ICESCREAM

            Katie brought mint chocolate chip ice cream to my little soiree on Thursday, March 17, 2016, Saint Patrick’s Day. I hoped the cream part would be green, and it was. Green – the symbol of the day, the color of four leaf clovers. Shamrocks, they are called by the Irish. Maybe there are some other symbols I don’t know. I’m not Irish. The day is fun. I remember back in the eighties when I was asked to join a group of colleagues from another college while attending a meeting, to celebrate after work at a local Irish pub. I was ready in my green velvet jacket. We drank Guinness and other libations of Irish origin or lore.

In Baltimore, my hometown, the Sunday before is highly celebratory. Streets are closed throughout the downtown – the tourist areas of the Inner Harbor, Fells Point, and Federal Hill. The march extends for hours. That annoys me when I forget the day of the parade and am stuck in traffic, seriously delayed to visit family and friends who are not Irish.

But back to Katie and my Saint Patrick’s Day soiree. Katie baked brownies. Not that I asked her. She told me. 

“Okay,” I said, “ how generous, ice cream and brownies.

She made them from scratch. I thought - who brings brownies to a Saint Patrick’s Day party. She must be thinking of the intent, not the Saint. She, like me, is not Irish.

The party celebrated the birthday of our mutual friend, Pat. I decided to change the annual format – from lunch out to an at home celebration. Also, I always have Irish whiskey around – my preferred alcoholic beverage. Her full name is Patricia, and she was born on Saint Patrick’s Day. I won’t say how many years ago. I asked her for a list – no more than ten including the two of us.

Carla brought her contribution the day before, green olives and green mint jelly. Eve came with green cheese, I found a yellow one called Dubliner. Rose came with a tray of   chocolate holiday decorated iced mini cupcakes. I bought Irish soda bread and green shamrock shaped Irish shortbread cookies. Cassie brought a couscous dish. Even I know that’s not Irish. I cooked the corned beef and sauerkraut for the traditional Irish meal of corned beef and cabbage. I don’t know the why of these food traditions because I’m not Irish.

The house smelled. The hallway too. My neighbors may have inhaled, but they said nothing. I think one may be Irish. Her last name seems so.

Charlotte called. “What can I bring?”

“Potato salad,” I said. “Isn’t there something about Irish and potatoes.”

I thought afterwards, wasn’t there once a potato famine in Ireland. Maybe that’s not such a good idea. But I didn’t call her back.

Famine and celebrations, so much literature about feast and famine, I thought as I fork tested the doneness of the corned beef. I remembered there was a great migration of Irish people to the United States in the mid nineteenth century. Immigrants they were, having a rough time with discrimination and all its attendant diseases. Maybe that’s why we find what is the Irish in us on Saint Patrick’s Day. We are all– immigrants - new or progeny - all Americans – unless your ancestors were native to this country – American Indians or Native Americans, we call them. They, too, suffered greatly from discrimination and all its attendant diseases. 

Doesn’t Trump who screams about immigration, doesn’t he know, doesn’t he feel his Irish?

THAT DAY THIS DAY

THAT DAY THIS DAY           

On March 8, 1996, the weather in Blagoevgrad was sunny and breezy with a tint of winter’s cold and moments of soothing warmth. I was at the outdoor market strolling through aisles of vendors selling cabbage and cauliflower, onions and potatoes, carrots, peppers and eggplant, nuts of all kind - winter crops, many from home grown gardens. In another section goods spread across tables of body lotions and kitchen gadgets, towels, and down jackets, bras and infant clothing. 

The sun seemed brighter and the mood cheerier on this day in town, a regional center nestled between the Rila and Pirin mountains. I was with Kevin on my first working trip to Bulgaria, my first taste of the Balkans in Europe’s troubled Southeast area – countries only a few years from Communist rule, well into economic and political upheaval, suffering the throes of transition – from the known and expected to the whims of democracy and free-market capitalism.

Just two months earlier, I took a momentous step and accepted a position at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) – a short-term contract for six months. My family and friends were concerned at this short duration.

I replied, “This will be the best six months of my life. I feel it.”

I felt long term too.

As Kevin and I moved from stall to stall, I watched the vendors, bundled and calloused, weighing and making change. This was before the euro came to Bulgaria, and the base of currency, the lev, was way down. Kevin had been at the university a year or two before me and had learned the language.

As we left the market to return to our desks at the university housed in the former regional communist headquarters, an elderly man, grizzled and whiskery, in a frayed brown overcoat reached out to me with a single white rose in hand – offering it to me. I was flustered.

“Take it,” Kevin said.

I looked at the man.  “Blagadaria. Merci,” I said. Thank you.

I leaned into Kevin as he put his hand on my shoulder and brought my ear closer to him.

“It’s International Women’s Day,” he told me. “And the men give women they encounter a rose."

How lovely, I thought. Not Mother’s Day as in the US, but a celebration for all women.

Today is twenty years after, March 8, 2016. I sent an email note of greetings of the day to my Bulgarian women colleagues. I copied Kevin. He immediately wrote back to me -  from Islamabad.

 “I remember that day!!”