Celebrate the Green in St. Pat's

On St. Pat's Day, you'll find me dressed in green and sporting green jewelry, even though my heritage comes from Germany. A mug or two of green beer completes the picture of my usual St. Patrick's Day celebration.

When my parents were in their late 80s, Mom invited the four kids and spouses for dinner. It just happened to also be St. Patrick's Day. Often I'd gone out with my daughter and tossed a couple of green beers, but that was not to be on that year. I was sort of disappointed that my daughter and I couldn't celebrate in our usual St. Pat's manner, but was glad to spend time with my folks.

Everyone came and we visited a bit. One of my brothers walked in toting the hot, great-smelling pizzas and mom had fixed a great tossed green salad. Imagine my surprise when she came to the table bearing two huge pitchers of green beer - one in each hand. We all clapped and hollered and cheered her on. She'd even tied a green ribbon in her hair.

"Well," she said. "I really wanted to have a party and I knew you'd like beer with your pizza. So I opened enough cans to fill two pitchers and then I added plenty of green coloring, " she said with twinkling eyes. Dad just sort of rolled his eyes and said, "Yes, you know how your mother likes to make things special." [I know mom still decorates for most holidays - but St. Pat's?]

What fun, I thought, for an elderly woman to take the time and energy to go the extra mile and do something special for her family and herself. She said later that she'd talked to one of her neighbors and they said they were going out for green beer on this great day of St. Pat's. That gave her the idea and she flew with it.

Needless to say, we celebrated that St. Patrick's Day with our fun family party. We talked about old times and about current things on our schedules. We cleaned out the bowl full of the green tossed salad and we ate every last crust of pizza. Be assured we drank every last drop of mom's sparkling green beer. I think we even had a couple more - probably not green though.

We may have sung Roll Out The Barrel, rather than Danny Boy, but just know that a good time was had by all! This truly was a green day in March to be treasured on future St. Patrick's days as they come and go.