum of purposes.

It might be useful for a few of the people in this morning's news, from the mind-boggling college admissions scandal (who even knew Georgetown had a tennis team?) to Bryce Harper. But I'm working on the plank in my own eye before tending to the motes in others', so I'll keep it to myself.