My mother’s parents both died young. From her teenage years on she was raised by extended family. She had an aunt who was a nun who helped arrange for her to attend a catholic girls boarding school. The school was run a religious order called “The Sisters of the Incarnate Word”, many of whom were fresh off the boat from Ireland. One of their conventions was to insist that every time a student spoke, her sentence was to begin with the phrase “Praising the Incarnate Word..” as in “Praising the Incarnate Word, Sister, may I be excused….”.The story of the young Irish nuns occasionally breaking into a jig came straight from my mother’s lips. The title of the song comes from the St. Lucy Parish where she often lent her lovely voice to the choir.

My father was born on a farm in Peosta, Iowa outside of Dubuque.  He was schooled in a one-room schoolhouse through 12th grade, then worked his way through college and law school. He met and courted my mother in Chicago where my Dad was a newly minted lawyer at the headquarters of Montgomery Ward where my Mom worked in the secretarial pool. The Normandy Inn was their favorite dinner spot. They married and moved back to Dubuque. But their lives never stopped expanding in ways that they could never have anticipated. Both are now buried at New Mellary Abbey outside of Dubuque alongside my father’s parents and siblings.