This ones for you Gema, Edi, Getha, Raymond, Ranley and you too, Stanley. Be sure to tell Mom Ive been thinking about her, little brother., next time you run into her. I know shell be tickled to the sky and back to still be remembered for the great stories she told! Ive been thinking about the lessons to be learned from living and especially how I deal with things that cant be seen yet paint such emotional non images in our minds as we live them, then reflect on them later. Heres something I wrote recently, remembering the things that have gone down in my life and how they connect me to my inner reality and my outer actions, with that part of me that observes it all, even as I live it.... ...or as Bobby Zimmerman was wont to say: Its all right Ma...its life and life only..... My mother was a Roamin Catholic, which made for some interesting conversation when I was growing up. Her mother was a Catholic convert who dug into that religion with as much zeal as her nature allowed. She married little Pete Kearney (I always thought Grandpa Pete was a Leprechaun) when they were teens in the freshly minted mining town of Marianna and she made sure Pete stayed home and hit the books rather than going to the tavern with his buddies - hed gone into the mines at age 10 as a pony tender and got his schooling sitting quietly in the back of the classroom on the way home from work whenever his shift allowed. So he studied for his bosses papers and became a straw boss, which meant he got to lead the rescue teams after mining explosions, which were often and deadly. This also meant that he had a job during the Great Depression when even the coal industry ran on skeleton crews. Grandma took in the children of his brothers and sisters so that would have something to eat during the summer, fattening them up for the hunger pangs of fall and winter back home. She raised rabbits and hung curtains in her chicken coop in their coal patch back yard and every square inch was some kind of garden. Lest all this virtue go unnoticed by God, she dressed her only daughter in nothing but blue and white until she was confirmed, although Mom confessed the Polish girls next door would sneak her over to to their house and dress her in bright colors, to her great delight. After confirmation Grandma sent her off to be boarded at Divine Providence school for Catholic girls, to be properly instructed by nuns, the tales of which my mom regaled her own children with later. Mom lived at home with her parents through World War II, took the bus to New Kensington to work at Bell Telephone, spent her weekends roller skating with her girlfriends and wrote to about 20 boys to men, including her own two brothers throughout the war years. All those she wrote to, always in that warm breezy way of a sweet heart waiting back home for their return made it back unwounded except for the memories they were instructed by heir discharge papers to keep to themselves. She married one of the men she was writing to - the boy next door who had a shipboard conversion in the South Pacific but that wasnt enough to convince my grandmother. She forbade the union but it happened anyway and in time when the grandchildren began to arrive she forgave her daughter. I was baptized and so was my brother, but when Mom went to deliver him in a Catholic hospital they brought in papers for her to sign asking for her permission, if it came to it, to save the child rather than her. She refused to sign and when her labor began they brought back the papers for her to sign rather than taking her to the labor room. Mom freaked out, got word through her sister-in-law Jean, equally pregnant in another room, to call my dad at work and tell him what was going on. My dad, sleeves rolled up above greased stained arms - he was a mechanic - stormed in to save the day. That was when my mother became a Roamin Catholic and again, my grandmother forgave her. But Grandma couldnt resist grabbing the rest of the kids who went unbaptized after that and splashing them with holy water from the font in the upstairs hall when they went up to use the bathroom. My sisters still talk about it to this day. Jesus himself, hanging bloody crowned with thorns on the wall beside her bedroom door was her witness. (It would do Grandma good to know that one of those little heathens actually joined the Catholic Church, mainly because of the tribal identity that is to be found among the women who rule the basement!) I grew up with a great curiosity about religion after hearing all these tales, including a host of minor miracles, watching my grandmother at work doing the business of the Lord, including sewing those little cloth saint charms that Franciscans wear around their necks. (She won so much stuff at bingo in the church basement that when she died there were toasters bathroom scales and blenders still in boxes stashed on the enclosed front porch with its day bed where Grandpa Pete spent his last days.) It seemed like such a circus act to me, glittering incense filled Latin intoned men in skirts. And yet the mystery remained, no matter how hard everybody worked at doing all this crazy stuff. I *knew* early on that these folks didnt have a clue about the truth of existence and neither did I. But I was bound and determined to find out, even if it scared the daylights out of me to think about it very hard!
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 21:28:28 +0000