For as long as I can remember, the Baltimore St. Patrick’s Day Parade has been part of my world. I started Irish dancing at about 5 years old. Once you started dancing, you started marching in the parade.
On the morning of the parade, there was always a mad scramble as we tried to assemble our outfits. I don’t know why we never focused on that the evening before, but I remember the whirlwind hunt for all the pieces. Somehow, there were never enough white gloves or black tights to go around. The costumes were complicated, and something was always missing.
Still, somehow we always ended up fully dressed, and I remember standing year after year, shivering and laughing with my sisters and fellow dancers, as we waited for the parade to begin by the Washington Monument. There was always so much to see—the dogs who had been dyed green and the men in kilts playing bagpipes and the horses snorting clouds into the frosty air.
The sound of bagpipes always puts me right back in that moment, I’m a little girl, full of energy, just waiting for the parade to begin.
My father was always at the parade too, wearing his green sport coat and marching along beside us. He isn’t Irish, but he’s married to my Irish mother, and he never missed it.
As we got older—maybe teens and college-aged—my father started distributing the programs at the start of the parade. He tied a stuffed Kermit the Frog to his green station wagon roof and drove through the streets, leading the way.
Years later after John and I got married and adopted our sons, once or twice we brought them to march in the parade with the Emerald Isle Club. We pulled them in a green wagon and fed them fruit snacks to keep them going along the route.
There’s just something about a parade—and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade specifically. It holds a special place in my heart.
This year, I realized my older son would be marching in the parade with his band. I was excited to see him processing through the same streets I walked through on so many shivery March Sundays. I had hoped, of course, that it might be a warmer day, but it was chilly—as it so often is on the parade day.
My husband and I drove into the city, miraculously found a spot—a free spot, even—and walked down to the Monument. We paused to watch our son warming up with his band before we walked to the start of the route to find a place to stand.
There were dogs wearing green apparel and Irish Wolfhounds striding through the streets, and there were a few horses, and bagpipers, of course. It felt like coming home—but it also felt new.
I knew our high schooler’s band would be playing “Danny Boy,” because our trumpeter had told me. Still, when they came down the hill and around the Monument on Charles Street and the first notes started, I was full of so much joy.
My Irish grandmother loved “Danny Boy.” I think of her whenever I hear it. And here was her great-grandson, born on the other side of the world, and playing one of her favorites as he marched through the streets of Baltimore, a city she loved and made her home. She would have been proud. I know I am. As I watched him doing what he loves and does so well, my eyes filled with tears.
Some of these milestone moments creep up on me, and I am just so full of wonder and joy at the goodness of God.
The moment passed quickly, as they always do, and the band was marching off, heading swiftly down the parade route, off to entertain others with their music.
But as we headed home, I felt grateful for another St. Patrick’s Day Parade memory to add to my personal treasure trove. Who needs a leprechaun and a pot of gold when we have moments like this?
“But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow,
It’s I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow,
Oh, Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so!”
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