I wish I would have read more James Joyce…

As I was leaving school today, one of my favorite students asked me,
“What’s it like to be
St. Patty’s Day?”

Good Question.

What is it like to be St. Patty’s Day? I hadn’t really thought about it, but, since it is my name after all, I suppose I should have.

“It’s quite fine,” I said.

“What are you doing for St. Patty’s Day?”

“My husband and I are having corned beef and cabbage for dinner.”

“CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE?!!! What is corned beef?”


I love St. Patrick’s Day. When I was growing up, we would wake to green milk in the refrigerator and were put to bed with a buttery salty meal of corned beef and cabbage. My mother worked hard to make any and every holiday special and extraordinary and she always managed to do it. This holiday has always been one of my favorites and I think back fondly to my senior year in high school, when I marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin, Ireland, playing the cowbell. What a memory.

As a people, the Irish are survivors – the potato famine, the weather, the IRA. Maybe that’s what I admire most about them. Their perseverance and their ability to take all those gray, harsh days and turn them into some of the world’s greatest authors (James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, W.B. Yeats), musicians (The Cranberries, U2, Damien Rice) and peace activists (Bono).

Long live the Irish.