When I've remembered to celebrate it, Saint Patrick's Day has typically never meant much more than a color to me. Before I left for college, the holiday would snuck up on me in the form my mysteriously green milk, slipped into my lunchbox, perhaps along with some shamrock confetti, or even a green sandwich if mom was really feeling enterprising. My sister was reportedly grossed out and embarrassed by this ritual, but I always liked, it even into high school. It never hurts to have something to remind you of the uniqueness of the day.
A vibrant spark of green probably was some sort of color wheel ancient ancestor to the pale olive pants I'm wearing today, and in the face of pinching pressed, I might be able to argue that a couple verdant strands of DNA were passed down into this outfit. But I can't fool myself -- I just threw on the cleanest clothes I could find and it wasn't until mid-morning that I read something about a pint of Guinness and remembered: today's a holiday day. I considered buying a dozen eggs on my way home from class and finding time to sit down and decorate them with jagged pastel borders or some glittery dye or something.
And it was not until I actually started writing this post that realized I was got the holiday wrong. At least I hadn't considered carving pumpkins, although I might as well have. I feel like I've been seeing things through a dull gray glaze, and though I know there are real Irish legacies to celebrate today -- Joyce, Wilde, Bram Stoker, a good section of my genealogy that must have lived there at some point, even U2, what springs most immediately to mind is Good Ol' Lucky and his shimmering marshmallow breakfast, empty eyes a-smilin'. And it's very tempting to give into those Charms to see today as vague, vapid and vacant.
This is the first year Saint Patrick's Day I say I've been to Ireland. I spent two December nights in Dublin, a last minute sight-seeing detour on my way home from studying in Spain. I spent the night in the London Stansted airport on my way there, along with thousands of other travelers spread out in sleeping bags on the floor and slouched in chairs, arms and legs looped suitcase shoulder straps, and when I arrived in Dublin airport very early the next morning, I found it tricked out for the holidays, with cartoon Christmas tree statues sitting on benches and animated reindeer arranged around the baggage claim. Outside everything was clear, gray and bitterly cold. As I rode the bus into the city, I was given a sparse introduction to Ireland by an old Catholic widow and a yuppie woman who was returning home after living in Southern California. The widow walked me halfway to my hostel in the midst of a cloudbreak. It may be my only memory of Dublin without rain or fog. For the rest of my time there, I wandered alone through the dreary city, hitting up a few literary museums and exploring the corridors of Trinity College as the students left for Christmas break.
While snapping a few pictures of a war monument, I ran into a group of blue collar workers, four men and two women, bumming around and keeping warm from the booze they were drinking out of juice bottles. They stopped me to ask for a pencil, and I ended up chatting with them for over half an hour in the chilly afternoon. They seemed to be an unlucky lot, with scarred faces and worn-out clothes, and spoke with a certain resolve about broken marriages, lost jobs and missing ambition. But they were still full of relative good cheer and care for each other. Their faces are what I remember most from Dublin -- real people, lost and struggling, but getting by.
And though they envied me heading back to warm California, I've now found myself sometimes in a similar place to them, minus a about a dozen years and at least as many hard knocks.
Dublin was foggy, cold and lonely for me. But through that haze, there's a lot about Ireland to celebrate today -- the gray/green climate that is so similar to my beloved Oregon, the staggering amount of staggeringly brilliant literature it's responsible for, including every chortling self-appreciative limerick ever written, the good humor and friendliness of every person I met there, and of course, there's Erin my girlfriend, who did not forget her green today, and whose name, which literally means Ireland, mirrors my own.
