1950s St. Patrick’s Day in New York: no green beer, no green foam hands with index fingers raised, and no “We’re No. 1!” boasts shouted. Then as now, too much drink was taken in certain circles of the diaspora, while others observed the feast day with Mass attendance and a large meal.

In my family, celebration of St. Patrick’s Day was understated, muted and even dignified. My grandmother covered small brooches or pins with a bit of green cloth that we wore on our overcoat lapels.

There were large St. Patrick Day Parades in the New York of the 1950s, as there had been since 1762, when the marchers were Irish immigrants and those serving colonial military duty with the British Army. The wearing of the green was banned in Ireland in the 18th century, so the marchers in Colonial New York, bedecked in green, singing and playing pipes, enjoyed themselves green.

One March 17th, possibly 1957, we took the subway from Brooklyn to New York (what Brooklynites called Manhattan) for the parade. The marchers were organized by cells of the four Irish provinces and their counties, and led by the U.S. Army’s 69th Infantry Regiment, the “Fighting 69th.” We stood on Fifth Avenue, shivering in heavy coats adorned with the bits of green cloth, and watched the representatives of the various provinces and counties march by, flags flying, pipers piping, and regiments of cops in their winter uniforms, two rows of buttons across wide, dark blue plackets.

Behind the provincial flags marched descendants of immigrants mixed with visitors from Ireland, New York politicians and celebrities of Irish heritage. Representatives of the counties of three provincial units marched past. Kerry! The crowd applauded and cheered, and we clapped, albeit politely. Cork! The crowd roared. Kilkenny! Waterford! Dublin! Galway! On and on through the three provinces of Connacht, Munster and Leinster.

And bringing up the rear to a much thinned crowd, the northern province, Ulster. We clapped harder and waved at Ulster’s representatives, reaching a crescendo for Belfast’s county, Antrim. We, nearly alone on the wide Fifth Avenue, clapped as the banner of the Red Hand of Ulster flapped in the wind.

Ulster. It took me a very long time and a lot of research to grasp any understanding of what it was, what it meant, how we were Irish—my grandparents, mother, and her brother having emigrated from Belfast to Brooklyn—and how we weren’t Irish.

Brooklyn born with an American father of English descent, I wasn’t Irish directly, and yet I felt then as I’ve felt most of my life: Irish.

The crowd on Fifth Avenue didn’t seem to think Ulster was Irish, not Irish like they were. Indeed, we didn’t know any other Irish people, and any that crossed our path often were dissected verbally for sport. For light friendship, for she never cared for anyone outside the family, my grandmother gravitated to Scots neighbors in Brooklyn, not Irish. It took me a long time to understand the pull all things Scots exerted on her; and yet, she was proud to be Irish. Understanding Ulster explained some of that much later (although understanding my grandmother fully has yet to arrive).

My grandmother was Ulster Scots, meaning that her ancestors took a short sea voyage across from Scotland to settle 17th c. Ulster, as Queen Elizabeth I’s forces chased the Irish Chiefs from the land, lands stolen from other Irish people earlier. Of Scottish descent, religion, attitude and physical traits, her family lived on that Irish land for nearly three hundred years before my grandmother was born.

The very complicated history of Ulster—human, religious and political—was unknown to me as a child, of course. At home there were clues to an oddity connected to Ulster that I sensed but could not understand—things dramatic, both hidden and obvious, things not discussed for reasons unknown.

For instance, their accents were what I’ve since understood to be the Norn Iron sound spoken by Belfast born and bred people, people of their time and background, but also what I sometimes heard and could always identify in 2014 Northern Ireland. My childish brain knew they didn’t sound like Scottish people (those on TV and the movies, but also those around us), but I also knew they didn’t sound like the Irish actors of the day (when the rare role allowed them to sound Irish), like Maureen O’Hara and Barry Fitzgerald. Yet I never doubted that the family was Irish.

My grandparents were Catholic and raised their three children in the Roman Catholic Church—that much was entirely and frequently on the table. As in all families, there were blow ups that made their way to the surface, and often about religion in our case. What was hidden until long after her death was the fact that my grandmother was a Protestant who converted to marry my grandfather in the dangerous and highly charged 1920s—the time of the first Troubles in Ireland. The War of Independence (the Irish Civil War) raged throughout the island, and continued on in Belfast past the Partition of Northern Ireland in 1921 (for further discussion of the Partition, see constancegemmett.com/borders-irelands-brexit-killer).

My family’s emigration in 1930 was explained by their religion, which incited someone or some group to burn my grandfather’s business to the ground. Catholic and comfortable, he was a sitting duck, apparently, because before the arson he’d nearly been killed by drunken and armed B Specials. Explanation: around the time of the Partition, the British Government enlisted ex-WWI British Army servicemen (enlistment data show they were all unmarried and shorter than average) into a quasi-military unit of the Ulster Special Constabulary, commonly called the B Specials. Whatever it was on paper, the B Special’s commission was interpreted to commit the violence (rape, murder, assault, and arson) they carried out against Ulster Catholics and anybody else who protested their appalling behavior.

A passing Protestant minister vouched for my grandfather as his parishioner and that lie saved him. The ruined business may have been the final straw, and I suspect that both experiences made my grandfather want to get the hell out of Ulster, a move my grandmother always regretted.

Still, there we were at the St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1957 wearing our little bits of green. I now understand that many living in Ulster today experience the same pulls: Irish and not Irish, British or Scots, or all three, or plus all of the places people have emigrated from to Ulster, as they choose Irish or UK passports.

My grandmother, of Ulster Scots heritage and the Protestant religion, chose to become Catholic despite everything she’d been taught and experienced, and in the face of disapprobation of some in her family (but not all), of everyone in her culture, and despite the violence against Catholics she lived through ahead of the marriage.

And years later, there she was with her bit of green, the symbol of Ireland, standing near St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where she took me for my baptism. All things she would never have done as a young woman, before her conversion, before her marriage. She became her version of Irish.

At least that’s how it seems to me now, but there’s nobody alive to ask, nobody who would get the full picture, except for my new Ulster friends, possibly. As for me, I still embrace being an Irish American, but feel more like an American who is of Ulster descent specifically: a mix of Irish and Ulster-Scots from my mother’s side, and English on my father’s side. My most recent DNA test confirms the identity it took years for me to understand: more Scots than anything else, Ulster (but nothing from anywhere in what is now the Republic of Ireland), English, and 3% Norwegian and Icelandic; a drop of Viking blood handed down in the red hair on both sides, and to me at birth, just as it was to many on the islands in one little corner of the world, the world of my ancestors.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!