4/365 Lectors

"Bridgett, why aren't you a lector?" Joanna asks me point-blank in the middle of Christmas decorating.

Christmas decorating. It's one of the things I do at my parish. I do many things, and I have done many things. Over the years, I have taught at the school, helped out with the picnic, helped plan a garden, and rebuilt a school library. I started but did not finish a wall mosaic project. I was secretary of parish council. I arranged flowers. I mopped the church floor and polished the brass. I've bought ribbon and flowers and wreaths. I talk to florists on the phone now, and I sit in excruciating meetings on occasion. Sometimes I sit in really good meetings. I serve on the RCIA team (helping people come into the Church), I have run an Atrium (helping children come into a fuller participation in the liturgy through catechesis of the Good Shepherd), I sort of run Children's Liturgy of the Word, I make banners, I take pictures, I make meals for the homebound, I deliver Christmas and Thanksgiving boxes to the poor.

But there's one thing I'm absolutely in charge of when it all comes down to it. I mean, yeah, I'm the one making the banners but nobody would look around and get overheated if the banner didn't happen this Easter and had to wait until next. But there's one thing I do that rests sort of completely on my shoulders when it's all said and done. Christmas decorating. I've done it 4 years now and it has changed here and there from what it once was to what it is right now. It will change more with time, I am sure.

Each year, after the 4th Sunday of Advent's 10 a.m. mass, I get a queasy feeling and a sense that everyone is looking at me. They aren't, but still. The first year, I stood my ground against an awful boy scout leader and started dragging stuff in all by myself while my predecessor told people I'd ordered too many poinsettias. This year there wasn't anything like that--Bev arranged the flowers like she once did; Rachel and Keith and Fr. Anthony and my husband and Sr. Joanna and Sr. Christine and new people whose names escape me before I can even change them here stepped up to the plate and got all the bows on all the wreaths and all the trees where they belong and Sal the janitor didn't knock down any trees and everything went just fine.

Joanna says this to me as I am clutching a large piece of gold cloth--like 12 or 15 yards of shiny gold cloth--that we thought we'd lost and it was, in my mind at least, my fault. I wasn't putting the cloth down until it was time to place it under the nativity figures. I'd just made the call to cut one of the big trees down, bring up one of the smaller trees that was frankly too big for the nativity scene, and to somehow place the other large tree to one side...sort of an asymmetrical altar design that I was totally not sure would work. But the afternoon was starting to wear on me and I knew I couldn't be the only one. I didn't want to be that person.

But I turned and looked at Joanna. Sometimes when she says things, she doesn't mean them. Sometimes when she says things, I take them the wrong way. And sometimes when she says things it's because it's high time they were said to me.

"I just don't think I'm very good," I say honestly. Or maybe that's what I've been saying to myself because I just don't want to. I'm unsure. Even now a few weeks away I'm still not sure if this was just one of those lines I throw out to avoid engaging...or if it's true. I fear it may be true. I also fear it may not be.

"It's just that we're looking for folks who will really pray the readings," she starts explaining. I know what she means. I know the difference--this past Easter, Paul stood up there and read a reading from Genesis that was like listening to a bedtime story. I told him after that I loved listening to it, and he started talking to me about stars and birds and how he had these stuck in his head as he was about to read and he just tried to let the words flow that way. I hadn't understood completely what he meant, but it stayed with me. In comparison, there are a few lectors that I need to read along with or else I just don't hear the words. Even when I know the readings beforehand. I don't know how I feel about this--the choir doesn't tend to employ bad soloists but allows anyone, including my 8 year old, to sing the melody. Is it right to tell bad lectors they can't proclaim readings anymore? Is there another way to let them participate? I don't know.

And that isn't my job.

Thank God.

I stood there holding the gold cloth and someone--it might have been my 8 year old, in fact--came up to ask me a question. And I figured I was being asked another question as well and so I turned back to Joanna.

"If you need lectors, I'll do it."

And I will. I have my fingers in many pies (sometimes literally down in the kitchen on Christmas Eve morning) but that's ok. I've always been a sort of jill of all trades.

Christmas undecorating is next Sunday after the 10. I need volunteers too.

5/365 AKA

"So I'm Joanna?" she asks me. She reads my blog. I'm breathless, in from the cold into a crowded church for the migration mass. We're heading up to the choir loft because I can see it's hopeless to try to find a spot in the pews.

"Well, I had to come up with something," I defend myself.

"What about Hildegard?" she suggests. It's a name I use occasionally online (my ravelry account, for instance), although I'm more enamored with other identities for myself.

I love Hildegard. Not technically a saint of the Church (I believe the story goes that she was right at the point when the Church started asking for more proof of sainthood than before, like numbers of miracles and so forth, and her supporters never got the stuff together. But everyone refers to her as such). She is part of the journey from "I think I'm going to leave the Church" to where I am now.

Briefly. Maeve was born and the diocese was going to close my parish. I had fallen out of favor with the pastor and I had stopped being involved in parish life beyond the occasional softball game or chatting after mass. I spent about 10 months wringing my hands not knowing what to do or think. I started reading Thomas Kelly and was drawn to the Society of Friends. But Mike really wanted me to give it one more try and so I went on the women's retreat in the fall of '05. There, I was briefly introduced to Hildegard and the amazing life she led. Intrigued, I read some more on my own, which led me to the Rule of Benedict, which led me where I am now. And along the way I jumped back into parish life.

So given that she's one of my only readers and all that, I'll go ahead and make the change. It's only the 5th day after all. Still early in. Hildegard it is.

6/365 Remnant

Yet I will leave a remnant (Ez 6:8)

I don't know the whole story. Some is speculation and some is fact and some is a mix of the two. But sometime in the 80s, my area of town had a huge influx of Vietnamese immigrants. My parish (remember, this is before my time) was small and rather white. We either welcomed the Vietnamese or we wound up with them. I'd like to think the former. Probably. Suddenly our parish was very Vietnamese. Readings were said in Vietnamese and then in English. At one point there was a separate mass in Vietnamese.

Time passed.

At some point in the 90s, but still before I got to the parish in 1998, the Vietnamese appealed to the bishop to have their own parish. They were given St. Thomas of Aquin down further south of us. But since there was no school there, our parish school remained about half Vietnamese. When I arrived at the parish, and soon after, the school, the feeling at our church was still one of a strong Vietnamese presence. The readings were all in English but the names on the prayers for the sick list were a mix. The school still took a day off at Tet. Those sorts of things.

The school merged with another Catholic school further east and moved its campus. I don't know what the demographics are now. I do know there are fewer Vietnamese at church on any given Sunday. St. Thomas of Aquin has closed, but they are now centered at Resurrection Parish. I don't know what their numbers are, but here there is only a remnant remaining, a few families of former schoolchildren.

At the migration mass on Sunday, though, the second reading was read in Vietnamese. At the end of readings, a Vietnamese reader will sing something that must be the equivalent of "the Word of the Lord." It asks for a response in the same melody, same tongue, but of course hardly anybody in the congregation knows how to do it. On Sunday, the reader did this same ending and I held my breath up in the choir loft. There below me on the St. Joseph side of the church came the sung response. That's where the few Vietnamese parishioners traditionally sit. The younger generation folk who were upstairs with me (also coming in right at 10) did not respond. I don't know if Thuy at 21 knows much Vietnamese anymore beyond conversation, for instance. But the older generation downstairs in the back replied to the reader and then she said the same ending in English: The Word of the Lord. We all replied: Thanks be to God.

It is often said that our parish is stronger because of our diversity. It's almost as if we have to say that. Never that it is a struggle to combine two disparate cultures (or three or four). Never that some of them would really rather have their own church with their own traditions--Americans and Vietnamese, frankly. But I think it does make something stronger to have different people in the pews with you. I think the remnant that does remain--either Vietnamese or Eritrean or Nigerian or Irish-from-way-back-baptized-in-this-parish or yuppie couples or gay men or converts or whatever demographic category you want to put yourself in--does make the experience stronger and deeper for all.

Sometimes, like Sunday, our parish is overwhelmingly what it is. We are sometimes more like what we are than we really are. Other times, we are a shadow of that, with only a few Vietnamese folks on the right hand side, a handful of other immigrants scattered throughout the nave, some school families, a few old die-hards, new people who joined with our pastor, the choir...but this remnant, too, of our best moments, remains, so that it can be added onto as we build up the city of God.

11/365 And Now...

And now Miguel. (Which school children with obsessive English teachers, as well as obsessive English teachers, will note as the title of a Newbery award winning children's book).

It is interesting to write a reflection a day--on any topic--and I've been doing so for 3 1/2 years now. Something strikes me and I put it down on paper (or in pixels). A year of people I know and used to know--back when nobody was reading anything I had to say online, at least nobody I know. I got to know lots of people from around the country doing the same project. Then I did a year of songs that turned into an autobiography somehow. This past year I worked on a year of conversations from my daily life. And now this--which is sort of a blending of a lot of different things, but the biggest change is that I'm writing about goings on at a place where the people I'm writing about see me all the time. Know your audience, and yet...write as if everyone you knew were dead. So it's fun thinking about what to say, but then editing myself is a careful job. Because I am known to be caustic. And I go to these meetings...

So more than ever before people are talking to me in person about what I have to say. Now, it's like 4 people, not like 40, but still. And yesterday at church undecorating my pastor made a suggestion for his pseudonym.

The whole idea of changing the names is funny since the only people reading know all the players--well, not completely true. But if anyone really wanted to try, they could figure it out. Maybe not everyone. I might be able to disguise some folks. But not all.

On the other hand, I like pseudonyms. I have several handles online, all very clever, trust me. In college I played a long-running roleplaying game character named Ursula who basically became an alter-ego. I know the importance of names. I dropped my first name when I got married but have unofficially (not through the Social Security office) taken it back. Getting married also saddled me with a big mispronounced German last name and hid my nice alliterative Irish one in the middle. Becoming an oblate gave me a set of initials at the end of my name that I can't see ever using in any capacity but I like rolling them around in my mind: OblSB.

So when he says, "Miguel," I know there's a story. My history with Miguels could be summed up in the phrase "Lost in Translation" and this would not have been a name I would have considered. So there must be a reason.

"For Miguel Pro. He's a Blessed. Jesuit priest in Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century." He tells me a bit more and I know I'll be looking him up later.

Well, I did. And once again I'm sitting here thinking that our parish got lucky or blessed or something to bring this pastor to us--the role models we choose for ourselves always tell on us, and this, I think, is no exception. So Fr. Miguel and Sr. Hildegard. You haven't heard near the last from them.

Now I want a name. But I have plenty already.

13/365 Good Priest, Bad Priest

So I was thinking last night about priests I've known, ones I've known well enough to have stories about or eaten meals with--not just every Jesuit who taught me at SLU or the parish priest in Macon whose name escapes me. Ones I knew well enough to like or really not like...

And I think I've concluded that most of the priests I've known have been bad at their jobs. Not bad people, not EVIL in some major way, but just not very good. And I thought that I should probably write a bit about them just to demonstrate why it is that I (and many many other people) really like our pastor.

But not today. Because today is our pastor's birthday. So happy birthday to our Fr. Miguel and I'll have more to say coming soon. Maybe in a few days, I'll just reminisce. But today this is enough to say.

14/365 The People in the Pews

In a conversation about why I remain Catholic when I do not share what non-Catholics typically see as "Catholic values" one time (over the internet, of course--in person people are never as bold), one ex-Catholic mentioned that she had to leave in order to find a church where she knew all the people sitting in the pews near her shared all her beliefs.

I never considered that something I would want. Sure, when I sit in a Catholic church, I expect that the majority of people there are Catholic. That they can recite the Nicene creed and at some level believe what they say. Beyond that? I don't have many expectations.

I didn't seek out a specific kind of church when we moved here--we'd been attending, half-heartedly, St. Henry/Immaculate Conception (my mother asked me at one point: "Was St. Henry immaculately conceived? Who is St. Henry, anyway?"--it's a combined parish that kept the names...and now it is no more). We lived in its parish boundaries and that's where we went. We moved into our house and my grandmother told me that she knew the pastor and I should give him a call. Turned out, we didn't live in the parish boundaries, but as I was about to hang up to call the correct one, he said, "Wait, do you have kids?" And as we talked more, I decided we'd give it a try. We were geographically closer than to the parish where our address fell, and we went a bit.

Obviously we stayed, with some backsliding and handwringing over the years. But never once did I say to Mike, "I can't belong here because Adam keeps talking about things I don't agree with." I never once felt as though I didn't fit in due to my opinions about politics that did not fall directly into the sphere of belief. I am very liberal on some topics, somewhat less so on others in comparison to Americans in general. I figure I'm probably to the left of the average Catholic, but trust me, there are others far far further to the left.

And a few of them attend my church.

Many people to my right, politically, attend my church. And there are a lot of people who are vaguely similar to me. At least, that's the way it feels to me--politics don't come up as often as they once did with our former pastor. So it could be that I have a skewed view.

But that's the point. It doesn't matter that much at my church (anymore). I can sit in the pews next to that old guy from the Knights of Columbus who couldn't understand Mike's hesitation about joining up. We can both be at this church because we don't have a problem with group think. We are a geographic parish. We do not have any particular focus around politics or devotion. We aren't the Tridentine Latin Mass church and we're not the radical left. We are in the middle. And that's what makes us a good place, frankly. I guess our diversity does make us strong.

Heck, my parents even came back.

15/365 The Rewards of Stability Continue

The choir loft is locked. For a long time I thought this was amusing--what, was someone going to steal the organ? A pipe at a time? But then I figured for safety reasons--who wants a nine year old going up there on a dare and pitching over the side? Nightmare. Then, I was taking the photos of the rose window and noted the door on the opposite side from the stairwell. I mean, I had noticed the door before. It has a glass window in it, and it is obviously some creepy storeroom where also is found the ropes to pull to ring our church bells. It has a padlock on it. But no lock that day--just the catch for it. So I opened the door. It's a creepy little room, with stairs going up. And on the walls near the stairs, grafitti from 80 years of altar boys "discovering" the place just as I had and leaving their marks.

The darkroom at my high school was the same way. It was a tiny concrete room off a science lab. John and I had keys. There was grafitti all over the walls. We added quite an astounding amount.
Then Mr. Termuhlen found it all, made fun of us, and had the closet painted. I still have the key, though, on a rubberband keychain from the yearbook advisor attached to a pinback button that says "Pfui!" Ah, good times.

I taught Joe and Sam.

Funny how you become Mr. Termuhlen somewhere along the way. I guess you stay in one spot long enough. But I don't want to paint over this. My kids will be altar servers (Sophia is ready now and keeps asking--5th grade is so so far away!) and they'll find this hideaway. Maybe it's a bit much to wax poetic about circle of life in a graffiti filled bell tower stairwell, but it makes me happy.

21/365 Coffee is Helpful

I went to Worship Commission last night even though I was going to beg off because it was Leo's birthday. But it starts at 7:00 and we were done with the sour cream chocolate cake and the opening of presents by then.

I steeled myself for crazy. The combination of personalities is not always good. Even people I get along with really well, people I like, get on-edge at this meeting. So I drank a lot of coffee well into the afternoon yesterday. You know, self-medicating. Great. I don't use alcohol that way because I lose too much of myself. And there's a family history to avoid and one day at a time, I will not do that. But I do use caffeine that way. As far as I know, there is no "Coffee Drinkers Anonymous". It makes me more able to ignore certain people and makes me way more talkative, which is what I need. I have opinions. I just usually do not share them in this meeting because it's so punishing. But with coffee, well, I can't help but share sometimes.

I really wanted to go in spite of the atmosphere because we were going to talk about Lent and also review Advent and Christmas. So I wanted to be there. And I went.

It was a small group--who knows why but can I venture to guess--and the first thing that happened when I walked in was get handed a new parish pictorial directory. We spent almost a half hour perusing this and chatting, which was a good ice breaker, frankly.

Lynn, who can be strident and hard to handle, wasn't the worst she's ever been. Or maybe it was the caffeine. Everything she had to say--which of course was almost entirely negative or strangely self-referential with a cackle--just sort of rolled off my back for a change. She didn't like red at Christmas. She didn't like the Christmas proclamation. She thought melting down old candles and making our own for next Advent sounded like a brilliant plan. Hmm. There were other small things.

But I don't think it was as bad as usual. Hildegard didn't cross her arms in front of her and change the subject. Miguel didn't straighten and re-straighten his pen alongside his binder. Sr. Vanda kept talking. And Hazel didn't sit in sleepy depressed judgmental silence--as much as I probably disagree with Hazel's opinions, so often Lynn is so loud that nobody else adds anything anymore. And that's disappointing. We don't have to be all in agreement. We just, well, it would be nice to be able to say something and not be shot down in the rudest manner possible.

After December's disaster of a meeting, I never wanted to go back. But one of those little aphorisms kept coming to mind, like "evil flourishes when good men do nothing" or something like that. Not that she's evil, but it was sort of like that. If I walk away, then eventually it'll only be staff members and Lynn at worship meetings. And then what.

So I'll keep going. And I'll keeping showing up jittery and without filter because it's better that way. At least for me.

26/365 Girl Scouts

Technically Girl Scouts may not be a parish event, but we are commissioned from our church (as opposed to our school, for whatever reason) and we meet in the church basement.

Tonight we made a snack that required using a few kitchen bowls and spoons (Sr. Hildegard, if we need to do more than we did let me know but I think we cleaned it all up). We walked into the kitchen and my girls looked around at the details I don't even see anymore.

The singing fish plaque on the back of the door. The, well, everything marked "Property of Fish Fry." The sign on the wall for those serving on the line, reminding them that they are serving "our guests." Poppy asked who our guests were.

Our guests.

I was expedient and explained the fish fry. But I let that question float in my head while we learned about food safety and how to measure milk in a cup and how much milk did we need....who are our guests?

And that question was answered, for me, just a few minutes later when the buzzer rang and one girl scout trailed in late. Arcelia and her mother Yvonne are not my favorite people. Actually, Arcelia is just fine. Yvonne, though, is not someone I want to spend any time with, at all. In the recent past I have been somewhat thin-lipped and thinly-veiled with my emotions. I don't even know if she's noticed. Her behavior hasn't changed at all, for good or bad. Maybe....no, I'm pretty sure I've been behaving badly.

To our guests.

She came in with a flurry of her own emotions, hands waving in the air, bending forward when she talked to me, like she was aiming for me with her forehead. She followed me into the old atrium. She chatted to me as I got the girls centered on their next task.

"Can I stay? Can I help?"

I thought of something I'd read about Benedictine hospitality back when I was becoming an oblate (I have been remiss in Benedictine reading lately...). I think it was in How to Be a Monastic and Not Leave Your Day Job or one of those books by Br. Benet. How an elderly monk was on his way to do something that was important to him, whatever it was, when the doorbell rang and people had come to tour the monastery. He threw his hands in the air and muttered, "Now I have to do hospitality!" And then went to do it.

That is exactly how I felt as she asked those questions. "Sure," I answered, making eye contact. "I can always use another set of hands." I explained the activity. She mother-henned a bit more than I would have, but she stayed and maybe that's what she wanted to do. We got the activity done, had the snack, and then she stayed to help Jana and I clean up after the girls had left (the last bits in the kitchen, that is--the girls clean up their stuff all the time). I asked her if she'd like to come a bit early next time and help set up. She said she definitely would. I'm not sure if it will come to pass--she classically falls through on her promises--but I knew she was going to volunteer with hesitation and asking her, well, made it seem like she was doing me the favor instead of what was really the truth.

It probably wasn't my most Christian example of hospitality. But frankly, visiting my ailing grandmother is easy. Inviting new neighbors over for coffee is easy. Babysitting Dolores' granddaughter in a pinch is incredibly easy compared to handling the relationship with Yvonne. I have fantasies of paying her off. Of claiming there isn't going to be a troop next year and then sneaking around behind her back. Things that won't work.

I'm stuck with her.

I don't think we'll ever be friends, for many deep reasons, but I think I can manage to be nice. I broke the ice today. We'll see if I warm up more next time.

27/365 So Sorry

I've been meaning to say something since before Christmas. But I never know how to approach this. We've chatted since then about many things, but finally I just walked up to her after the meeting and looked her in the eye.

"Are you and Frank no more?"

She gave me that grim look that meant yes. "We are on the way to being no more, yes."

"I am so sorry," I said, and I meant it.

"Thank you," she said, and she meant it.

She didn't say any more, and I didn't either. But not awkwardly. There wasn't anything more to say.

29/365 Name Tags

The other day at coffee Astrid said it would be so nice if we wore name tags at church. I mentioned that the parish where I was baptized did wear them for a long time--it was a brand new parish with no history at all, and everyone was new. They were gray with white raised letters--probably made on some handheld punch machine. But durable--my mother's is still in her jewelry box along with other trinkets that won't make any sense in another generation. Everybody wore them and nobody felt embarrassed for not knowing someone.

So many times, especially in the past 5 years, someone will say "Good morning Bridgett" at church and I can reply with a friendly greeting but not with a name. And they know me well enough to use my first name...or at least know OF me well enough. I am shy by nature on top of being rather oblivious to details sometimes, and so I'm mortified. Sometimes I figure it out through other connections. Or I ask someone I trust. But other times I just wish we had a better way.

We had a good idea--a parish pictorial directory. When it came out, we sat in that Worship Commission meeting for a half hour perusing. But it wasn't complete. So many families didn't participate at all. There were still regular faces at mass completely unknown to me. I am in and out so much--with each baby I was down for the count for a bit, and of course there have been several long stretches where I didn't go at all. If I introduce myself now, what will that look like? Then again, when it happens to me, I never take it personally. No, sometimes I do. But not usually.

But upon further reflection sitting in Astrid's kitchen watching Leo play on the floor, I thought about the transient nature of our parish. How folks come and go and sometimes come back but sometimes disappear into the ether. Name tags? They probably wouldn't work. An idea whose time is not now, not here.

36/365 (skip a few, Brother..) The breezeway

There is a ventilation duct that goes down the center of church in the ceiling. So "goes down" is not really the bad descriptor I want. "Runs the length of" would be better. There are holes in the ceiling of church with grates on them, and I sat there for many years wondering what those holes were for.

Eventually, I was told what they were for. And I was told that somehow there was a passage to them. I never considered the possibility that they were accessed from the bell tower, but they are.

I've been up the first set of steps, high enough up to turn on the incandescent bulb with a string pull. But abject terror (I love that phrase) kept me at bay. Now I hear Miguel and Jack could take me up there. Perhaps someday.

All I know is that one time, little Sadie O'Toole turned to me and asked where Dolores was. "Dolores?" I confirmed. "Why do you need to talk to Dolores?"

"She's going to take me up into the ceiling of church," Sadie explained. Sadie is my daughter's age. At the time, she was probably about 5. I wonder if Dolores took her up there. Perhaps I need to stop my silly fearful handwringing and just go. It would make good pictures, after all. Documentation.

37/365 History: Our First Time

We sat in the back half of the church, to one side. We didn't know anyone in the room. I had talked with the pastor on the phone, briefly, long enough for him to convince me to give it a try. It was June.

We walked out the front door and found Fr. Bill on the steps. He's so much younger than I expected, I thought to myself. My grandmother made him out to be older. I know this is the guy, though. She couldn't have put it more clearly: Go there. Fr. Bill Richardson is there and he's so charismatic. I needed charismatic. After we left the Jesuits in college, we church-hopped. Fr. Stoker down at St. Cecilia's was not charismatic. The really really horribly old priest in residence at St. Henry's Immaculate Conception wasn't either. No, that isn't the real name of our former parish. I just like to pretend it was.

At the time, I was about to start teaching at another Catholic school run by very un-charismatic unapproachable alcoholic priests. I was 23. Catholic schools were comfortable even though they didn't pay for nothin'. We'd bought our house, though, on Mike's salary alone, so any additional was better than the assistant teacher's salary out in the ritzy private school in the county. To be honest, I sought out the parish partially because I needed something to fill a void in my life, but the biggest reason was so I could talk about a parish at school.

Seriously. I needed an experience that would match, closely enough, the experience of my team teacher or my assistant or the music teacher I would sit next to at lunch. Later in the year this would prove fruitful when my pastor was interviewed on TV about the Pope's upcoming visit. Mrs. Matusek turned to me in the faculty lunchroom while everyone was talking at once and said, "that pastor of yours! His face belongs on television!" She was always falling for inappropriate unavailable men.

But that would be later. At the moment, we stood on the front granite steps regarding each other.

"We'd like to join the parish," I announced.

After a duel of calendars, all three of us realized that right then was the best time. He showed us how to go downstairs for coffeeanddonuts and promised he'd be right behind. He was. Ten minutes later we were filling out the paperwork.

"I think I'll have Frank and Jessica call you," he said, staring out into the middle distance and clicking his pen. "Young couple like yourselves, energetic, welcoming. Just to help you make a connection."

We left without parting gifts. It's not like signing your child up for kindergarten or signing on the loan for a house or a car. All you do is say sure, I'll come here for mass. And we did.

God, we were young.

38/365 History: Finding a Niche

It's hard to find a place. Once you find a place, it's hard to find your way into the place. Having spent most of my childhood packing and unpacking boxes, I knew there was a lot of "finding my way" that was on back order. I would talk about this with Fr. Bill over the first few years we were at the parish. How I was always leaving and really didn't want to. Not just the parish, but everything: marriage, friendship, neighborhood, jobs, commitments. He would challenge me to stick it out. For all his faults (and mine, being a damned liar that I am) he saw that yearning for stability writ large in my life.

Our first year there, out of the blue, he asks the two of us to join a committee to bring a prayer group project to the parish. Based on a program my mother had been involved in back when I was a child, this one was adding the futuristic "2000" to the name. Renew 2000, like the "Fridge-O-Matic 5000" or some other silly faux product. At our first meeting, I don't remember who else might have been there, but Dawn Armstrong was. By the end of that meeting, she had appointed herself and my husband as co-chairs and I decided I didn't like her very much.

Before the program even got launched, she realized this about me. I don't, well, I don't hide my feelings with much success. She confronted me on the phone and brought up three instances that made her wonder what the hell my problem was. Those weren't her words. But that was the tone. I was terrified. She asked if she could come over to talk about it. She was there the following night and I had to explain, basically, what a flake I was.

I think about this when I have trouble with Lynn or, for a time, with Dolores. Or Yvonne or wonder where I screwed up with Judy and her husband. I think about how it is to be in a parish and try to really be in it. How personalities clash, people get offended, and then people walk away. How brave (and terrifying) Dawn was to show up at my house and ask for an explanation for my jerk behavior. And how, in the end, it made me a better person. She wasn't going to walk away from our parish. It would have had to have been me if it had come to blows. Obviously it did not.

That would be later, and it wouldn't be with Dawn.

41/365 Meeting Joey

"Hi, I'm Joey," she says as we're introduced in the school hallway. "Bill says we're going to be working on the garden together."

"Yeah, I'm the school liaison or something like that." I unlock my classroom door and the two of us step in. "Bill" slips away, his work done here. Joey goes over to the windows and looks down at the asphalt lot with the dead tree in the middle where there will someday be a garden.

"Well, I've been meeting a lot with the anonymous donor, you know, being on finance commission and all I know who's who." I don't know for sure if this is supposed to get me going, and if so, I don't know how, frankly. I'm not even sure whether I'm supposed to say anything. So I give a minimal response--mmm--and put my things down on my desk.

My desk. I've scrounged it from the defunct library along with a set of bookshelves. My chalkboards can hardly be called that, being nailed up plywood painted with green chalkboard paint. They will eat chalk over the course of the year and I will snatch up the room across the hall for next year faster than you can say gesundheit. But for now, I'm trying to decide how much I need to decorate for middle schoolers and wondering what this Joey wants from me.

I know her from church, meaning, I've seen her around. I don't know her. I've seen her name in the bulletin--all over the bulletin, in fact. And I know she's from California, which does not endear me to her any more than the fact that she doesn't work but also has no kids. And she's maybe 5 years my senior.

"Yeah," she keeps going, "I had my landscaper in on the first meetings. The next one is tomorrow afternoon. I'll be there, but I'll be late. I sit on a board for a women's shelter here in town and they're having a lunch meeting. But Piper will be there, and maybe even our anonymous donor. She's a real treat. She's going to hate that the school has a part in this. I was over at her house the other day. Anyway. I probably shouldn't say anything."

She turns back from the window and I'm struck by two things. First, she is very tall. Second, she is sizing me up. She is looking me up and down and at the things in the room--which aren't my things, after all, but the grungy discarded furniture and books from around the school. But this moment, I know now, defined the first entire year of our relationship. She was a tall blond Californian with insider information and leisure time, and I was a short working class brunette with second-hand ideas and a chip on my shoulder.

Oh, it was going to be GREAT.

42/365 Garden Misunderstandings (History Continues)

"I was just afraid the railroad ties would fall apart," I try to explain my negative attitude. Joey and her landscaper Piper sit on one side of the table, and I sit on the other with Martha. I know she's the anonymous donor but I understand well enough that I'm not supposed to know.

"What about concrete pavers?" Piper asks. She opens a binder and shows us options. They rather generic, without much character, but they would be sturdier. I say so.

"Ok, I'll talk to my source on those," she says, closing the binder. Martha has a worried look on her face. "Now, the fence."

We talk about the iron fence. About a gate. Yes or no to the gate. What kind of gate. Then I ask what later seems like the stupidest question:

"So are we going to have a set up like the community gardens? Are we going to lease plots to parishioners first and then open them up to the neighborhood?"

All three of them stare at me like I've just yelled, "I have rabies!"

"No, nothing like that," Martha shakes her head after she recovers from my apparently shocking question.

And then they continue as if I'm no longer there. Shunned, I listen to the discussion. Serviceberry tree or redbud? White redbud? Holly? Male and female pair? Then Piper opens her binder again and shows me the diagram for the first time. The school part is along one side. Oh. That makes sense, I guess. I process the new information and sit silently, feeling the creeping sensation of "I'm redundant at this meeting", which is a feeling I will have so many times in the years to come at the parish. But here more than ever before or after, frankly. We adjourn soon after and I head upstairs to my classroom to look out the window at the lot.

It'll be good to have the asphalt gone, I tell myself. A nice green space in the city. Not every green space has to have a use. It takes me several self-reincarnations to realize that usefulness is not the only scale upon which something should be measured. It will be good just to have it not be asphalt.

I don't know, standing there at the windowsill, that years later I'll witness Easter fires in that garden. Or that even the next year, it will become an obsession of mine and my friend Mary's, along with the library and so many other little nooks and crannies at the school. I can't know, standing there, that I'll get hot under the collar about this little lot. I don't know how it will all end. All I see right at that moment is a wasted space that's about to become a green wasted space.

But it will grow on me.

43/365 History: A Nemesis Develops

"I can't stand it," Martha whispers through her mournful hands covering her face.

"What's wrong with it?" Piper asks her. Fr. Bill and Joey sit uncomfortably in the little atrium with us. Joey's face is stern and Fr. Bill has on his priest power suit. He leans forward, gathering himself up to say something. But nothing. We wait for Martha.

"It. Looks. Like a grave."

I think about the school portion of the garden. It is somewhat grave-like, but it's October. We haven't planted there yet, for goodness sake.

"What can we do to make it better?" Fr. Bill poses. But I've had enough meetings with Martha. Nothing will make it better now. She has cried at too many meetings. I regret ever saying yes to Bill's suggestion that I join this committee.

I can tell Piper regrets more than that.

"Bridgett's right. The railroad ties would have fallen apart. Now, I'm sorry if the end result isn't exactly what you were looking for, but," she stops. There's nothing more to say. We have talked it to death. All of it. Mushroom compost and drainage and permits and every little detail has made me sick of gardens. We shouldn't still be talking about it.

"Well," Joey shrugs. "I'll buy some mums. I'll have the kids plant them and there you go."

"What exactly about mums is--" I begin but Bill catches my eye. We are done talking about this. Who cares if mums have nothing to do with education. It doesn't matter any more. Quit it.

At the next faculty meeting, Joey is there. She's there to explain the garden.

She's also there to announce that another anonymous donor has offered to buy computers for the school. And she has volunteered to help set everything up. Everything. She will do it all for us. Sr. Fern is so excited. She can't wait to announce it at the PTA.

I look across the table at Ina and Terri, two of my team teachers. I roll my eyes. I am so done with having meetings with Joey. Terri grins back at me. She has misunderstood my irritation. I ask questions. Joey can't answer them. Questions about the internet. About guidelines for use. About from where in the school day computer time will be carved. Sr. Fern's smile is fading but Joey knows how to handle me. "We're going to have a committee. You're welcome to join."

I think about what Fr. Bill said to me at the first Renew 2000 meeting. "I want to hold you and Mike safely," he said, and I didn't understand. "I don't want you two to get cynical about church, about the parish. If it's too much to be on this committee, you tell me."

At the time, it had seemed unnecessary. But not anymore. I tell Joey I'll be there. Just call me and tell me when.

51/365 MSN vs. school server

"I'm not sure MSN is our best choice," I put my fencing foil into the fray. Sr. Fern looks puzzled. What she knows about the internet can fit in a teacup. I'm not IT professional, but I am married to one. Joey is sitting across the table from me, seething. The other teachers know they're being taken along for a ride where they are only unwilling passengers. Like a carpool.

"Why not?" Sr. Fern asks.

"What sort of controls are available? I don't want to send my class into the computer room and be able to send emails to anyone about anything. Not on school time."

"Look," Joey interrupts, "It's not like these kids don't have computer access at the library, at home, all the time. They are going to do what they want to do!"

"But maybe not here," Sr. Fern says sternly. "I don't want a parent coming to me with evidence of harassment or something like that. What do you suggest?" she turns back to me. I'm ready.

"I've researched a number of email programs for schools that would be appropriate. They're free, they're completely monitored, and we can restrict them in all sorts of ways."

"But the anonymous donor really wanted to go with msn," Joey protests.

"Does msn have the capabilites I think we need?" Fern counters directly. "No? Then I think the donor will understand."

Joey stares at me, not happy. Seething, in fact. But Sr. Fern is happy and I've chalked up a stroke in the win column. "Why don't you and Joey meet after school tomorrow and set that up?"

In the computer room after school, suddenly we're best friends. Joey gets me on a computer and I find my way to the webpage.

"You know, I only picked msn because that's what we use at home," she explains.

"Sure," I say with a nod, clicking on the sign up key.

"I just, I wish you could be more appreciative of my work here."

That makes me look up.

"I've laid out a lot of money to make this work," she continues. "And I hate that you stomp all over that."

"You're the donor," I say, not a question.

"Of course I am."

This doesn't make me like her more.

"And I'm here almost every day trying to get all this to work and did you know I have rheumatoid arthritis? I'm trying to get pregnant and nothing is working and the medication I'm on I'll have to go off and this is just one more thing," she shakes her head.

I mentally erase the mark in the win column, but I don't back down on the internet usage in the school. There is common sense here, not just meanness. But I try to back down on the other stuff. For now.

52/365 St. Louis, again, is too small

"Is that Leo's high chair?" Yvette asks me at the fish fry as she cleans tables.

"No," Becky answers, "Marguerite had it for Joel, but I don't know where they've headed off to."

"They're upstairs. I think my kids are up there, too." Yvette nods and moves on to the next tables. I sit down next to Becky and hold Leo on my lap while I wait for Sophia and Maeve to reappear.

"Bridgett, this is Randy," Becky introduces us. "He knows Bevin"

"How?" I ask, surprised. He seems vaguely familiar but I think it's from church.

"I poke holes in her."

"Ah."

"I'm a piercer." But I knew already. Bevin has quite a few piercings in quite a few places. "How are you related, again?" he asks.

"I'm her older sister."

"How come we've never met?"

I sigh. There are so many reasons.

"Have I met Bevin?" Becky looks at me with her head tilted. I describe Bevin:

"You know, superman black hair, long, gorgeous, very pale skin, blue eyes, as tall as me."

"Is she the one who likes vintage clothes?"

"They both do. They'll be here at Christmas, but usually not some other time."

"Leo's baptism?"

"Sure--she was the one drinking bourbon slush."

"Bridgett," Becky laughs. "Everyone was drinking bourbon slush. You were, Fr. Miguel was, everyone."

"True," I think back on that day.

Randy kisses Becky goodbye soon after and makes his way out. I ask her how she knows him.

"He played bass in my brother's band," she explains. "And I took him to a lot of things in high school. We dated briefly--he has the uncommon ability to remain really good friends with girls he dated."

"That is rare," I think about my exes.

And sitting there, watching Sophia and Maeve come down from the church where Marguerite was nursing baby Joel, listening to the Irish music warming up in front of me, I thought about the coincidence of Randy. I thought about the complete lack of anonymity I have now. It was kind of a cozy feeling, but also a bit smothering. They're always both there when I think about these things, about how small St. Louis is, how long I've been here, how I'm probably not leaving. Cozy and smothering like a fluffy fake fur blanket on a rainy February evening.

53/365 History: Sabotage

"The rectory got broken into last night," Sr. Fern mentions in the faculty room, sort of off-hand, to me and a couple other teachers standing their at our mailboxes. "Somebody with a key."

"Then it's not really a break in," Ina points out.

"True, but they sabotaged a computer."

We all look at each other. I am suddenly really thankful I don't have a rectory key. I don't need that kind of heat.

"Which one?" Ina asks.

"Joey's." Sr. Fern leaves and I look at Ina.

"Joey has a computer in the rectory?"

"She has an office," Ina points out.

"Really."

"Yeah, she's a full-time volunteer over there, you know."

I sort of knew. Whatever. I put it out of my mind because it doesn't directly concern me and there is plenty going on at the moment that does. But a few weeks later I'm in the library trying to sift through non-fiction books to label when I hear a key in the door across the hall. Since it's evening and I'm there with Mary, essentially alone and defenseless, I stick my head out to see what's up. It's Joey and her husband. They're fighting about something. I duck back into the library and tell Mary I'll be right back.

"Hey Joey," I announce before I'm completely in earshot. Colin backs off. She looks at me and waves me over. Colin doesn't say anything to me but heads back down the stairs.

"I'll wait til you call," he tells her.

We go into the computer room. She dumps her armful of supplies on a table and sighs.

"Heard about the rectory," I tell her.

"Yeah. A lot of people don't like me very much." She goes over to turn on a bank of computers. "I can't figure it out. I--me and Colin--we're the top donors to this parish. I know because I'm on Finance. But then people who don't give more than $5 a week think they have a right to complain."

I almost felt bad until she said that. Always pulling rank. Not that I gave $5 a week--Mike and I did quite a bit more than that--but she shouldn't get to know, and then tell people.

"Do you know who did it?"

"I've narrowed it to Dolores or Roxanne. Maybe one of Roxanne's kids. They both have keys--had keys, that is. Bill took everybody's keys away unless they were employees."

"So you don't have a key anymore?"

"Oh, I still have a key. I'm not paid, but I'm an employee. You know, when Colin and I moved here we didn't live in the parish, but at St. John's. And I went to the priest there and asked if there was anything I could do. He shooed me off. Wait until I was here longer, that sort of thing. So we started looking around, and then we moved into the parish and when I asked Bill if there was anything I could do, well, he had plenty. I'd just had back surgery and quit my job," she trails off.

I don't say anything. I lean in the doorway watching her do something on the computer.

"We have money because we worked for it. It wasn't given to us." She must be rewinding the conversation in her head.

"Sure," I nod.

"And Roxanne. Damn it. That crazy bitch."

I sort of agree with that statement. Actually, I agree 100% but I'm not going to show my hand. Dolores is a stickier problem. I teach both their kids, and each is a piece of work in her own right, but Roxanne kind of scares me in a way that Dolores never did (and never will).

"Why do you think it was her?"

"Well, she doesn't have a key, but Dolores does. And I think they did it together. They erased all sorts of my files. Some are gone for good. And they both hate me, you know."

She leans back in her chair and beckons me over with her hand.

"I need to tell you something."

We weren't friends yet, but this was where the ice started to break.