Well it’s that time of the year once again. The day when lads and lasses from all walks of life, from all races and cultures, from all socio-economic circumstances, come together for the “Wearing O’ the Green”.
Graiguenamanagh
Being second generation Irish American on both sides of the gene pool, St. Patrick’s Day is usually a day for flying the colors, along with the Stars and Stripes, making a proper boiled dinner, participating in the local parade, playing and singing some rebel songs of the Emerald Isle and avoiding the local “Pub Crawl”. You don’t want to get me started on the custom of infusing green dye into perfectly good malt beverages.
Suffice it to say being raised Irish Catholic and having made a two-month “pilgrimage” to the Old Sod with a pack on my back, many years ago, I may have a slightly different perspective on the deeper meaning of the whole St. Patrick legend. Also memorable that year was a trip to New York on St. Patrick’s Day. I arrived at Grand Central Station on a train from Philadelphia with my sister Mary and a few of my dear relatives from the City of Brotherly Love. We were swept up by a sea of green on their way to the New York St. Patrick’s Day parade. It having been my sister’s inaugural visit to the Big Apple, I quickly took her arm so as not to lose her and smiling ear to ear half shouted above the din to her, “Welcome to New York”.
That was also the trip Mary and I visited my grandfather “Pop” for the last time. He lived in Atlantic City, was ninety years young and although he was frail, his mind was as sharp as a tack. He told us in his melodic, still heavy Irish brough, about his boyhood in Ireland. He was a stable boy in Graiguenamanagh, (Greg Nuh Manna) a small town in County Kilkenny, where I would visit that July. He described the tack room and the stable where he worked with acute clarity, even after the passage of seventy-five years. I carried that meeting with me to Europe, and thought about him daily during the two months I spent in Ireland. Pop passed while I was in Europe.
So with that in mind, I want you to enjoy yourself this St. Patrick’s Day. For those of you who don’t know much about the history of Ireland, (or your ancestral home), this would be a good week to do a bit of research to bring you closer to your roots. I apologize for giving you homework while blogging about a holiday, it is just an occupational hazard that comes with the territory.
So…
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Erin Go Bragh!