All the corned beef in our house came out of a can.

Mom -- born Marion McQuillian -- was schooled in the ways of lace-curtain Irish by her proud, formidable Irish mother, who had come to America alone at 16 to be secretary to a music teacher.

Mom wouldn't "smell up the house" with the odor of cabbage cooking, the odor of tenement hallways. Maudlin tenors weeping through Danny Boy, like boiled cabbage, were part of a painful past escaped, and best left back there.

Dad would never tell me stories of Ireland passed down from his mother. "It's a tale of misery and woe, Sheila," he would say.

Francis. A. Lennon was "shanty Irish," Mom joked. Even as education and character expanded his world, he played MacNamara's Band (clip) with gusto on our piano, sang Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra (clip) like Bing Crosby, and insisted on corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day. Every year he got it -- for lunch, somewhere else.

They're both gone now, but all this came back to me Sunday, listening to Carol Noonan's lovely A Danny Boy for My Father (real player or wma) on NPR as we were driving in South County.

Here's a bit of the narrative; the song plays behind it, and takes over at full volume at the end. Turn it up.

...I really hated this song. Every year my dad offered my Danny Boy services to the annual step-dancing recital at the Ancient Order of Hibernians hall. They made me close the program after all the cute Catholic girls did their Riverdance. ... Adults loved my voice. My vibrato was mature for a 9-year-old but freakish to the ears of my friends. Monday would come and I would endure a week of "Glenda the good witch" jokes, and vow I would never sing that stupid song again. When I turned 12, I finally did refuse to fulfill this annual engagement, and never noticed the disappointment in my dad's face when I made the bold announcement. ...

In the car, after this pure voice had banished all the bad Danny Boys before it, my half-Irish husband said, "I think I'm going to cry."

Happy St. Paddy's.