More than a Leprechaun

It’s March, the month of St. Patrick’s Day, but I’m sure St. Patrick would agree there’s more to the day that bears his name than leprechauns and a pot of gold. Here’s what I mean.

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My first conscious memory is of a one-bedroom, summer cottage on a skinny spit of land at the confluence of the Housatonic River and Long Island Sound. In front of the grey-shingled rental was the beach. Behind and across a dead-end road was the tidal river opposite Stratford, Connecticut. Based on a handful of photos, and what I now know about my adoption, I was probably two and a half. But memories at such a tender age are not recorded equally. Some details leap out with searing brightness while others remain a vague slurry of emotion. And so, I can still see the tiny black snails, glossy with sea water, embedded in the sand at low tide. They were everywhere. I was afraid to step on them, so Daddy carried me into the waves on his shoulders.

 One day Daddy announced we were sailing to an island for a picnic. He lifted a small red boat he called a dinghy over his head and led the way across the road paved with crushed shells. I followed down a narrow path lined with marsh grass taller than I was. When we got to the river’s mucky edge, we all crammed in the dinghy, and Daddy sculled to the sailboat with a single oar. After clipping the little boat to the mooring, he climbed onto the deck of the larger vessel. Mommy carefully lifted me onto the deck and climbed aboard herself.

There was little wind. The sky was overcast, the air humid. Our sails luffed as we bobbed over glassy swells. I remember wearing a red striped sun suit because its elastic legs pinched my chubby thighs. By the time we spied the island, I was hot and starving.

We beached the boat on a narrow ring of sand that rose to a crown of stunted pine.   

Daddy lifted me out of the boat, and before my little sneakers hit the ground, I informed him, “This is where the leprechauns live.” I’d heard stories of a faraway emerald isle. Surely there were men less than half my height just out of sight.   

While mommy unpacked a red metal Coke cooler, Daddy and I combed the sands for teeny footprints. I climbed over driftwood hoping to surprise a miniature man in knickers and a waistcoat. We turned towards the trees. I led. Daddy followed.  

“Time to eat.” Mommy’s voice pierced the magic.   

But how could I turn back when so close to their secret kingdom? I confess, potato chips, was all it took to lure me back to our green army blanket.   

When lunch was over, Daddy glanced at his tide tables. “Quick, gotta go, or we won’t have time to sail back before low tide with this little wind.”

Mommy packed up, but I dawdled, my ears perked, my eyes wide, for any sign of wee men. The slight breeze granted me a lingering search of the shoreline before releasing our vessel from the island’s spell.  

By the time daddy clipped the small sailboat back to its mooring, the brackish water was too shallow to float our dinghy all the way to shore, so Mommy lifted me out of the boat and held my hand as we slogged through stinky black mud up to my thighs. How vividly I recall those endless sucking steps before we got to solid ground.

Daddy pulled the dinghy the rest of the way to the riverside while Mommy stripped off my soiled sun suit and we rinsed clean in the outside shower. Staring at my feet and shivering in the frigid water, I realized my sneakers, PF Flyers, which promised I could run faster and jump higher, were lost in the mire.  

Mommy put me right into pajamas and readied my foldout cot in the living room. Time only for cereal and a quick story before bedtime. Through the open window to the porch, I could see my parents enjoying their cocktails, as the sun slipped below the horizon. I could hear ice cubes clinking in their glasses, as waves crashed on the snail-speckled beach. Windchimes tinkled, and I remember thinking, if only. If only I hadn’t turned back for potato chips, surely, I would’ve found my leprechaun.

In the wake of that long-ago voyage, I see my child’s heart unbounded. No line of demarcation yet drawn between the ordinary and the extraordinary. No curtain yet pulled between the natural and the supernatural. Completely unaware I was looking for far more than a leprechaun, surely my child’s heart was already on the hunt for the divine. The door back to Eden still ajar.

From the beginning, creation in its magnificence enlightens us to His nature. Creation itself makes His undying power and divine identity clear, even though they are invisible; 

Romans 1:20

Cover photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash