WHEN IRISH EYES ARE SMILING
by Mary Strand
From a certain perspective, I grew up in an Irish household.
This is pretty funny, actually, since I’m only 1/8 Irish and half Norwegian. My mom was 1/4 Irish but, not being a math person, thought of herself as 110-percent Irish. This mostly meant that she tended to lead the wailing on “Danny Boy” and sang the loudest on “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” the latter possibly with the assistance of Irish whiskey, and she had a penchant for giving her kids names like Brian, Sheila, and Patrick. My dad had little say in the matter, but he sighed a lot.
I followed in my mom’s footsteps, but mostly just on St. Patrick’s Day. In college this meant green beer, lots of it, and dancing Irish jigs to any song, most of those songs entirely inappropriate to an Irish jig, especially since the bar where we performed these jigs was a disco bar. (Don’t blame me. Blame the late 1970s.) In law school my so-called Irish self and I spent St. Patrick’s Day in one of the Irish pubs a block or two from Georgetown, on Capitol Hill. I was kicked out of one of them one year. For an Irish lass, it was a proud moment.
Next thing I knew, I was married and practicing law, and St. Patrick’s Day became yet another day of work or, in a wild moment, a civilized dinner of corned beef and cabbage. No more green beer. No more getting kicked out of anywhere. No more Irish jigs.
And then, one year, kidlet # 1 was born. Due on Easter, he arrived four weeks early (bless his little 1/16 Irish heart) on St. Patrick’s Day. My mom insisted he be named Patrick. Tom and I had long since named both of the kids we were to have, and Patrick wasn’t in the mix. My mom declared, mournfully, that I had failed her and all of Ireland. These things happen.
Ever since, St. Patrick’s Day has been all about kidlet # 1. His lifelong favorite color is green, but he has no interest in corned beef, cabbage, Irish soda bread, or (so far) green beer, and he calls the shots on his birthday. As a result, my wild St. Patrick’s Days have become a distant memory. One of my brothers, who remains as 110-percent Irish as my mom was, calls me every year to explain that he might not be able to come to kidlet # 1’s birthday dinner, because, gee, it falls on St. Patrick’s Day.
Yes, it does. And it will next year, too. But now we celebrate a more important holiday: my son’s birthday. Still, I’ll always have a fond spot in my 1/8 Irish heart for St. Patrick’s Day and my mom’s favorite Irish blessing, embroidered on a decorative pillow:
May those that love us, love us.
And those that don’t, may God turn their hearts.
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts, may He turn their ankles
So we’ll know them by their limping.
LET YOUR IRISH EYES SMILE ON MARY STRAND’S ROMANCE NOVEL – COOPER’S FOLLY.
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