The Wild Rover of March
Growing up, I spent many St. Patrick's Days in bars. My grandfather, who we called Pappy, was in an Irish band with my uncle and two others. Pappy played bass, loved to sing, and loved St. Patrick's Day. I sometimes think my cousins and I knew more Irish drinking songs than we did actual Catholic hymns.
Irish Mist played at bars with names like Bubba's Pot Belly Stove, O'Hara's Dining Saloon, and Smokey Joe's. The beer was green and the stage was small and everyone in my family would come out to watch and sing. They would play "The Unicorn," and the kids would line up in front of the tiny stage to make our skinny arms the geese, our fingers pinched above our heads to be the cat, the rat, the elephant. When I was young, I loved it: I was the only one of my friends with a Pappy called Pappy, a family with a band, the only one who knew the lyrics to "What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?" Pride and joy were very easy to come by on St. Patrick's Day in my family.
When I was a teenager, I went with my mother to see the Irish Mist perform, and gone was my enthusiasm, traded for surly angst. For one song, Pappy called me up on stage. I think my hair was blue, and I remember the dark pleather jacket I wore, the armor to my cultivated coolness. When Pappy motioned for me to join him, I was mortified. My mother widened her eyes at my hesitation. I got up from my seat and went on the small stage.
"My granddaughter," Pappy said, "plays the drums."
"Trumpet," I muttered.
"She's gonna help us on this next song!" He then handed me a tin pan and a spoon, borrowed from the bar's kitchen. He positioned me so I stood next to him. "Court," he said. "When we get to the rest in the song, I'll squeeze your elbow, and you just hit the pan, three times."
I held the spoon over the pan. Being a teenager meant that I wanted the whole world to know how unique I was, but never wanted anyone to look at me. Standing on stage with the Irish Mist, holding a pan and spoon under the guise of being a drummer, was not an experience I wanted to have.
The song was "The Wild Rover” by The Dubliners, which begins: "I've been a wild rover for many a year, and I've spent all me money on whiskey and beer." I would not have been able to guess when I was younger what the song would come to mean to me.
*
Pappy was full of witticisms and jokes and jingles. He used to sing, "Courtney, Courtney, two four five! Courtney keeps the boys alive!" ("Not the boys!" one of my cousins later laughed.) But there was something that he said about music that I always remembered. He talked about a friend who wanted to learn to play guitar, and often said so. "You'd give anything to play guitar," Pappy said. "Except the time."
It was a humble sentiment that echoed whenever I made excuses not to write. When he told me that story, we were standing on the concrete porch of his house, a porch surrounded by sharp bushes, on a small grassy spot, one block from the 7-11 and two blocks from Holy Cross Church. There was a certain way the light could only reach the porch from the side where the driveway was, where we would park behind Pappy's car. Where we would stretch our legs after the hour drive, before rushing inside for chocolate milk, Dunkin Donuts, Herr's potato chips. To sit with my cousins on the brown carpet, too close to the television. Watching the adults laugh until they cried, the jokes that escalated, the drinks that were poured. In the third grade I had to bring a photo of my Pappy to school for a project. I chose one of him standing on a kitchen chair, his mouth open wide, leading everyone in song.
"Not that one," my mother said. She didn't like that he was holding a Budweiser in the photo. I didn't even see the Budweiser until she mentioned it.
Years later, towards the end of my drinking, I took St. Patrick's Day off work because I was determined to drink. I asked friends to take the day off, too, but no one would. One friend met me for a whiskey on her lunch break. We were the only two people in the bar. It was a Wednesday around noon in the East Village. She had one whiskey and then she left. I stayed. I stayed and drank and felt excruciatingly lonely but too stubborn to leave. I wanted to sit and drink whiskey. I had taken the day off work. The alcohol was more important than the loneliness.
Coincidence was the first grace I ever believed in, and it is by coincidence that I quit drinking on St. Patrick's Day in 2007. I had been leading up to it, talking in therapy, hemming and hawing, meeting more and more people who didn't drink anymore. I knew alcoholism to be part of my family, but I didn't want to admit it had gotten its hold on me. One cold Saturday I was talking to a woman who was sober, and she offered to take me somewhere where I could get help.
I could feel the knot of fear in my stomach, hard and dark. I knew it would be over if I accepted. I knew the drinking problem would be real if I followed her that afternoon.
"Okay," I said.
Only later did I realize it was St. Patrick's Day. I sat in a coffee shop, dizzy with the momentum of having accepted help. While walking back to the subway through the grey snow, my father called.
"Hey," he said. "Happy St. Patrick's Day! Are you out celebrating your heritage?"
"Well," I laughed. "Kind of." And I told him. He said he was proud.
When I was that embarrassed blue haired teenager, it was the chorus of the song that Pappy squeezed my arm for. They'd sing, "And it's no, nay, never,” then pause while I hit the spoon on the pan three times. Then they would burst into song again. The whole bar would sing, "No nay never no more! Will I sing the wild rover, no never no more."
It’s the only one of their songs that I get stuck in my head now that I’m older. I like being the no, nay, never girl, with less angst, more awe, less drama, more seltzer. It makes every March a month of gratitude and pride.
xoxo,
c
p.s.
* This Sunday, March 6th, The Hustle Reading Series is celebrating our one year anniversary. I'm fan-girling wildly about the line up: Melissa Febos, Marie Helene Bertino, and Leah Falk. As always, we'll have mimosas and donuts and lively conversation about what it means to write and pay the bills. Plus, we made a special anniversary zine! It's not to be missed.
* If you're curious about the Irish Mist, they're still around! My Pappy passed away in 2009, but some of the original members have kept the band alive.
* It's girl scout cookie season, and you can find on their website where cookies are being sold near you.
* While I do love St. Patrick's Day, I'd be remiss if I didn't include how the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York hasn't loved LGBT folks.
* Emily has created a monthly reading challenge for herself, and is blogging about it over at corpuslibris.tumblr.com. If you ever need a book recommendation, she's the one to ask!
* July Westhale, poet extraordinaire, has a chapbook coming out from Finishing Line Press, and I can guarantee you that it's incredible. Pre-orders help the small press to continue publishing fantastic poetry collections like July's.
* This powerful essay about visiting James Baldwin's house (and a hundred other important things) by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is one of the best essays I've read in a long, long time.
* Cats Playing Patty Cake: an oldie but a goodie.