Sunday Morning
by Kate Burns April 21, 2024
Today in church I sat on Mary’s side, as I have been this year. I would have anyway, but I was especially drawn to the glow cast through one of the stained glass windows. It was rosy and golden and I thought if the Holy Spirit was anywhere in the building, it was right there. I sat as close to the glow as I could, having arrived just in time for the start of the Mass. I botched the melody of a song, coughed through another, and said the wrong response once, but I’m doing the best I can.
Isla was sitting closer to the front with her friends from Religious Ed after their confir mation class: Sophie, Danny, his two Argentine friends, and the other kids who are get ting confirmed next weekend. I was trying to focus on the Mass but I was distracted by Isla and Sophie quietly yukking it up the whole time.
I noticed the sweet young family I’ve often seen at 9:30 Mass. She sometimes teaches RE and I’ve seen him help with communion distribution. She’s lovely and he’s got close-cropped dark hair he must get cut weekly or do himself. Their two little boys sat between them — the older boy of age to take catechism with the other young kids, so maybe a first grader, and his younger brother nearly the image of the well-behaved older one, but dimpled and mischievously cuter. He’s a visual draw because he climbs all over his extraordinarily patient mother, playing with her long, tawny hair and squeez ing her face with love and likely booger-glazed hands. He cannot sit still.
Well, today was the day he squirmed his way into a meltdown. His father bent over to talk to him quietly at length while holding his arms firmly. The little boy huffed, “I’m… not…mpfthsdlersd!” As his volume rose, his father clamped a hand over his mouth in time for the last word. The angry child continued yelling through the muffle. Thankfully another song of praise started up and drowned him out; and his tantrum subsided.
When I returned from Communion, an elementary school girl who’d been left alone in the pew behind me caught my eye and contorted her face at me like she was pos sessed.
I knelt down in my pew again but couldn’t decide who to pray for.
On the way to the car afterwards, I mentioned to Isla that she and Sophie had been awfully chatty during Mass. I told her about one time when we were kids and my brother Gregg and our neighbor Frankie Caruso would not stop goofing around during Mass one Saturday afternoon. When it came time for Communion, Father Gianni announced from the altar, “There are two boys here today who have disrespected God, and when they come up for Holy Communion I will not give it to them.” I didn’t think that was ex actly the thing for Fr. Gianni to do, but my brothers and I weren’t huge fans of his any way, with his sanctimoniousness and the way he dropped the “h” when he said “yooman beings.” I told her she was lucky our priest this morning didn’t seem bothered by anything. I can’t remember what his sermon was about except that he was happy we’re in the midst of Easter season.
I added that at one point it looked like she and Sophie were taking turns touching Dan ny’s shirt or poking him in the back, with him a row ahead of them, unresponsive. She said really they were stealing his backpack from the spot next to him while he stood there oblivious, hence their hunched giggles. The only time Danny turned around was during the little boy’s audible meltdown to mutter, “Shut the fuck up,” in the child’s di rection, which only the girls could hear. Then he noticed his backpack between them. Busted.