my parents' divorce had a smell and it wasn't the smell of fear, it was the smell of bacon. When my mother, my sister Micaela and I arrived in Ireland from Spain in the summer of 1972, we didn't have a place to live and we spent several months in a bed and breakfast on Pembroke Street in central Dublin. Every morning the smell of sizzling bacon -- "rashers" as I soon learned to call them -- would waft up along the narrow staircase from the basement window and my nose would twitch at the new sensation. At age 8, in the tiny parlor of that building, watching the Munich Olympics on TV, I shed my sense of smell that until then had revolved around the Mediterranean, namely the smell of heated olive oil that kept Spanish cities in a vapor-lock every lunch time and again around 8 o'clock at night.

But bacon was only the first note of days that quickly built up into sensory overload. Instead of the strong black coffee of Spain, the Irish drank milky tea poured from teapots that they kept enveloped in knit cozies. Instead of churros, those Spanish pastries that were fried in vats of oil, here it was buns that were topped with jam and fairly oozing cream. Instead of the acrid smell of black Spanish tobacco, it was the cloying smell of the Virginia leaf that the Irish smoked. Instead of simple oil and vinegar on a salad, it was a creamy concoction that came out of a bottle and was called salad dressing.

I realized even then that our knowledge of food was different than the locals. My mother took full advantage of it. The greengrocer, for example, was unclear on the concept of avocados -- he'd put them on sale when they got soft. My mother would buy a half dozen at a time, and back up in the room we'd flip out the stone and fill the cavity with red wine vinegar and a drop of olive oil. It felt like a meeting of an illegal group.

The one food that the two countries had in common was fish. Up until we'd left Spain we'd spent every summer in a fishing village in the northwest region known as Galicia. I'd grown up seeing the fishing boats come in loaded with sardines, mackerel and glistening sea bass that were sold straight from wooden crates on the pier. In Dublin I'd stare in the windows of Molloy's Fish Store on Baggot Street and see the fish filleted in stainless steel tubs and I understood that the Spanish part of my life was over.

My mother kept an account at Molloy's, not because it was grand but because store credit suited the fluctuating nature of our finances. When she had some money, she'd settle the bill and pick out an expensive piece of fish, like turbot, for that night. Most of the time, however, we simply ran past the store hoping that they wouldn't see us.

Because we'd just arrived and could speak Spanish, my sister and I were always referred to as "Spaniards." In Spain we'd been called "Americanos." It didn't bother us, we'd always accepted we had two sides. Early in life both my New York Jewish father and my Irish mother reacted against what their futures would be and set out to find new ones. My father chose not to follow his father into the furniture business and after the war he set out for Europe. My mother, the daughter of a County Cork solicitor, was informed at age 18 that she couldn't study law because she was a woman, and she also took to the road. They met in the south of Spain, in the days when there were no high-rise hotels and the only local sources of income were fishing in the Straits of Gibraltar and the sale of contraband cigarettes that the same fishermen brought over from the International Zone in Tangier. My sister and I were born from this marriage. Our self-knowledge didn't amount to much more than being olive-skinned, bilingual and always ready to leave.

These thoughts on the fickleness of identity come to me in the grounds of St. Mary's Collegiate Church in the town of Youghal in County Cork. St. Mary's denomination is Church of Ireland, which means its congregation was the local Anglo-Irish gentry. Just beyond the moss-covered wall that marks the border of the graveyard is the house of Sir Walter Raleigh, who was once the town's mayor. St. Mary's parishioners were transplanted people ("planted" to use Cromwellian terminology). They lived in Ireland but they died for England. The plaques that line the inside walls of the church are their legacy. This parishioner, a member of the Royal Irish Guard, died in Crimea. Another "suffered fatal wounds under Lord Nelson." This is how the British Empire ended, life by life and outpost by outpost.

I turn to watch my mother and my wife strolling down the path between the gravestones. Their clothing is the only touch of color in the gray-on-gray landscape. Fifteen years after leaving Ireland, I am traveling with my American wife and visiting my mother, who still lives here. She has become stockier with age but she is much more at peace. She no longer has that haunted look that I remember of being a 40-year-old divorcee with two children arriving back in the country she once fled.

Together we all walk out of the grounds of St. Mary's and down through the narrow streets of Youghal, all of which lead to the sea. The water reflects the Irish dusk and only a pair of swans breaks up the still surface. The air is full of the smell of peat fires coming from all the chimneys. It's time for a drink before dinner. We're staying at Aherne's, Youghal's most elegant hotel and hands down the best fish restaurant in Ireland.

"We grew up with this," says John Fitzgibbon, sitting on a banquette of the comfortable bar. Together with his brother David and their wives Katie and Gaye they own and run the property. "My grandfather just had a little village pub with a snug and a bacon counter. Then my parents made it a little better. They added a lounge bar and David and I grew up collecting the empty glasses on busy nights. They did serve food then but their idea of food was to throw a ham or half a turkey up on the counter. When we took it over, we knew we wanted to concentrate on fish. We have the best fish in the world practically at our back door."

David, who is the chef, stops by and gives me some of the reasons why the fish is so famously good here. First, he believes in "leaving well enough alone." He wouldn't "let a sauce near most of the fish." But it all starts with the raw product. "We have small trawlers here," he explains, "which means that they can only go out for 15 hours and not for days, so they don't have to ice down the fish. Ice keeps fish but it isn't the best thing for fish. And I don't write the menu until late in the day when I know what they're bringing in."

"And how do you know that?" I ask.

"I call them in the boats," he says and cracks a roguish Irish smile. "That's how it is now, mobile to mobile."

My mother, wife and I go into the dining room. It is warmly decorated with sienna-red walls that are covered in original artwork. Between the three of us we polish off a couple dozen Galway Flat oysters that are as good as the best French belons, and then the main course comes out. A whole small turbot for my wife, a filet of plaice for my mother and a whole black sole (Dover sole) for me. We take our first bites. The texture of the fish is exquisite, the delicate flavor sublime. The exterior is crusty from where it was dusted with flour, the interior redolent of the Irish butter with which it was basted while it broiled. It is so good it almost brings tears to my eyes. I watch my mother enjoy hers also. She sees me and smiles. I think of saying something to her but I let the fish do the talking.

Feb. 19, 1997

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Previous columns:
An Afternoon in Chelsea (02/05/97)
"You Yelled, Madam?" (01/27/97)
Basic Instinct (01/13/97)
The Greatest Meal (12/23/96)
The Worst Night (12/16/96)

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