She wore the green sweater. Though she wasn’t Irish, she’d married into an Irish family, and it was expected. Everyone took the day off from work or school without exception. St. Patrick’s Day meant green sweaters, lots of Guinness and a shot of Jameson, potatoes, bacon and cabbage, soda bread, and Irish stew. There was singing and dancing and for a while, everyone forgot she wasn’t one of them. She knew the songs and the dance steps well enough not to embarrass herself.
She was thankful her mother encouraged her to learn to play the flute. She played in the high school marching band and the orchestra. In college she never made first chair, but to a bunch of tipsy Irishmen, her rendition of “Greensleeves” sounded surprisingly good.
Maeve, her mother-in-law, always put her to work in the kitchen peeling potatoes and chopping vegetables. While the kitchen crew reminisced about St. Patrick’s Days past with their Irish families, she laughed in all the right places and nodded knowingly. If they asked her about her family traditions, she talked about going to the O’Brien’s house in Chicago and going to see the Chicago River in all its green splendor on St. Patrick’s Day. They’d only done it once, but she always stretched the truth and made it seem like a yearly family excursion. A little white lie to make her seem more “green.”
Ryan would sneak into the kitchen, grab a piece of bacon, and kiss the back of her neck until his mom shooed him away. He appreciated how hard she worked to fit in on this special day.
When the meal prep was done, Maeve sent the girls (as she always referred to them) down to the basement to do the yearly craft with the children. They supervised the cutting of the big shamrock shapes from the green construction paper and helped the children cover their palms in white tempura paint to press on the shamrocks. Once dry the shamrocks would hang on the basement wall till next year when the process would be repeated. There was even a special ceremony, presided over by Maeve, where each child took down their old shamrock and placed it in the St. Patrick’s Day Memory Box before hanging up their new gift to their grandparents. Then, Ryan’s dad, Kevin, told the story of how St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. The children listened with eyes wide, delighted by their grandfather’s gift for storytelling.
Weather permitting, the neighborhood kids decorated their bikes and had a parade. Since Ryan’s siblings lived in the neighborhood, she and Ryan loaded their kids’ bikes in Ryan’s trunk and took two cars to his parent’s house, so their kids could participate. Despite this inconvenience, she was glad to have some separation from his family during the rest of the year.
The bigger kids and the adults played football (which she learned not to call soccer) in the park at the end of the street. They played in any weather unless there was lightning. The boys (as their mother called them) got so dirty and smelly, Maeve made them hose down in the yard and change into clean clothes in the basement before she allowed them at her table. The girls who were brave enough to play used the shower inside. Five minutes was your allotted shower time; and if you went over, you got dish duty and clean up after the big meal.
She was the designated driver even though it meant a trip back the next day for Ryan’s car. At midnight, they packed the kids up and made the twenty-minute drive home. The next day, the kids would be cranky from too much excitement and too little sleep. She loved when St. Patrick’s Day fell on Friday or Saturday because then it didn’t matter. They could all sleep in.
It was once a year; she’d put on the green sweater, smile, and be Irish.