Musings for Shay's birthday

A Tuesday night at Emmett's in West Dundee, and the usual crowd is here. That's to say Shay Clarke and his pals are near the bar, not just for the $3 pints, with Munich Light being the favorite, but to mark Clarke's 60th birthday.

The gathering of friends spills into the restaurant. There's a cake at a table where Clarke's wife Traci is sitting. She cuts a small piece but can't place the taste. Turns out the frosting is laced with Bailey's Irish Cream.

The night merrily rolls along, and Clarke's buddy Joe Cullen breaks out an accordion to sing traditional Irish tunes. Joe looks Irish in the way the Hobbits do. You can kid him about it. That's part of being Irish.

There's a thin, quiet man with a full head of gray rock star hair sitting a few tables away. He looks like he could have been in the Rolling Stones or at least been friends with them. His name is Maurice Lennon, and he played fiddle with a band that formed in Ennis, Co. Clare, back in 1977. He would be heading back home for a reunion show Wednesday morning.

Do the math. Thirty-three years ago, Clarke was 27 and living in Dublin. Twenty-seven suddenly is 60 and somewhere in the middle of the Midwest.

Sitting in a chair next to Cullen, Lennon plays a few tunes that capture the bittersweet feeling of time's passing. Sure, at first, there's a guy at the bar with a southern accent who almost drowns out the subtle music. But a couple numbers into it, even he's being quiet and paying attention.

Lennon plays a number dedicated to Clarke's wife, "If Ever You Were Mine." This is how a love song should sound - sweet but not sticky, winsome with a hint of loneliness, the longing that comes from enjoying life but knowing nothing lasts forever. That's why there are violins.

Lennon finishes the number and points toward Traci Clarke, his muse for the night music. There is a round of applause, and Lennon matter of factly closes his case and evaporates from being the center of attention.

Cullen takes over and changes the mood with "Big Bamboo." It's a bawdy Jamaican number, and on accordion the shuffling melody seems more than a little like the Mardi Gras classic "Meet Me on the Battlefront." I tell him that he ain't being very Irish, laying on the Chicago accent nice and thick like a bad cross between a Guinness and a Miller.

It doesn't really matter, anyway. I stupidly say "there ain't no party like a Shay Clarke party," almost immediately cringing at my own bad joke. But I don't. It's like something my dad would have said, had my dad listened to rap. And at a 60th birthday party there's something to be said for acting a bit like your dad, even if you're the only one in the room who knows this.