Nine Photos Featuring Shades of Green

Irish-named Aidan at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Denver, this past Saturday. Her name means “little fire” and it fits. A girl with a boy’s name has to be tough.

Joel and Sam watching the parade.

Beatrix loved the parade. She waved and screamed “Hi!” to all the entries we saw, especially the Shriners in their wacky cars.

It wouldn’t be a parade without 17 miles of old convertibles.

When you have a birthday right before St. Patrick’s Day, expect to have clovers on your cake. My husband’s cake was no exception:

My new green plate from Target:

This morning, I noticed how the cloudy diffused light from last night’s snow storm whispered through my green glass birds on the living room table.

Crayola’s window markers have saved the day many times this winter. The kids love writing and drawing on the windows. Here’s a clover with our snowy yard beyond.

The last shade of green is from a pine tree in our front yard. We woke to this snow. I am done with snow. It can stop now.

*~Alfred Percival Graves

We were born the same year and graduated from different high schools in 1989.

My husband claims I wouldn’t have looked at him if we had attended the same high school.

I wouldn’t have talked to him or given him the time of day. If he asked me to dance at a school-sanctioned late-1980s pastel-infested dance, I would have said, “Like no! Gaw!”

I maintain I would have recognized something in him—whatever quality attracted me to him in college would have been present in high school, but in a clumsier form.

Today is his 37th birthday. Being born on the Ides of March means being told to BEWARE! of it again and again by those who remember Caesar’s Bad Day and 10th grade English.

I think it’s a pretty lucky day, for me at least. On the day my husband was born, I was three months away from my own birth.

Mom, do you remember when I kicked you really hard on March 15, 1971?

Yeah.