Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! I love this holiday, even though I skip the crazier parts of celebrating it. My husband and I prefer going to a local bar, getting a Guinness and some soda bread, and listening to two men who play live Irish folk music there each year. It’s how that bar celebrates until roughly 9 PM, when the musicians are swapped for a DJ and patrons like myself are swapped for recent college grads wearing the traditional St. Paddy’s garb of Party City.

I wanted to write an impromptu story about St. Patrick’s Day today, but found myself writing of the ocean instead. I then wanted to write a short story about the ocean, but found myself unable to finish after the final line. Perhaps I will finish it later, and continue it in another post. Perhaps it will become the opening of another book, once I finish Please Give. For now, it’s a stray passage in need of a home – and for now, that home is here. Enjoy – and if you have ideas for where it should go next, feel free to leave them in the comments!

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Sea of Green

When I first saw the ocean as a child, I was struck by the fact that it was green. Whenever I’d seen a wave crash on television or a boat sail in a book, it had been on an ocean of blue. My mother took me to the beach, and I furrowed my brow and declared, “That’s not the ocean – it’s green.”

She chuckled at my innocence. “That is the ocean, even though it looks green. It’s the way of the Atlantic.”

I wouldn’t see a blue ocean until many years later, as I watched the Pacific crash on some rocks beneath my balcony. I typed on my computer, sipping coffee as the sun rose and brightened the cliffs surrounding the water. Bordered by oceans of blue and green, I smiled at the thought of our hetero-chrome country, its watery eyes gazing at the varied terrains in between them. I trekked across them often, as my mother stayed faithful to the sea of green, and I’d cross any mountain, desert, or plain to see her when she called.