my mother's annual irish soda bread arrives today, made somehow more special addressed to two us for the first time, and i'm reminded of the year i took the green food coloring in the beer gag a bit too far and at maybe 8 years of age turned everything in my parents' refridgerator a shade of emerald that rendered milk, beer, salad dressing, and anything else that would hold the color instantly inedible for those with eyesight.
so tomorrow's the day saint patrick did something or other, and our proud people will behave in ways that are okay for a day because italians jews atheists and college kids are somewhere drinking a guinness for reasons they don't understand either.
i've put this up before, but i thought ireland and i thought seamus heaney. and you can't really go wrong doing that:
Postscript
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
I also found this in Vermont a few months ago. This is not to imply that all Irish people are at some point deserve to have their heads knocked off.
At least not tomorrow.
