A bright sunny day, warm for March, maybe 45 F, A great day for a St. Patrick’s day parade. But I was going to be in it, not just watching, Never been in a parade before but I know it will be well organized, easy and enjoyable. Well I was right about two out of three - not bad.

I was supposed to arrive at 11:00 to meet up with the knights and get ready for a 12:00 start. So at a few minutes before 11:00 I walked up to the Knights and Justin standing together right where the map said they should be. But there were very few other people around, certainly not enough to make a parade. If it wasn’t for the random people walking around wearing green hats, green pants and green anything, I would have thought we made a mistake.

We had a pleasant hour of chatting as the crowd grew. We had several hundred roses to give out to the moms along the way and Justin gave us the plan of how all this was to happen.

Then, at about 12:15 the parade was finally starting. We got our group together and moved about twenty feet up the street and then we waited… and we waited. All of the groups on the other side of the street kept moving while we continued to wait.

Most of the other groups were rather chaotic, with occasional cheering, horns blowing and even a bagpipe to entertain us as we waited. This was not the orderly procession of marching bands and floats and cars with waving politicians that I was expecting, but it was certainly a lot of fun.

Finally the line we were in started to move. The knights had the statue of Mary up on their shoulders and the cart full of roses was behind them with three of us around it.

As we moved along the parade route we took an armload of roses and passed them out to the mothers. We tried to give them to the children and tell them to give them to their mom. I gave a couple of them to grandmas who were surprised and very grateful. The kids loved it and the moms seemed to love it even more. The little ones were excited about giving a flower to their mom. I got hugs from a few of the moms and I saw one mom with tears and a very big smile taking the rose from her little one. Another mom told me “it is beautiful to get a rose from OUR mom”. A very young mom said, “I’m not a mom yet but I will be soon.” as she proudly patted her baby bump.

As we went along the route, we saw people saluting the flag one of the knights was carrying and people making the sign of the cross as the crucifix and Mary’s statue passed by, I think the parade actually lasted over an hour, but it seemed to me to be over much too soon. I had never seen so many happy people in such a short time before.

Now, I am eagerly looking forward to the next one.