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March 17 More A Season“There are many good reasons for drinking,
One has just entered my head. If a man doesn't drink when he's living, How in the hell can he drink when he's dead?” ~Irish Saying
“Here’s to a long life and a merry one.
A quick death and an easy one A pretty girl and an honest one A cold beer – and another one!” ~ An Irish Toast
“May the Good Lord take a liking to you... but not too soon!”
~Irish Blessing
Saint Patrick’s Day; A blessing and a curse.
The quotes above reveal the blessed, festive side that I love about Saint Patrick’s Day. Many a memory of observing ‘The High Holy Day’ as it should, with merry making and drinking and bagpipes and drinking and friends and drinking and corned beef and drinking and toasts and drinking and rooms that spin and no more drinking.
Now I know that many a true Irish person actually frowns on the fact that we’ve turned a Saints day into a drinking fest, but it really does go much deeper than that. Any day can be a drinking festival, but there is really something magical about THIS particular day and just as important, the people that we celebrate.
It is a magical place and a magical people. Doesn’t matter one lick if it’s true or not, the important thing is that it works for us.
Unfortunately, because of some quirk in the space time continuum, I find that for the first time in my entire working life, that I have to work on ‘SPD’. I always make sure that I am off for this holy of holy days, but somehow this year I went a kilter. So this year will go without the grand celebration that it is due. Tomorrow we will have the bestus friends J&J over for the tradition SPD meal and libations, so that will be enough to make up for the missing 'on the day' celebrations.
However, there is one part to this day that I will not miss, no matter how late it gets or how tired I may be. The afore mentioned activities are all for fun, this one is for love.
When I was growing up, long before the days of cable TV or Video/DVD rentals, there was only network TV and you were pretty much at the mercy of whatever they decided to show you on any particular day. But there was always one thing that you could count on; Saint Patrick’s Day and the movie ‘The Quiet Man’.
My dad and I were always John Wayne fans and it didn’t matter the movie, whether it be with a tank’s cannon or a horses ass, we were there. But there was one movie and one movie alone that stood head and shoulders above them all, and that was the Quiet Man. My mom would say years later that she always knew, no matter what else would be going on that day, where the two of us would be. No matter how many times we had seen it, we looked forward to its arrival for months on end as one would look ahead with excitement, as when they were young, to the coming of a circus. Saint Patrick’s Day was not an event, but more a season.
Since my fathers’ death sixteen years ago, Saint Patrick’s Day has never been quite the same. I may be able to go out and celebrate with friends old and new, but eventually when it ends and I come home, there is an emptiness; a piece to the celebration missing and always just a little beyond my reach.
This is the curse of Saint Patrick’s Day.
It is funny that even now, when I watch a John Wayne movie (which by the way, my wife rolls her eyes at much the same way my mother did with my father), I can feel my father sitting next to me watching along just as he did all those times and years ago. And it is more than just that. My father had the same hooded eyes that John Wayne had and he even had a bit of a drawl; not quite like the Dukes, but a drawl none the less. When I watch a Wayne movie today, I also get a little visual of my dad; this may be a good reason why the movies never tire for me.
In a couple of minutes from now, I will sit down (with beer in hand and a good plethora of snacks), and complete, as best I can, the Saint Patrick's Day celebration by watching the Quiet Man, so that I can celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day once again, with my Dad.
Slante'
“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell. ”
~Edna St Vincent Millay
“Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle Everything I do is stitched with its color.” ~W.S. Merwin, "Separation" “In love the smallest distance is too great, and the greatest distance can be bridged.”
~Hans Nouwens
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