Marley arrived, giddy and outfitted in green. She staunchly refused to eat boiled dinner, had prepared herself for that part by loading up on cereal before she came. I made another batch of soda bread, and one of what we all know now is properly called (*delicate blush) “spotted dick.” (Which is soda bread with raisins in it. What the heck kind of people are we emulating anyway?) For dessert, I gave the girls strawberries and whipped cream on soda bread.
Moonbeam and Sunbeam arrived, and then Cute Husband. I cooked up the hash and fried up the eggs and we ate it with toasted soda bread while the girls watched a leprechaun movie I’ve never heard of with Sean Connery.
Cute Husband took the kids upstairs to bed, and the Big Girls and I retired to the kitchen to begin our work.
We started by blowing up balloons. Well, they blew up balloons while I offered helpful instructions.
“Full balloons, girls, don’t be wimpy.” Moonbeam has asthma, but she puffed away. I am such a jerk sometimes.
We spread out all the gold trinkets on the floor — buttons, crystals, pearls, beads, notions, gold thread to string it all on. Gold body glitter, lip gloss, nail polish. Piles of gold candy. We ate some candy and tried on the bracelets.
And then … the sound of a child. On the stairs.
”Aaaaaaahhh!!!” Sunbeam shouted, a regular Han Solo going after a corridor full of storm troopers. She bounded up the stairs two at a time toward the unsuspecting child.
Moonbeam covered her flank and I blocked the view to the kitchen. By turning sideways.
“AAAAAAAAHHH!!!!” Sunbeam continued. ” —AHHEyye I… don’t know what you think you’re doing …” A long out-of-breath pause. “If you come down the stairs,” she gasped, “… um. The leprechauns. You could startle them. And they could … disappear. Okay, honey? Now, let’s go back to your room.”
“Wow. I’d want Sunbeam with me if we ever had a bomb scare or anything,” I said.
She was back a few minutes later and we started with the ribbon. It took us about 45 minutes to string it all — six colors, three spools of each, through the kitchen, living room, family room and back.
“This is for all the times you didn’t get your coat on the first freaking time I asked,” Moonbeam said, running green ribbon around and around a lamp.
“Oh, and this for all the times you wouldn’t go to bed when I was supposed to be doing homework,” Sunbeam said, passing a wad of ribbon under an easy chair and up into the ceiling fan.
“This is just ’cause I love to torture you,” I said, and then realized I really couldn’t do anything too clever in my current condition and just ran it through the back of chair. Lots of times.
At some point I was tragically caught in the middle of it all. Waist-high in a laser-beam obstacle course of satiny rainbow colors. Moonbeam and Sunbeam behaved with their usual respect for my dignity and well-being.
“Lemme get the camera,” Moonbeam said.
“Good idea,” Sunbeam said.
I got out of it by pulling a Catherine Zeta-Jones, dropping to my knees and sliding under it.
Zeta-Jones, I ain’t.
“Anyone caught photographing my plumber’s crack is out of a job,” I said.
After we were done, we collected the empty ribbon spools and hid the other evidence of our work. (“Because no child should ever have to give up her faith in leprechauns”) And then for good measure we flung gold-wrapped Rolos on the floor. (Why no mylar? Because, my friends, every time I bend over it requires about 20 minutes before my blood pressure returns to normal. Chocolates, I can count on the kids to pick up.)
The girls woke us up at 7 a.m., howling and shrieking.
“They came! The leprechauns came!”
Ah, yes. The morning twilight and we, like all the other families up and down our block, are waking up to the magic of St. Patrick’s Day morning.
Okay, maybe ours isn’t like everybody else’s.
“MAGIC BALLOONS OMAGAWSH MARLEY!”
Magic balloons?
“Sure they are,” I said.
“I KNOW WHERE THE POT OF GOLD IS!”
“Sure you do,” I nodded.
“It’s in the dishwasher,” she said, reaching for the handle. Before I had time to shout “AHHHHH!” Cute Husband appeared out of nowhere with a hip-check to the door.
“You don’t want to do that,” he said. “If you’re right and it’s in there and you didn’t follow the rainbow to get to it, it will poof and disappear.”
“Are you sure?”
“Duh. Everbody knows that’s how it works.”
Moonbeam and Sunbeam arrived minutes later with Starbucks and we all had a good cackle as it took the girls an hour to get to the end of the rainbow. Finally the time came to open the dishwasher and they did and it was a regular Festivus Miracle.
Oh the surprises of motherhood — how good a baby smells, how utterly I have changed, how hard it is every single day, and how worth it.
And how St. Patrick’s Day has become a highlight of the year for no good reason at all.
So Happy St. Patrick’s Day, my friends.
Or as we say here, “Felicitious Festivus St. Patrickus.” — May the Leprechauns bring you much joy.
