72/365 St. Patrick's (Sort Of)

Today is the parade downtown. We have a float in the parade with our Irish dance school, and afterward the girls dance at a bar and grill downtown that is a work program for a Catholic homeless shelter--teaching folks how to work in a restaurant to give them skills to go out and find good work doing just that.

A lot about our school is like any other. We go to shows and we go to feiseanna (that would be competitions). We spend a lot of time doing hair in side rooms at nursing homes before the girls head out to dance on the cafeteria floors. There is competition between some girls, there are teams that get along, there are parents whose animus is only thinly veiled. And there is a lot of what I thought was lip service paid to Catholic tradition. Lots of references to Our Lady and asking what parish we go to and all that. Here in St. Louis it's expected that if you're not Catholic, you at least understand Catholic culture. And most of this I cynically accepted as a load of blarney.

But then sitting there eating my Irish stew and drinking my Irish coffee and watching my girls dance, I realized that McMurphy's Grill isn't usually open on Saturdays. They're a lunch place for downtown workers. But they're open for the St. Patrick's Day parade (the Saturday before St. Pat's). So that we can come and dance. Huh. And then in the bathroom a woman with a name tag said to me that "when they hired me they said I'd make more money today than any other day of the year and they're right, it's crazy kind of busy."

And suddenly I was glad. Glad that we dance there on St. Patrick's Day instead of some smoky bar, or even just back at the studio for parents (most of the patrons were connected to the school). It seemed like we meant it.