March 17th, 2017 – My Irish Boy

If ancestry.com can take our spit and determine our country of origin then what we thought our percentages of heritage were have a new variable.  You might have 50% Dutch, 25% Ukranian and a smattering of other European countries or because of the ways your genes expressed themselves your percentages could be much different.

I am not Irish. My son, Liam, has a large percent of Irish in him. If today is any indicator, his blood runs green and a brogue echoes in his soul.  All week he had been planning traps for the leprechauns. Large intricate Rube Goldberg machines ending in some gold coin and chocolate bait awaited the pesky troublemakers on St. Patrick’s eve.  In the morning the outfit was picked and even the undershirt was chosen because it had a smattering of green ink.  He had an amazing day at school, closing the week as the lucky name pulled out of a hat to represent his class for the school-wide “Eagle buck” behavior system.  He chose, of course, a green water bottle from the prize collection.  Also, finishing his week without any days of misbehavior (clip-chart style) he was able to pick from the class treasure chest and located a green car among the bits and pieces of Oriental Trading paraphernalia.  As we settled at home, he donned his newly minted class-made craft – a green hat attached to a construction-paper orange beard. Short of doing a jig he was all things American-Irish.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him today.  I couldn’t break it to him that not all Irish people wore green everyday and that leprechauns were, in fact, not real.  I couldn’t tell him who St. Patrick really was and how the day has been misinterpreted as more of an Irish heritage celebration.  Instead he let his (green) colors fly like so many.  And as we settled down for bedtime, I swear, for just a short while, I could almost hear a jig beating in his heart, that Irish blood pumping bodly through his body.