11 A St. Patrick’s Day Story

This story begins long, long ago. The year was 1969 and the place was a small university town in Missouri, in America. A slender young student followed a local tradition of celebrating the St. Patrick’s Day holiday, March 17, by purchasing and wearing a bright green (the national color associated with Ireland, home of St. Patrick) sweatshirt. It was emblazoned with the year, 1969, and the icon of the local university, Joe Miner. Feeling lonely and yet optimistic, the young student purchased a second, identical sweatshirt. Now, all he had to do was find a young girl willing to wear that matching sweatshirt.

The time of the young boy and his search for a willing young girl was many years ago. The era in which they met and loved and wore those matching sweatshirts is gone. Later, those two sweatshirts, battered and faded over the years, followed the young man as he grew older and went out into the world. The young girl willing to wear the matching sweatshirt disappeared during the journey and was replaced by another girl, who was replaced by yet another and another. Somehow, those green St. Pat’s sweatshirts survived through decades of loves found and lost, careers begun and changed, adventures in various locations, even moves to new countries. Now, each year on St. Patrick’s Day, the young man and his current willing young girl put on those St. Pat’s sweatshirts for photos. Part of the reason for this annual ritual is to celebrate the holiday, but part of the reason is to celebrate a life that is far behind.

Over time, the young man wasn’t so young anymore but “the wearing of the green” became a tradition. In moves to different cities, those venerable old sweatshirts were carefully packed. As they aged - and the slender young man wasn’t so slender anymore – those two sweatshirts were respectfully stored and were brought out only for the St. Patrick’s Day holiday. Each year, the two sweatshirts were worn for a few days. They were seen in photos sent to family and friends to show where they were at that moment. Then, they were reverently returned to protective storage for another year. Over the years, conditions changed. Sometimes, locations changed and, often, the people in the photos changed. The only constant was those two green St. Pat’s sweatshirts. Somehow, despite the vicissitudes of life, the two sweatshirts always survived, providing a link back to earlier times.

Today, we live in a world vastly changed from those innocent times of 1969 when those two sweatshirts were newly purchased and the search for a willing young girl conducted. Those sweatshirts are still in my closet, still carefully preserved, and still brought out for photos each year around March 17. Sometimes, new faces appear wearing those faded old sweatshirts. Then, the new photos join a long series of annual photographs. The common thread is those two aged St. Patrick’s Day sweatshirts, connecting all the people through all the years and all the places. Now decades old, they are treasured relics that have become a legacy separate from the individuals who have worn them over the years. With care and with luck, they will be passed along to future generations, a whimsical family tradition and a link to the past. They have become a mobile legacy, enjoyed over the years in many different places and by many different people. Hemingway called Paris a “moveable feast”.  In a small way, those two sweatshirts are my moveable feast. Donning them each year carries the currently not-so-slender not-so-young man back to those slender, young innocent days of 1969.

As an expat, those sweatshirts and their ilk become hugely impactful. I remember well the elation I felt when, in the middle of my first months as a foreign teacher, I opened a package from my parents and found a little surprise. I had requested them to purchase and send something very common, almost plebian, in America, a salt and pepper shaker set. In my new country, those little shakers, almost universal in restaurants and homes in the US, were not found. But, the package from home contained the small set of cheap, plastic salt and pepper shakers from my parents’ own kitchen table. That origin immediately made them very special and created a link between my new table and theirs. Years later, both my parents are gone, as well as the way of life they symbolized. But that cheap plastic set of salt and pepper shakers is still on my current table, still linking me to the best things of that past life.

As an expat, such mundane items can take on a disproportional influence. In those early days as an expat, I wrote in my journal, “Always, when I finally finished something that I had brought from America, I wistfully recalled the setting of the original purchase of that particular item.  Squeezing the last toothpaste from a tube of American toothpaste or emptying the last drops from a bottle of American shampoo are not usually material for sentimental memories but each such act represented another broken link in the connections to my old life.” While I have to be wary that I don’t get hooked back into a romanticized, Disneyfied version of a past life whose reality wasn’t always that pleasant, those little plastic time capsules on my current kitchen table still have the power to make me smile.

As an expat, what will it be for you? Choose carefully what will be your legacy, on your table and in other, more important parts of your life. Choose carefully indeed. Your decision will create cascades of consequences - perhaps for decades to come, perhaps even for future generations.