An Irish American on St. Patrick’s Day

To read my last name you would never guess that I am primarily of Celtic descent. Welsh and Scots, certainly. More than anything else, I am of Irish descent. I think that’s what makes us Americans such a wonderful people. We’re a bit of this, a dash of that and a whole lot of something else. We really are a melting pot.

Like almost all of my grade school classmates, I considered myself to be an Irish American. Moving away from my hometown in high school I was struck by the realization that all of those strangers in this strange new town had no idea what my real last name was. I had always thought that in reality it was the same as my mother’s family, not my father’s family.

Our Irish family all lived within a few miles of our home. The adults called each other daily. We were constantly back and forth to visit. If my grandmother didn’t spend at least half of Sunday with us, something was horribly wrong.

My father’s family? They were strangers to us.

We’re Irish Americans. Ignore that paternal last name you read. When Cillian Murphy won his Oscar for best actor, that was one of our boys.

Growing up I knew Murphy’s Law. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Any good Irishman can carry a grudge in one hand and a drink in the other.

A positive mindset was knowing the adults would be drinking beer while we had milk with our meat and potatoes.

What is with this new thing about toxic positivity? It was absolutely nothing we knew about. We had never heard of such nonsense. An honest Irishman will tell you that no matter how well you’re doing in life, there’s always something to be depressed about. It’s normal to be morose one moment and laughing the next.

Food that had the hell cooked out of it was the only decent food. You could get sick on anything that was vaguely less than overdone. The only good meat is well done. At the very least.

St. Patrick’s Day was a day when we knew we would have beef and potatoes. As an adult in Boston an Irish friend told me that back home in Ireland they boiled fatty pork with potatoes and vegetables. Corned beef is an American invention. That was a surprise.

The Ireland Irish in Boston shocked me when they told me that St. Patrick’s Day is a more solemn day in the Old Country. No parades or leprechauns or any of the things we Americans take for…