Not being Irish, St. Patrick's Day has never meant that much to me. We didn't do Corned Beef and Cabbage and a tall glass of Guiness has never been my thing. In our house, San Gennaro replaced St. Patrick and at this time of year, a smudge of ash on the forehead and a promise not to eat candy was more our style than a pot of gold and a leprechaun.
However, every year while I was in high school, rain or shine, we boarded buses early in the morning on March 17th and traveled to New York City to march in the annual St. Patrick's Day parade. We dusted off the sheet music to "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" and played it over and over again as we marched down 5th Avenue. Despite the sea of green festivities, we were more fascinated with trying to buy hot pretzels from the street vendors without the grumpy Sr. Claire noticing. "They store those things in warehouses infested with rats," she would say as an attempt to dissuade us from our mission. It never worked.
When the kids were little, their teacher sent them home to make leprechaun traps. "Are you kidding me?" I mused aloud as they handed me the instructions. What did I know about catching leprechauns?
"We're Italian," I said, hoping to set them straight lest they truly believed that they might catch one of the little green creatures and be led to his pot of gold. "Leprechauns don't visit Italian families."
My grandmother was a firm believer in novenas. If there were any sign of trouble, out came the promise of a novena. Something you wanted? A novena was the answer. Someone suffering? Needing a little help from above? Why, a novena would do the trick. It was her ace in the hole.
If the truth be told, while it sounded very powerful, I wasn't really sure what a novena was. In fact, it wasn't until I was much older that I learned about the nine day devotion. I'm not sure why this piece of Catholic tradition eluded me. My only guess is that I must have been absent that day from catechism. Never the less, once I learned what it was, it made Grandma's efforts all the more impressive.
I always wondered why it was the Irish that had all the luck. I mean, was I to suffer merely because I was born to Italian parentage? Perhaps that explains why I've never won anything. Well, almost anything. There was the time back in fourth grade when I won a pack of Bazooka gum and a puzzle, the door prize that Saturday at the roller rink. But that, in a nutshell, sums it up. There have been no lottery winnings. No door prize at the annual Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast. No super-sized stuffed elephant at the carnival. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
No. I'm just not lucky.
Maybe it's time for a novena.