My grandparents immigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1945. They were from a small fishing village called Galway. My grandparents were just about as Irish as they could be. Every time I visited them, we would attend midnight mass, and God forbid I ate any kind of meat on Fridays. My favorite memory of visiting my grandparents had to be rummaging through my grandmother’s thing from the old country. My grandmother owned many beautiful and interesting pieces of jewelry, that I would sift through for hours. I especially like her rings. They were all different colors and sizes, but each had the same design. The rings all had two hands which were holding a heart between them. The heart had a crown on top of it. I asked my grandmother what the symbol meant, and she always told me that I was too young to know. I’d find out with time.

I was about eighteen when my grandmother died. I went to live with my grandfather for a while to help him sort through her things and make sure everything was in order. One day we were looking through grandmother’s closet, and found her jewelry box. I opened it up, like I did when I was a kid. I knew by that time that the rings I had so admired as a child were Claddagh rings, meant to be given as a sign of friendship and love. My grandfather sat down beside me on the closet floor, and asked me if I knew why grandmother had so many Claddagh rings. I shook my head no, and my grandfather just laughed.

My grandfather told me that a long time ago, when they were both still kids in Galway, he and my grandmother climbed over the town wall to the neighboring village called Claddagh. While they were walking through the old village, they realized no one lived there any longer. The village was deserted. This was understandable, seeing as how Galway had much more fertile fishing waters, and was more modern. They continued exploring and found a decrepit wall. On the wall, a symbol was drawn. It was a picture of two hands, holding a heart. The heart had a crown on the top of it. My grandmother and grandfather went back to Galway, and went straight to the village jeweler. They told the jeweler what they had seen, and the jeweler pulled out a box full of rings with the same heart symbol on them. “What does it mean?” grandfather asked the man. The man said how in the 17th century, the ring with the symbol was created for Queen Mary II. The symbols themselves were much older. The heart stood for love, the hands stood for friendship and the crown, for loyalty. The ring could be given for friendship, or love. If a girl received a Claddagh ring from a man, then she could wear it three ways. If the ring is on the right hand, facing out, then the girl did not think she was in a serious relationship. Wearing the ring on the right hand facing inward indicates that someone had captured her heart. Worn on the left hand facing outward means the girl is engaged, and if the ring was worn on the left hand facing inward, the girl was married. My grandfather took this tradition to heart and bought a different Claddagh ring for each stage of his and my grandmother’s relationship.

Since that wonderful year I spent with my grandfather, learning of my Irish heritage, he too has passed on. In his will, he left me all of grandmother’s jewelry, including the rings. I think telling me the tale of the Claddagh symbol meant just as much to him as it did to me. One day, when my sweet daughter gets old enough, I am sure I will continue passing them along. I still wear my grandmother’s marriage Claddagh ring on my right hand facing inward and my own wedding ring on my left hand. I do this to remember that Ireland will always have my heart.