My sister was a very quiet, intellectual child.  She started wearing glasses when she was three and  fit the description of a bookworm.  She loved to read and learn, and was never interested in boys until after high school

One day when she was in the fifth grade, she came home bloody with her clothes torn.  Our mother was astonished and asked what happened.  My sister explained that she had been in a fight. “With who?” Mother asked.  “A boy,” my sister replied.   By now, Mother was amazed and asked why she was fighting with a boy.  My sister explained that she was fighting because this boy had called her boyfriend a sissy.  By now, our mother was amused, having no idea that she had a boyfriend.  “Well, what did your boyfriend do while you were taking up for him”?  With pride, my sister answered, “He was holding my glasses for me.”

He was my first born.  He was my baby.  He was so incredibly bright, sweet and unique.  He was 19 years old.  There’s nothing that could have prepared me for this day or kept it from hurting.  I just wasn’t ready.  But he was.  So I helped him move.

After 19 years of knowing where he was all the time; knowing if he’d eaten; knowing if he had clean clothes to wear, how could I leave him alone?  I felt like I wasn’t going to be a mother anymore.   How could I still be his mother when he was so far away?  This is it, I felt.  I have one more day to do it all.  There isn’t enough time!  I panicked.  Had I said everything I meant to?  What if  I’d missed something really important?  What if he forgot and I wasn’t there to remind him?  I wanted to hold him in my lap and rock him.  I wanted to hum the lullaby I”d hummed so many, many times.  I wanted to read all his favorite books over and over.  I wanted to sew the tail back on his stuffed lion like he”d asked me to so long ago and I had forgotten.

But, instead, I helped him unpack.  I put dishes in his cabinet, food in his pantry and organized his kitchen.  I put candles in their holders, hung the skull on the wall and helped him alphabetize his CD’s.

I went to bed that night knowing that when I left the next morning everything would change.  I experienced such pain.  Pain that I would not have thought I could bear.  It felt as though my heart was being ripped out.  And yet, I had a desire to pull my heart out and give it to him.  I couldn’t sleep.  I got out of bed trying  not to wake anyone in the one room apartment.  I was tiptoeing across the room and heard a soft, “Mom?”.  He couldn”t sleep either.

Finding the closet the only place to go and not disturb anyone sleeping, we gathered pillows and candles and quietly went into the closet.  We stayed there in the closet a long time talking.  I told him I was afraid that I hadn’t prepared him well enough, and that I wasn’t ready to let him go.  He told me that he was terrified but needed to do this.  We talked about music and movies.  We remembered family stories.   We budgeted his money and talked about job possibilities and where to shop.  What he knew, but I didn”t say, was that I knew he’d be okay without me, but I didn”t want him to.  What I knew but he didn’t say was that I had always given him  my trust and that’s all he needed to be okay without me.

During those candlelit hours, cuddled in pillows on that closet floor, my son and I shared possibly the most meaningful time of our lives.  We came together as mother and child, then we let each other go.

I grew up in a small town in west Texas where there were rumored to be some Catholics, but I never met one.  They were very mysterious to me.  I actually heard adults say things like, “Well, you know she IS a Catholic!”

I moved to Dallas, TX during high school.  By then I had actually met some Catholics and learned they are okay, but I still had never seen a nun or a priest and knew nothing about their religion.

After I graduated from high school, I went to work at a Catholic hospital in the respiratory therapy department.  This was back in the day when nuns still wore habits, so it was a very different experience for me to see nuns around the hospital.  I was afraid of them at first, although I’m not sure why.  I suppose it was just that it was the mystery from the things I heard about Catholics as a child.  My co-workers helped ease my fears and learn that the sisters were as approachable as anyone.

One day, I was given a new patient and advised that he was a priest so I should show due respect.  I said, “Okay, sure.” and went off to his room.  But as I entered the room, I realized I had no idea what respect was appropriate.  I had no idea how to address him. So, I just smiled and said “I’m here to give your breathing treatment.”  He smiled and said, “Thank you” so I figured I was going to slide through this challenge.  I had to plug the breating machine into an oxygen outlet that was located above the head of the bed.  To reach the plug I had to stretch and by leaning over, one of my feet came off the floor.  I didn’t realize when I put my foot back down that it went into the metal wastebasket.  As I turned to get the mask from the machine, I stumbled.  The metal trash can, with my foot still inside, started clanging and I lost my balance.  I feel square on the bed on the priest’s chest.  I was sputtering and stammering and desperately wishing I had asked how to address a priest!  I was saying, “Oh, your highness, I am so sorry.  I tripped, and I’m sorry, Your Honor…okay let me get up, here, Father.”

I honestly don’t remember how many names I uttered to him, before I realized he was laughing so hard he was shaking the whole bed.  What a relief it was that he had a sense of humor.  I smiled at him and said meekly, “I’m a Baptist.”

[Note:]  My horizons have broadened a lot since those days.  I’m proud to say that my son, my daughter-in-law and all my grandkids are Catholics.

When I was growing up my dad worked for a construction company.  We lived in a trailer house and just parked it on whatever job site he was working on around west Texas.  When I was five, another worker and his family had their trailer next to ours, and they had a son that was a year or two older than me.

One day, their son, Ronnie, was up in a tree outside our trailer.  He wanted me to come up in the tree with him.  I didn’t think I could climb the tree, so he came down and helped me get up on a high branch.  It was glorious being up that high.  I could see so far away!  Ronnie said he had to go home for a minute, but that he would be right back so I waited in the tree for him.  He didn’t come back.

I was terrified because I knew I couldn’t get down by myself.  But my dad came home for lunch every day, so I knew that he would come along.  “How will he see me, though, up this high?”, I wondered.  From my spot in the tree, I could see the walkway he would come down toward our trailer.  So, I kept an eye on that road and decided that when I saw him, I would yell and he’d know I was in  the tree and needed help.  Once he saw that I was stuck, I had no doubt that he would rush to get a ladder and climb up in the tree to get me.  He was my hero, and I knew he’d help me, so it wasn’t as scary when I thought about that.

Eventually, I saw him coming down the walkway and started yelling, “Daddy!  I’m up in the tree!”.  He heard me and looked toward the tree and a big grin was on his face.  He started toward the tree and to my amazement he just reached up there and plucked me out of that tree.  He was a giant!  I was so impressed that he could reach that high.  It felt like I was two stories up in the air, and he just reached me with no problem.