Yes, I will be wearing green.

It's Saint Patrick's Day. 

So yes, as I have done on St. Patrick's Day since I was a little girl, I will be wearing green.

It was easy enough in grammar school and high school: I wore a green jumper.

But my mother would by packets of flimsy Erin Go Bragh flags and pin them on us to augment the green uniforms. My father would wear one in his lapel and head off to work in an office where, other than for his friend George (who was a Polish-American), he was pretty much the only non-Yankee in the upper ranks of his company. So wearing his green was a bold move. It didn't take any bravery to wear the green to a school with majority Irish-American students, and first gen South Boston Irish nuns.

A note on my father: He'd started off working on the shop floor of the factory, which produced industrial wires. My father operated the wire drawer, a winch which coiled the wire, which is what he was doing for a living when he joined the Navy shortly after Pearl Harbor.

After the war, he was promoted to foreman, and then to a job in sales and sales management. Not that there's anything wrong with wire sales, but my father's been dead for 50 years, and it still upsets me that, thanks to his father's early death, the Depression, and a lot of other things, including on occasion a ration of anti-Irish Catholicism, my father didn't have the sort of career his brilliance, personality, and work ethic should have merited. Admittedly, some of this was of his own making. During the war, he was invited to go to Navy Officers Candidate School. He refused because he had an Irishman's natural lack of respect for authority, and because the officers he knew he perceived a-holes and anti-Catholic bigots. Guess he never met JFK while he was in the service. Anyway, he did become a Chief Petty Office, which was the highest enlisted man's rank. 

Back to Paddy's Day.

Today, I will probably wear a sweater I got in Ireland a few years back. And a little pin I have of a thatched cottage if I can find it. So I'll be showing my colors for my two Zoom meetings - one for a client, the other with my writing group where, as luck o' the Irish would have it, we're doing one of my stories, and the other writer who's up is my old friend Kathleen. A doubly-whammy of American Irishness for our other writing colleagues who are all Jewish. 

And oddly enough, my client meeting is with the client of a client. As it turns out, many years ago this client-of-a-client (the company, not any individual) was a client of my company, and I was on a call at that client on St. Patrick's Day. The person I was meeting with was named, of all things, Kelly Green.)

Today, I will listen to Irish music, which I do plenty of times, so that's no big deal.

Today, I will eat soda bread slathered with Kerry Gold butter. And make myself a nice cup of Barry's tea. For dinner tonight, I'm making myself a big old pot of colcannon. (Mashed praties with scallions and cabbage. Beyond gorgeous.)

Today, I'll think of my Irish great-grandparents: Matthew Trainor and Bridget Trainor from Co. Louth. John Rogers from Co. Roscommon. Margaret Joyce from Co. Mayo. They were brave young things when they left their families behind and got on the boat to Amerikay. Thanks, lads!

Today, I will think about when I'm next going to Ireland. (I'm not quite sure how many times I've been there. Somewhere between 15 and 20. Anyway, it is one of my favorite places on earth and has been since I stepped my first toe in way back in 1973.)

So Erin Go Bragh and all that. 

It's a great day for the Irish, but it will be an even better one when the COVID is in the rear view mirror.

Meanwhile, last year I compiled a list of the St. Patrick's Day posts I've done over the years. (I've been at it since 2007!) The ones that I think are particularly good are highlighted. 

Slan for now! And remember: it's St. Paddy's Day - NOT St. Patty's Day. Not to mention that the symbol of Ireland is the shamrock ☘, which has three leaves. It is NOT the four-leaf-clover.