My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Hazel Ferell, and try as I might, I cannot locate any photographic evidence of the Ferells in my mother’s scrapbook, although she does mention her grandmother, “Momma Ferell,” in a couple of her letters. (I did, however, find proof in our family geneology Tracking Barefoot Runyan: Descendants of Isaac Barefoot Runyan, compiled by Marie Runyan Wright.) Anyway, I mention it because it means I have some Irish in me. I believe my mother was a quarter Irish, so I guess that makes me an eighth. And my kids would be one-sixteenth, right?

Saint Patrick’s Day is actually a holiday I’ve never really gotten into on any level. I’m sure I’ve worn green most years, (I’m wearing muted olives and camo as I write this)but I don’t believe, for example, that I’ve ever drunk — or vomited up — green beer.

In fact, for the past eleven years (wow) since my father’s passing, I’ve had my own, personal reason for having a negative reaction to this holiday. In March of 2000 my father was dying of cancer and was an in-patient at Greenwich Hospital. I was living in Brooklyn at the time and did not have a car. In order to visit my father, I had to take a Metro North commuter train about one hour each way — not a pleasant experience under normal circumstances. But when you’re going to visit a dried out and yellowing version of your once vital parent while surrounded by people euphemistically referred to as “revellers,” the reality becomes nearly unbearable.

The memory of visiting my father on St. Patrick’s Day gives me no ill will toward the Farrell sliver of my genetic make-up, nor to the Irish as a people. (This is where I’m supposed to say “some of my best friends are Irish” or “my favorite band is Irish,” or “I just love Conan O’Brien!”)

I will say that when I think back to my time in Europe in the late 1980’s, Ireland was one of the most welcoming places we visited. I don’t know whether Sue Barney will remember it this way or not, but as I recall our arrival in Dublin, I picture us with our tourist map open, riding the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit). We are immediately surrounded by a group of kindly older men, poking at our map with their pinkies and pointing in various directions. They were literally elbowing each other out of the way in order to help us, and none of them had their hand held out for payment. I don’t know whether we offered; I’m sure they would have refused it, and strongly.

I realized some time later that the reason they may have reacted to our presence that way could have been — aside from their generally generous nature — our age. We were in our early 20’s, and in the Dublin of the late 1980’s you just see people our age. They all left for England, America and elsewhere, hoping for better prospects. It’s changed since the tech boom of the 1990’s, but back then it was like a reverse Peter Pan or Logan’s Run situation.

Well now, this rumination on Saint Patrick’s Day has brought me halfway round the world and back! I suppose one of the things that makes us human is our ability to hold a plurality of meanings for a variety of things at one time. This holiday may very well be one of those complex things in my heart for years to come.

Picture a little face. The face of a seven-year-old boy. He’s looking up at you, and he’s asking you, “What are we going to do today, Daddy?” He asks the question with a mixture of intrigue and misgiving. This morning, when Diego asked me the question, as he does on most non-school days, I heard my wife say from the bedroom, “No se lo diga.” Spanish. Our code language, and probably the only way we’ll get them to learn it, because if they think we’re telling secrets on them, they’re going to want to understand it.

Really healthy, I know.

“No se lo diga.” Don’t tell him. My wife’s instincts were telling her that if this boy got an answer to his question (“We’re going to Central Market for a cooking class.”) he would raise all kinds of stink and make my morning a living hell. (I say “my” morning, because Jeanette was headed for the merciful sanctuary of work. I’m “off” for Spring Break this week, so I’m on Daddy Day-care duty.)

“We’re going on an adventure!” That’s our stock response when we don’t want the kids to know where we’re taking them. Of course, they’ve figured this out by now, so he immediately asks me to be more specific about said adventure.

“You’ll see, buddy. You’ll like it.”

It’s not until we’re pulling into Central Market that I reveal the truth of what’s happening. “I don’t want to do cooking class! I hate cooking class!”

“You do not hate cooking class,” I say, remaining calm, but with beads of sweat already forming. Don’t let them smell your fear; it’s like blood in the water to them.

“I’m not going!” he said, walking away from me in the parking lot.

“Diego, you get back here NOW. One….TWO…”

Then comes his meltdown. The tears well up and fall. Despite all my efforts at Love and Logic, I become Daddy Monster, the daddy I don’t want to be. I issue threats, doing my best to make them reasonable. Jackson, the five year old, is — and by the way, Jesus, thank you — calm and not so concerned about cooking class. I think he’s figured out that there will be cookies involved, and maybe a lot of them.

My threats are enough to get Diego into the classroom, where the instructors look at me with concerned expressions on their faces. Diego repays my threats of depriving him of his greatest love — technology — by refusing to participate in the class, for which we paid a nice little chunk of change, I might add. I watch them from outside the glass, Jackson happily cooking and eating and eating and goofing with the other boys and eating, while Diego sits by himself, coloring. He’s not disruptive; he’s got an almost eerie peace about him, and inside I’m churning.

I must, of course, enforce my punishment. He is not allowed any technology for the rest of the day. I spend way too much time wondering why the hell I let this stuff get me so angry, and why I can’t be the in-control father that I fancy all the fathers around me to be.

But then something occurs to me. Diego is a smart, smart child. He made the choice to take control of his situation, even though he knew the cost would be something dear to him. It must be difficult having your days dictated by someone else all the time. As much as it annoyed me, at the end of the day I kind of have to applaud the kid for standing up for something.

I won’t tell him that though, will I? Like fear, they smell empathy, and feed on it voraciously.

While doing some spring cleaning today, I happened upon a handful of letters my mother wrote me between the fall of 1981, when I went away to college and January of 1987, when I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’m about halfway through them and had to stop, because of a heaviness in my heart. Hearing her voice brings her back, but it also reminds me of how much I’ve missed out on, since her death in 1988.

Writing those words, I came to a chilling realization: In two years, she will have been gone for twenty five years — the same amount of time I got to spend with her on this earth. That just feels so unfair to me.

My mother was a letter writer of the old style. I have many memories of her sitting on her chaise lounge, spending days on one handwritten letter to her friend Kay, or her cousin Sharon. Her letters to me are chatty, newsy and filled with humor, including a very short story called “McKay,” about a lobster I bring home to cook for my girlfriend. McKay is the lobster’s name. She often encourages me to study hard (“keep that pretty Runyan nose to the grind-stone!”), but stops at one point — presumably during one of my early academic slumps — to say, “Good grades in school are better than bad, Dan, but your happiness is the important thing!”

She takes pride in her artwork, particularly a bust that she created in her YWCA sculpture class. I remember the piece well; it’s a woman’s head, topping a long, elegant neck. Her hair is in a bun, and she has a faraway expression. It always made me think of Modigliani. I’m not sure where that bust ended up. It may be in my brother’s home in White Plains. I’d love to keep it for a time, if it’s there.

More than anything else, my mother’s letters to me are filled with warmth and love. I often say the thing I’m most thankful for that my parents gave me is the capacity to love.

She ends one letter with “And every night at 7:00 PM, consider yourself hugged — whether you want to be or not.” The one that made me have to stop reading closed with her saying, “I am so very fortunate to have people like you, Mike and Hanno as my family. Don’t ever forget how special you are.”

She, too, was a special person. I knew it then, and did my best to express it in my awkward, late-adolescent way. As I’ve said, she would have adored Jeanette and the boys, and she would have been endlessly amused watching me struggle with Diego and Jackson in the same way she and my father did with Mike and me. I’ll read the rest of those letters when I feel I’m ready to, and then I’ll put them in a safe place, so that I can share them with the boys, and describe the remarkable woman who was my mother.

It’s late, I’m tired, and so I reserve the right to pull from the vault. The following is from one of those questionnaires that were popular on Facebook a couple of years ago:

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me. You can’t use the artist I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Repost as “my life according to (artist name)”

Pick your Artist: U2

Are you a Male or a Female:
Stories for Boys

Describe Yourself:
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

How do you feel:
Magnificent

Describe where you currently live:
Zoo Station

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Where the Streets Have No Name

Your Favorite form of Transportation:
Walk On

Your Best Friend is:
Two Hearts Beat As One

You and your best friends are:
Conversations on a Barstool

What’s the weather like:
Beautiful Day

Favorite Time of Day:
Twilight

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
Into the Heart

What is life to you:
Pride (In the Name of Love)

Your last relationship:
Stuck in a Moment and You Can’t Get Out of It

Your fear:
Last Night On Earth

What is the best advice you have to give:
Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your Own

Thought for the day:
Rejoice

How you would like to die:
Numb

My soul’s present condition:
Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World

My motto:
Peace on Earth

It was a good turnout today for the “Keep Texas Smart” rally at the capitol building in Austin, and a beautiful day for it, too. Or so I’m told. I couldn’t make it to the protest, because, well, my son had a playdate.

That’s right, I missed an important political demonstration, because I had to take my children to a six year old’s birthday party. If you’d told me this back in the day, when I was shouting the usual chants (What do want? PEACE! When do we want it? NOW! and We’re gonna beat back the racist attack, we’re gonna beat-beat back the racist attack!) that I would have to bow out of a demonstration, and that that was my reason, I think my brain would have exploded.

When I was in my early and mid twenties, I attended a number of rallies in different places — Boston, Washington DC, Syracuse, of course, where we camped out in shanties in front of the administration building, demanding our trustees divest from South Africa, and Madrid, where I joined an anti-NATO demonstration. We marched out to the American military base in Torrejon, where I got a swift lesson in the difference between American and Spanish police practices. In Spain they’re less shy about dispersing a crowd. One moment we were marching peacefully across the square, and the next a projectile the size and color of a tennis ball whizzes audibly past my left ear, and all hell breaks loose. Suddenly we’re hauling ass back in the direction from which we just came. The tennis balls turn out to be smoke bombs, and people are crying and coughing everywhere.

So I guess what I’m saying is I’m something of a protest veteran. I’ll never forget when I was arguing with my father about politics. We were in Milan, visiting with my brother Andrew. Dad kept smiling at me as I made what I’m sure I thought was an iron-clad and heartfelt case about whatever my subject was; I don’t remember that part. Finally I said, “What? What are you smiling at?”

“I’m remembering something that Pierre Trudeau, the former Prime Minister of Canada said, when they asked him what he thought of his son being a Communist. He said his son was in his twenties, and he’d be surprised if he wasn’t a Communist.”

I was so insulted at the time. I think now, however, that I probably felt that way because I knew he was right. It was his way of saying he appreciated my political idealism; I guess I just wished he’d put it more simply at the time.

And now I allowed Jeanette to represent us at today’s rally, of which, by the way, I don’t mean to make light. The state of Texas needs to fund education, as I’ve said in detail in previous posts.

I couldn’t help but picture my father, sitting up in heaven, his feet dangling off a cloud. He was looking down on me, as I watched my kids frolic in their friend’s backyard, and my wife chanted amidst thousands about 15 miles to the west. I pictured him with the same smile he had on during our political discussion in Milan nearly 25 years ago.

In the summer of 1979, just before moving back to New York after our one quick year in Michigan, my family and I had a vacation in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Obviously, this was long before I knew I would marry into that country and become a “Dominicano honorario.”

The weather was beautiful, of course, and I remember enjoying everything about the Hotel Santo Domingo where we stayed. There was a big pool, tennis courts, and a guy who made you as many perfect omelets as you wanted every morning for breakfast. My father respectfully did his best at speaking Spanish, which was pretty good, as I remember, instilling in me that same wish to make the effort when traveling to countries where English is not the primary language.

In addition to these pleasant memories, there were also a couple of ugly moments. This part’s a little hazy, but I remember a flight in which we had to change planes in Haiti. One of the planes we were on was a tiny one, which was pretty bumpy and scary, and my mother was completely freaked out. Being a smoker, she dealt with her fear by lighting up. I remember Haitian women seeming pretty angry as they told her to put out her cigarette in Creole. My mother played dumb for a few puffs, before finally putting it out. Not a good international moment for our family.

The other uncomfortable moment came when we took the shuttle bus from the hotel to the zoo. We were greeted upon arrival by a large group of boys who were asking for money. Our guides told us not to give them any, which we didn’t, and in response, they yelled, “Gringos fuera! Gringos go home!”

I was 16 then, and it was the first time I was really aware of our image as Americans in the rest of the “developing” world, and that our tourism, and the American dollars that go with it, are both loved and hated at the very same time.

I’ve been to Santo Domingo a few times as an adult, and it’s a different experience for me now. For one thing, I’m fluent in Spanish, which helps the situation. In addition, I no longer stay in hotels; my in-laws built a house that is only a few miles away from the Hotel Santo Domingo. (In fact, my brother-in-law had his wedding reception there.) I enjoy my visits there, but despite my honorary status, I’ve never fully lost the awareness I gained on that trip in 1979 — that as an American, I symbolize many things to people, and I know it is important to keep this in mind, wherever I go.