The party’s off, but the family’s eyes are smiling

Éirinn go Brách (Ireland forever)! My husband Brian set up the St. Patrick’s Day village, with castles, lighthouses, churches and glowinthedark shillelaghs. But it’s for a party that won’t happen.

For two decades we’ve bought slabs of corned beef from Roberts Corned Meats and invited whoever felt like being Irish to visit the Bedlam Blue Bungalow in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior. But not this year. We won’t even get to pinch an inch because we’re staying 6 feet apart.

Brian gave up red meat for Lent, so there’ll be no corned beef for Queenie and Bandit. I’ll still bake soda bread, as a surprise for Aunt Dorla, so I hope she’s not reading this column.

But this is our last chance to get it wrong. We’re coming out of the other side of this disaster. Fingers crossed and masks still on. And even though we don’t get to sing “Danny Boy” with the usual crowd, we do get time together with my Celtic sons, Zane and Aidan.

Indeed, thanks to 23andMe, we know that 18% of Zane’s blood is Gaelic, and 32% of Aidan’s, which brings me to our early St. Patrick’s Day miracle.

On the feast of St. Casimir (March 4), Zane announced he’d learned to fry chicken at school and offered to make dinner. After a quick trip to Safeway for panko crumbs, eggs and chicken thighs, Zane told me nicely to get out of the kitchen.

An hour later, the family sat down to eat, and by the light of our little Irish village, we held hands, said grace and toasted “the best boys in the world, one of whom has learned how to cook ...” We dug in.

Turns out the toast was only partially right. The school had indeed taught Zane how to cook the outside of fried chicken, but not the inside. Two cuts in I found raw meat.

My son cooked dinner though, so I ate the entire thigh, on the theory that someone had to eat raw fish before they could call it sushi. Not so much Brian. He didn’t think raw meat was in the parenting contract.

Zane looked upset, so I told him the story of when I met Brian’s mother, and Brian told me to eat whatever was served because “this was Maine, damn it,” only to find that his mother had defrosted all but one of the Cornish game hens and I had lost that round of poultry roulette.

“You might just say that uncooked chicken is a family tradition,” I offered.

Here’s what to cherish: Zane cooked dinner. And it was two thirds edible. Zane got it, that in these long lonely days of isolation, family is what’s left when you’re socially distant from everything else. What matters is our little village within a village.

He turns 18 this August, just in time to be an adult in the brave new world. He’s made the best of the pandemic. While most families were navigating virtual education, Zane was making up for lost semesters and will graduate on time this June.

He called Terry AstenBennett, his default mother (the Wendy on our Island of Lost Boys), to tell her about the fried chicken and the diploma. She asked him what comes next. Zane told her a gap year, and Terry said that a gap year was a good way of getting lost. “No,” she insisted, “let’s do community college.”

Zane hung up the phone and sat down at my computer. Within two hours, he’d enrolled for the fall semester at City College of San Francisco. They don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into.

He’s the only son I know who went away to high school, then came back home to go to college.

Ireland might be forever, but not our shamrock village. We take it down Thursday to make room for Easter town. And we do it together.

Even though we don’t get to sing “Danny Boy” with the usual crowd, we do get time together with my Celtic sons, Zane and Aidan.