O Paddy dear, an ‘did ye hear
the news that’s goin’ round?
The shamrock is by Law forbid
to grow on Irish ground!
No more St. Patrick’s Day we’ll keep,
his color can’t be seen,
for they’re hangin’ men and women
There for wearin’ ‘o the Green!
- The Wearin’ o’ the Green, c. 1795, Anonymous
“STAND STILL, CAN’T YOU!” my Irish-born mother complained as she affixed to my blue school uniform shirt an Erin Go Bragh pin adorned with clay pipe and green ribbon.
“It’s St. Patrick’s Day! And look, shamrock,” she cooed, securing a generous bunch behind the tin button. She stepped back to admire her handiwork.
“There now, a lucky Irish lad, you are.”
Oh, yes, lucky me. Lucky me to be going to school decked out in a girly corsage so class bullies could blacken my two eyes with potato fists.
Lucky me to be wearing a three-quarter-length tweed coat I called a “gyp,” feeling gypped out of a normal coat by this relic from the old country.
Lucky me never to miss early Mass during the six bone-chilling weeks of Lent.
Lucky me to be spending summer vacations visiting holy shrines, while all the other kids were going to amusement parks.
Lucky me to be so poor that a young curate once proposed our family should grace a billboard for the diocese’s annual Catholic Charities appeal, though Dad would assure us we were “not poor, but simply rich in poverty.”
Oh, yes, being Irish was a lucky thing, like having tons of homework on Trick-or-Treat night.
At school that morning, I slouched over my desk, trying desperately to hide my dainty spray of clover.
“Sit up straight, Master O’Hara," scolded my fourth-grade teacher, Sister Maria Thomas. Her stern command straightened my spine like a swift boot up the behind, whereupon she caught sight of my tiny bouquet.
“What’s that greenery you’re wearing?” Her voice went soft, almost lilting, as she walked toward me.
“Shamrock, Sister.” My face turned red as every head in the classroom swiveled to look at me.
“Goodness gracious, shamrock!” She swooned, clasping her hands over the white bib of her black habit. “Where did you ever come by it, tell me?”
“My grandmother in Ireland sent it to my mom in a letter.” I turned all hot and itchy under her gaze.
“Isn’t it lovely?” She fingered the tiny leaves. “So much smaller than the clover that grows here in New England.
"Class, do you know St. Patrick converted the pagan Irish by using the shamrock’s three petals to explain the Holy Trinity?
"Now, Kevin, walk down the aisles so your fellow classmates can have a look. Imagine, genuine shamrock from the Emerald Isle!”
I would rather have run the gauntlet of Iroquois that clubbed old Father Isaac Jogues and Brother Rene Goupil in Auriesville, New York – one of our vacation hotspots. Sure enough, the girls smirked at my awkward fashion parade, while the boys took to calling me St. Kevin of the Sissies.
After my march of misery, I bee-lined it back to my desk, but Sister had another idea.
“Kevin, you must show your shamrock to Sister St. Regina. It would please her so.”
I walked out of the classroom to an accompaniment of snorts and giggles, and to the principal’s office, where I found Sister St. Regina sitting meditatively at her desk, suspended in prayer. She was a kindly old nun of failing health, and we vied for the privilege of carrying her black satchel back to the convent after school.
“What is it, child?” Her weak, watery eyes lifted themselves from her book of daily prayer.
I shifted from foot to foot. “Pancake . . . er, Sister Maria Thomas, wants me to show you my shamrock from Ireland.”
She beckoned me to her desk, where she touched the shamrock’s delicate leaflets with thin-veined fingers. Suddenly she began to weep, and she reached into her deep, mysterious black pockets for a handkerchief. Now, nuns often got angry, and many even laughed and sang, but I’d never seen one cry before.
At home that evening, after the family rosary, I told my parents how Sister Saint Regina had bawled her eyes out when I showed her my sprig of shamrock.
“I suppose the poor dear hasn’t seen any in years.” Mom nodded gravely. “She’s a Leahy by birth, coming from Ireland as a young girl.”
Seeing my jaw drop at the notion of nuns having any existence outside of convent, church, and school, she explained, “Most of the Sisters at St. Charles are Irish. Let’s see, There’s Theresa Gabriel Cawley, Mary Angelita McCarthy, Maria Thomas O’Connor, Helen Catherine Shine, Helen James Meagher, Stephen Maria Murphy..."
Boy, that was something to hear. Whenever I thought about where nuns might have come from, I imagined them to be either clip-winged angels sent to Earth to tend to God’s flock, or hatched from black-and-white speckled eggs on Easter Sunday. They never spoke of parents or siblings, but only of God the Father or the Blessed Mother, having no family but the Holy Family and their own cherished sisterhood.
Once I spotted a lock of Hellcat’s ... er, Sister Helen Catherine’s jet-black hair peeking from beneath her starched white wimple, but that was my only shocking glimpse of a nun’s normal humanity. Otherwise, they were simply creatures of awe and fear.
But now it made perfect sense they were Irish, brought up in homes just like our own, with front rooms so chock-full of holy statues and religious pictures that your right knee would reflexively buckle in genuflection upon entering.
“I pray we can all visit Ireland again someday,” Mom sighed, in her own St. Patrick’s Day reverie, “and when we do, I’ll show you my mother’s winter garden where her shamrock grows.”
Before getting into bed that night, I took a look at the wilted bit of shamrock on my little nightstand and wished I’d given it to Sister Saint Regina. Curled up under the covers, I reviewed the eventful day and recalled how the venerable principal had touched the shamrock as reverently as if it were a relic of her patron saint.
I tossed and turned that long night, pursued by dreams of an Emerald Isle set like a jewel in the middle of a dark wide sea. There were druids and snakes, of course, and a flock of barefoot pagan girls running after St. Patrick through verdant fields. By an ancient standing stone, they begged the bearded man from over the seas to tell them more about his wondrous three gods in one.
In gratitude for his teaching, they offered him sally baskets lined in shamrock and brimming with speckled eggs – a selfless brood of God-loving nuns.
*This story first appeared in The Boston Globe on St. Patrick’s Day, 2005. Kevin O’Hara is the author of “Last of the Donkey Pilgrims: A Man’s Journey through Ireland." You can learn more about Kevin O'Hara on his website TheDonkeyman.com.
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