Getting Lucky

It's no secret that I tend to live my life holiday to holiday. I'm sure it was learned during my childhood when it seemed like the day after a holiday we were decorating for the next one.

So I'm gathering the shamrocks and Easter wreaths, debating if I should decorate for St. Patrick's Day or just Easter, which are sharing the same month this year. I enjoy both holidays. Both have meaning. I'm both Irish and Christian, which adds even more meaning.

I'm sure I'll just go with Easter. Since I was a little girl in Sunday School, I always loved the story of Easter. I loved the feeling of hope and new beginnings that it inspired. I loved the idea of being unconditionally loved and forgiven when I didn't deserve it. I loved being all dressed up with a pretty bonnet and matching purse, with the five bucks my Pap tucked inside. I loved the lillies everywhere and singing with my friends, as our parents looked at us with pride and wonder. I loved the egg hunt and Easter dinner that followed at my grandmother's house, and the baskets were beautiful and full of everything I would need for summer.

Days before Easter, I would dye and decorate the eggs with my grandparents, and Pap and I would shop for my Mom's and Grandma's baskets. I always picked white chocolate crosses for them, and I'd get my mom those little chocolate footballs that Sarris' makes. We played football on Atari a lot, so I guess I thought it was the perfect gift. I'd usually pick out some sunglasses for her and things we could use on summer vacations. My grandmother loved to knit, so I always bought her yarn and pattern books at Murphy's.

Now I'm all grown up with my own family, and I still enjoy those same traditions and the most amazing story of hope and love that has ever been told. We decorate eggs, fill and hide baskets, take lillies to the special ladies in our lives, and we still support Sarris when we pick chocolate for the baskets.

But St. Patrick's Day deserves attention as well--and I'm not talking about the kind that involves kegs and eggs or hours of public intoxication. Feel free to Google St. Patrick if you want to learn the history behind the holiday. There are always two things I take away from anything I've ever read. A lot of St. Patrick's life is unconfirmed by hard evidence, but the stories that were validated involve him being a missionary and helping others without expecting anything return. The other thing I remember is that he used the shamrock, with its three leaves, to teach people about the Holy Trinity.

The luck side of the holiday likely grew out of stories claiming St. Patrick prayed vigorously while he was held captive and finally "got lucky" and was set free to return to his family. Somehow that resulted in the "luck o' the Irish."

I'm mostly Irish and have never felt luckier than anyone else.

In fact, I don't think I'm someone who has really attributed success or failure to luck. I always think it's hardwork or a lack thereof, love or a lack thereof, ambition or a lack thereof, or the natural balance of life that results in our circumstances. As much as we'd like to blame or credit something else, it's really our own life choices that determine our fate. And that's a good thing because it actually gives us more power over our lives than if we just left it all to chance.

This has nothing to do with serendipty or religion--both of which I believe in. I believe in prayer. I believe in living for something greater than ourselves. I believe in being useful and helpful. I believe in asking and receiving.

But don't expect to receive if you never ask. And don't expect to get everything you ask for.

I think luck can truly be defined as receiving when you don't ask. But how often does that really happen? Even people who win the lottery tried to win.

So maybe luck is about beating odds that are against you. What's unusual about that? Many people beat those kind of odds every day.

Still, we have those amazing, impressive weeks when everything seems to go right--an amazing date, a promotion or raise, we snag the perfect apartment with the awesome neighbors, we avoid a speeding ticket even though we were clearly speeding, a shipment arrives earlier than you expected, and you're traveling out of town on the same Friday that you get paid.

Give it time, though, and sometimes those things will unravel.

For example...

During the beginning of summer 2001, I thought I was as lucky as a girl could get. On the final day of spring semester my sophomore year, I found out that I got an internship instead of a junior I expected might get it on age alone. I got an apartment that was just two blocks away from my best friends and a block away from all that Forbes Avenue in Oakland had to offer. And I could spend Sunday afternoons on Flagstaff, a beautiful hillside park with views of the city and a lot of frisbee.

But...

By mid-summer, I learned our landlord was an elderly woman who occasionally set things on fire, which was really unfortunate considering she lived below us. My internship, while providing me with vast writing opportunities and martini glasses, paid so little that I could barely afford bus fare and yogurt. And those beautiful Flagstaff views couldn't ease the pain of watching someone die of cancer.

Yet, by the end, I still felt lucky to live on That Street during That Summer. It was the kind of street where kids played guitars on rooftops and offered you a beer on your way home from work. And it was still only two blocks away from some of the best people I have ever known, who would share Dave and Andy's and great conversation to help me through the roughest days.

Lucky or not, I clung to the consistency of it all. The crowded bus at 7:40 a.m. The morning coffee at Seattle's Best. The phone messages waiting for me at my desk--that blinking red light that made me wonder if it was a compliment or a complaint. The budget meeting and the deadlines. The brown bag lunches at the Point, and the overpriced ones at the local grille. The walk home past the newly-built PNC Park, smiling at the enthusiastic Yinzers and holding onto images of dads with children on their shoulders, hoping I would have that someday. The really crowded bus at 5:43 p.m. The walk home, down from Fifth Avenue, across Forbes to Meyran, past the little tables outside the small restaurant, wondering what those people were talking about, wondering what their lives were like, wondering if wondering about it made me crazy or just destined for great things. The walk past the kids with guitars offering me beer, past the landlord's garden of unidentified vegetables, up to our second-floor apartment with cool throw pillows and a lot of plants. The walk to my friends, two blocks away, to watch "The Golden Girls" and "Friends" and to talk about our days--and the wise advice from BG that the Laxative and Coffee Diet was not a wise choice. The Eminem from Sib's room. The Aaliyah from upstairs. The laughing until bedtime. The prayers and wishes before sleeping that I wouldn't worry about things like bus money one day and would be blessed as one of those moms next to the dads with children on their shoulders, simultaneously hoping that I remembered to water the plants.

Nearly 7 years later (and isn't 7 supposed to be the luckiest number of all?), I feel like those prayers are being answered.

But some of it had to be luck because, when I look at my children, I feel like I got a lot more than I asked for or deserved.