Chances Are.

This was the first year I forgot to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. I knew what day it was, and I did have a clean green shirt in the closet, but I rocketed through the house getting ready in the morning and it just didn’t register. Hours later, I’m sitting in a meeting and realize what’s happened. There wasn’t even green on my socks… I had the blue ones with the little clouds on.

I’m not Irish. My grandmother-in-law was, but I don’t think that’s really close enough to claim any kind of identity. Besides, I had been wearing green decades before I got married. We were all Irish on St. Patrick’s Day in Kansas City in the ’70’s… there was corned beef every year and a parade…

…that’s the thing, I even started the corned beef in the slow cooker before I left, but it still didn’t occur to me.

I don’t know how I could have forgotten. We wore green every year for luck, and it’s not that I don’t need it anymore, but I will admit that I’ve probably had my share. I even found a four leaf clover once.

It was during grade school, one “Field Day”, off to the side of the competition space in a large area completely covered with clover. I don’t know exactly why I was over there, but I’m pretty sure I was trying to get out of running another relay race.

On Field Days all the events were compulsory, so every kid had been through the long jump, broad jump, shot put, 50 yard dash, and loads of relay races (I enjoyed shot put the best). We didn’t do “wheelbarrel races” (where one person holds the others feet and they race on their hands) or “three legged races” (where two peoples legs are tied together to race) because we had an odd number of boys in our class: one of us would have to have been tied to a girl, which wasn’t going to work due to some ecumenical guideline the nuns would not elaborate on.

Having finished our obliged participation, we were all sitting amidst the delicate ground cover, looking for the impossible. We didn’t know it was impossible: none of us were budding botanists and the internet was 20 years away. The only four leaf clover any of us had seen was the cardboard cutout the teachers put on the bulletin board every year.

But I actually found one, and the kids I went to grade school with were not only nice enough to not take it from me, they were cool enough to not blow it out of my hand and have me lose it again on the ground.

I showed it to a teacher, who folded it into a piece of paper and brought it back to school. We all looked at it, and at the end of the day it was given back to me to bring home. I showed it to my mom, who thought it was cool, but also was not aware that only one in 5,000 clovers have four leaves.

We put it on the table as the world’s tiniest centerpiece during dinner, and even though I was unaware of how rare it was, I did feel lucky.

After a few days, two of the leaves came off. I didn’t know what that meant.

My mother told me not to worry, that luck was chance – hard work is more dependable, faith more personal, and patience more mature. I mean, she didn’t say all that right then, she’s not Yoda, but she eventually got around to that. At the time she just said, “Well, you can’t be lucky forever.” which was also true.

But it took hard work, faith, and patience to find that little plant, so to be honest, that’s what it represented to me.

Anyway, I’ll definitely be wearing green next year. Y’know, just in case.