Upon awaking, at undetermined time, I make my way to the stereo system and begin listening to some joyous Irish music, (I have 2 styles to pick from incidentally, Irish Rebel, or Irish Drinking songs), and pour myself a Guinness. At this point I make a call to my father. (For those of you who have never met my father he does bear a resemblance to the mythical Leprechaun.)
Anyway, after exchanging the usual pleasantries, and a “cede mela failtes” (A Gaelic term which I still to this day have no idea what the hell it means), my father, also with Guinness in hand, begins to go into his yearly diatribe about his trip to the homeland back in the 60's.
(Again, those of you who do not know my father, he is quite a talker and when he gets going, you'd better get comfortable.)
I hear stories of the countryside, the people, the pubs, all basically the same things I've heard since I was a child, but I figure this is his day so I listen, again. By the time he is finally wrapping up I am well into my second Guinness, but thanks to Anniversary gift we gave last year, (a trip to Ireland) he now has an entire new set of stories and adventures to relay. I pour myself a third drink, and thank the good Lord I am not there for all the pictures and the newest addition THE SLIDE SHOW!
(Since this trip is fresher in his mind the stories seem much more factual and much less embellished.)
About the same time this round of story telling is finished, I drain the remaining remnants from my glass. I figure my father is about the same way along, because as I get up for a refill I hear the ever so common “It's time to make a toast!”
I make my way back from the fridge, full drink in hand, and begin toasting all of the fallen legends of the IRA (that is the Irish Republican Army for those of you who are not members, or closely related to, God’s chosen people.)
We toast the car bombs, the random acts of terrorism, and the countless hunger strikes all done in the name of the flag. This is closely followed by the cursing of the English and the audacity they have to still occupy Northern Ireland. (These are both things I don't fully understand, but for one day a year I can pretend with the best of them.)
We polish off about Guinness and a half toasting pretty much everyone who ever claimed to be Irish and both of us are getting pretty fired up. I can hear my mother yelling from the other room to quiet down because she can't hear the bagpipers that are marching in the New York Parade, so things calm down again, for a bit.
We spend the next 15 or twenty minutes talking about when I was a child, and how we used to celebrate the day Saint Patrick drove all of the snakes from Ireland. The parties we threw, the cupcakes with green icing, Shamrocks strewn throughout the house, the Irish dancing contests my brother used to compete in and the snake hunts.
Yes, I said the snake hunts, a tradition very similar to the Easter egg hunt, where my parents would hide rubber snakes throughout the yard and we would hunt for them, than, upon finding them, throw them over the fence, or into the streets, the more you threw out , the more prizes you got (My therapist is going to have a field day with that one someday.)
We sit and laugh, not to mention finish another round, at those stories for what seems like hours, but I can tell from slurred speech coming from both of us that the call is coming to an end. Before we say our good-byes, and another round of “cede mela failtes” (I guess you can use it like aloha or shalom) we sing a rousing rendition of “Oh Danny Boy” I hang up the phone, full of Irish pride, (and very full of Guinness) ready to release myself on the city for a night of merriment.
