Bingo!

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

“B-8.”

The bingo caller sat in the front of the room in the Community Center and spoke into the microphone.

“G-51.”

I’d been in Ireland for weeks, looking for my family. I’d met cousin Gerry, but no one else had popped up. I’d followed every lead, and asked every acquaintance I’d met.  The only clue I’d had was from the barkeep in one of the pubs. As a boy, he’d known my great uncle. The barkeep laughed at the memory, rolling his eyes. “So you’re a Lynch, then?” he asked.

Not off to good start. I had to get out of the pubs and mingle with more people. But how? The next Sunday I went to church, Our Lady Star of the Sea, a small classic structure whose pews had been carved from driftwood in this treeless landscape. I’d pieced together the story that my great-grandmother and namesake Mary Lynch had been a big patron of that church. She was buried—not on Omey Island like the rest of the family—but beneath Our Lady Star of the Sea.

The church was perched on the shore just as the land dropped down to the road that led to Omey Island. Here’s where the local parishioners on the peninsula were baptized, and here’s where their funeral Masses were said before their families processed along the strand behind their caskets to St. Brendan’s cemetery.

In the old days, the family walked behind a donkey cart that carried the coffins, but now both the deceased and their families rode in hearses. Either way, the funerals had to be timed to the tides, the services letting out just as the waves were parting. That way, the locals had enough time for the procession, the graveside service, the burial, and the return trip before the ocean became an ocean again.

“I-21.”

I walked into the church, expecting to see the place packed with familiar-looking people who would instantly grasp my connection, throw an arm around my shoulders, and invite me home for tea. Instead, I found the priest on the altar, the same priest I’d bothered about Omey Island. He spoke softly, so softly that I could barely understand him. Was the service in Irish? No, the priest was speaking English, but it might have well been Irish.

A handful of people, scattered throughout the church, were in attendance, mostly older women, some with rosaries dangling from their hands, some attempting to follow along from pamphlets, the paper edges bent and covers tattered, stuffed into the racks of the pews. It all seemed very quiet, private, much like a Mass from a pre-Vatican II service with the priest on the altar, his back turned, reciting Latin, the parishioners letting the unknown language wash over them, inducing a meditative state. After Mass, the parishioners darted out of the church, all quickly brushing past me.

“B-10.”

Okay, let me try something else, I thought. I saw a sign in the back of the church for a Wednesday bingo game at the Community Center. Bingo! I had grown up playing bingo in Irish-American Catholic church basements. At the time, bingo was the only sanctioned gambling allowed in the state. The proceeds had to go to a charitable cause and no liquor was allowed, but the basements were filled with three-generation families, all there to laugh and chat, and hope to take home one of the cash prizes.

I learned that the Catholic way of life included a tedious recitation of the catechism. But it also included a celebratory string of other games of chance. There were raffles (with puppies as prizes) and cake walks and ring toss and bean bag toss. Everything was a contest, a competition, or a piece of luck. In my girls’ school, whole classes were lined up against the wall, our scratchy wool uniforms brushing our knees.

“Levez-vous,” the French nun commanded.

We pressed our backs against the blackboard, inhaling the chalk dust.

 The nun waved flashcards with multiplication tables in front of our faces. I tried as hard as I could with this math lesson, not because I wanted to do well in the subject. Rather, I wanted to avoid the humiliation of returning to my desk in defeat. The winner’s prize was a religious holy card with a picture of a saint, a halo around her head, and prayerful “ejaculations” printed on the back promising an eventual reduction of days in purgatory.

Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash

“O-61”

So, I set off to the community center.  I stayed in purgatory in the States. I never won a single game of chance there. My name was never drawn out of a hat. And I knew when to stop playing when I was losing. I was losing now in Ireland, but I still I pushed through the heavy doors and into the gymnasium. Whoa, there were around 350 people in the room. Here’s where everyone on the whole peninsula was hiding!  Men, women, and children were seated at round tables, waiting for the game to begin.

 I stopped and carefully looked at their faces, adjusting my focus. I could have shared a gene pool with any of them. They looked like leaves on the forest floor, all blending together in one mass, but at the same time, each one unique in appearance. What mutual stories did we share? What mutual talents? Or traumas?

My family had pushed off these shores for the States. Theirs had remained. Did the departed not send back enough money for those left behind to make the voyage? Or were there other problems that kept the natives bonded to this landscape? How had the distancing of both body and soul grown over the years? Now, almost a century? Was there any return?

I purchased a card at the cashier’s station, then surveyed the room. I spied a table filled with women in their seventies and eighties, their lined faces framed in white hair. They straightened their multiple cards in front of their places, their large pocketbooks tucked at their feet on the floor. I was in luck. I plopped down in the one empty seat at their table. Silently, the women all turned to me.

“I’m here to connect . . .” I began, but the caller cut me off.

“N-42.”

The women’s heads peered down at their cards. Those who had N-42 placed small plastic disks on top of the number.

“O-63.”

I watched the woman next to me scan all of her 10 cards for the number. She placed the disks on 3 of the cards.

“I’m a Lynch,” I tried again to explain.

My neighbor placed a huge box of red gummy candies in the center of the table.  She shook the box as if to say, “Help yourself.”

More boxes appeared, some with licorice, others with hard chocolate drops. The women reached into the center of the table and made their shared choices.

“I’m trying to find my cousins and our old family homestead.”

“B-13.”

Our cards were beginning to fill, the numbers blocked off.

“Patches. I have an old letter with Patches in the address.”

“B-7.”

Wow, the B numbers were marching down my card. I only needed one more and I might go home with a puppy.

“Patches?  Is that a familiar name to you?”  I asked my neighbor. I think it was my family’s house, or maybe their township.”

“Township,” my neighbor said. She pushed back her chair, cleared her throat, and inspected her cards.

Your jabbering is disturbing these dedicated bingo players, I told myself.  Just sit back and relax. Play bingo. At least you know that Patches in a township. Leave it at that.

“B-15.”

Wait, now my B row was filled. I turned to my neighbor. “Is this bingo?”

She looked it over. “’Tis.”

Surely, I’d made a mistake.

“Go ahead,” she told me.

“Bingo!” I called and leapt up to claim my £75 prize. “Bingo!”

The announcer reviewed my card.

Surely, I would stay in purgatory forever.

“’Tis bingo, all right.”

I jingled my coins in my pocket.

Back at my table, the women divvied up the rest of the candies.

“She’s a Lynch,” my neighbor whispered to one of the other players, and the word traveled around the table, from one member to another. “She’s a Lynch.”

“Is she now?” they answered with a slight upward turn of their lips. “Is she now?”

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