A toast -

I was never a huge fan of corned beef but I'm a sucker for anything that'll go in a crockpot & there are those pesky traditions to honor.  Though we made Reubens, not potatoes, and I skipped the sauerkraut.  

Happy St Patrick's Day. 

Gigi would have made a massive spread with both red and green cabbage, and homemade sauerkraut.  She loved to cook elegant, complicated meals and I am always a little ashamed on those nights my children end up with a sandwich or scrambled eggs. 

Not that she was perfect, of course.  She once brined a pork roast till it nearly crystallized and one St Paddy's day dinner forgot the cabbage. The horror!  We were all too polite to say anything, for which we were roundly scolded later, but she did laugh about it - several years later. 

I don't know if it's genetics or a sub-conscious twitch but I've forgotten something at every dinner party I've ever thrown.  Let's call it an homage to my elders (& not what it really is - poor organizational & time management skills).  Every time it happens though, I think of Gigi's cabbage and laugh.  

There is family drama in settling Gigi's affairs & people are behaving poorly.  The fact that she hasn't actually returned from the dead to shame them has killed any lingering hope I might have had in the afterlife.  My faith in the living has always been shaky, I just hate it when I'm right. 

But despite the salty meat and family shenanigans, tonight I ate corned beef, drank Guinness, thought of my Gigi, and smiled. 

Beautiful young people are acts of nature, But beautiful old people are works of art.