Today's a good day.

Today my dad and I were going over a dialog for our Irish class when he suddenly became choked up. My dad can be a little bit of a sap at times, so this behavior was not unusual. A good sports movie always brings a tear to his eye, as do stories about poor children from the ghetto who beat the odds and grow up to be doctors and professors. He also tends to get misty- eyed when he listens to Irish rebel music or a Judy Collins record. As a kid, my dad was much more demonstrative than my mom. This was just one aspect of my formative years that contributed to some confusion later in life as to the socially ascribed gender roles. I will get into that at a later date.

It is so strange how you can do the same things over and over with no associations to a past memory and then one day you are reading about Cait asking Nora if it is a good day and suddenly you are in the middle of a big pool of memory. This has happened to me before. For a split second sadness/nostalgia/happiness/pain/regret roll through you, filling your entire body and then poof! it all disappears and before you go back to feeling normal you feel empty.

i ask my dad what is wrong when he doesn't respond for several minutes.

"We used to always say to my dad when he got home from work, 'Today is a good day, papa'."

He never talks about his dad. My grandpa died when Dad was just twelve-years-old. He had a heart attack while the two of them were walking home from the lake. It was just the two of them. He died instantly.

I supressed my desire to ask him questions on the subject. This was not an "in" to a discussion on the grandpa I know so little about and my dad never talks about. This was Dad's few moments of memory flooding in, filling him up, and then draining out. We continued with the dialog. It is a good day.

St. Patrick's Day

My dad and I are taking Irish classes. He is the biggest brown-nose around. He will ask questions that showcase what he knows in order to elicit the response "An-mhaith", very good. This is all kind of cute until it involves me. He signed us up to volunteer at the organizations table at a St. Patrick's Day celebration at Landmark Center in Saint Paul. I am full of the volunteer spirit, however I know where my strengths are. When the volunteer coordinator came to our class with the sign-up sheet, Dad jumped at the opportunity to be the first one on the list. Which meant I was second.

Since I don't see very well, I guess I assume that a duty that asks you to make eye contact with people passing by might not be my thing. I don't do well in big groups where people are coming and going and asking questions about something I have studied for only six weeks while Irish music is blaring in the background while little girls with creepy curly wigs dance around.

Not my thing. I survived our shift and everyone was very nice to me, but I felt like such a dork. I avoid putting myself in those types of situations because I hate feeling this way. Of course if I didn't do things I was uncomfortable with, I would rarely leave the house. I have been legally blind for nine years and by now I am able to weigh the pros and cons of any given situation and decide if it is a good way to spend my time. I have been surprised, but ususally I am right.

We don't even get graded.