with love, the will can do anything

"Whatever I do, I do with the greatest love that I have in me. Try this, and you will see that you do not become fatigued at all. Love is one of the greatest stimulants to the will. Under the influence of love the will can do almost anything."
~ Paramhansa Yogananda

I don't know who the person who wrote this is.  I am fascinated how many people I know find themselves exploring non-western religions. Not that western anything is better than non-western, I am just fascinated.

I have no religion, only the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. Better than religion. And I don't know if Yogananda has a religion.

Living with the endless mystery of life. . . .

my courage always rises

"My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me."
~ Jane Austen

Mending Wall

By Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

you start dying slowly

You start dying slowly
if you do not travel,
if you do not read,
If you do not listen to the sounds of life,
If you do not appreciate yourself.

You start dying slowly
When you kill your self-esteem;
When you do not let others help you.
You start dying slowly
If you become a slave of your habits,
Walking everyday on the same paths…
If you do not change your routine,
If you do not wear different colours
Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.
You start dying slowly
If you avoid to feel passion
And their turbulent emotions;
Those which make your eyes glisten
And your heart beat fast.
You start dying slowly
If you do not change your life when you are not satisfied with your job, or with your love,
If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain,
If you do not go after a dream,
If you do not allow yourself,
At least once in your lifetime,
To run away from sensible advice…
~ Pablo Neruda

I'm dying slowly

Rosie's first purse

No longer after Rosie began walking around in her baby-soft-leather pink, Capezio high top shoes, she let me know she wanted a purse. I guess I used purses in those days but I don't remember paying attention to purses.  Rosie saw her father's female relatives, especially her paternal grandmother and paternal aunt the medicdal doctor, a lot in her second and third years because I was separated from her father and he had, naturally, frequent visits. He often would pick her up for his court ordered visits but hand over the childcare to his mother and sister, who were mostly delighted to enjoy the darling pumpkin our Rosie was.

I had no idea what happened in the time she spent with her father and his kin. I was careful not to pry about what she did with them. Our divorce was acrimonious but I really did my best not to smack talk to her about her daddy. I did used to say he was cuckoo in the nuckoo, a nonsense line I made up. I thought she would just think I was being silly. He must have pumped her about me, however, because he brought up that cuckoo in the nuckooo, or had his lawyer bring it up. Geez. I had even discussed that way of referring to him with my psychologist. It seemed harmless. I am digressing.

I brought up the fact that for the years of our bitter divorce, Rosie saw her paternal female relatives at least a couple times a week.  Maybe she got the idea that she needed a purse from them. Or maybe she got it from seeing me with one, although I have no memory of using a purse.

I have already written that she and I often took walks in the winter in the suburban mall near our suburban mall. I also shopped. I did not limit our walks to the mall walking strips in front of shops. I thought she liked experiencing the changing lights, colors and displays inside the big department stores. I sometimes would make a game of pushing her through closely arranged clothing racks, letting her experience the sensation of cloth swooshing over her face and body.  I don't know what she thought of that. She was not yet doing much talking then.

So a day game when she let me know she wanted a purse. No problem! We went to the mall and to the 'big' department store. I remember parking just outside the childrens department, for I had assumed she would want to pick a children's purse.

It quite surprised me when, as I chattered about the little girl purses in the children's department, Easter-like purses, she squinched up her face, shook her head no and said "No!" and then she gestured me to follow her to the women's department, then the women's purses.

I had said, extravagantly, that she could have any purse she chose. When I said it, I had envisioned an inexpensive kiddie purse.

She knew exactly where the adult women's purse department was, leading me stalwartly towards it, bobbing and weaving between varioius racks and displays that were much taller than her. I marveled at her navigation. And i realized "She comes here shopping with others besides me, people who are much more serious about shopping than me."

Say, I wonder if my daughter's predilection for fashion, endless new clothing and accessories, began in thos eearly shopping outings with her paternal womenfolk. She didn't get that proclivity from me but I have thought, sometimes, that people are born with that trait. My baby brother has the same trait. He'll drop money on a new designer shirt when it will mean he has to pay part of his rent a little late. I don't get that. I don't get interest in designer stuff. I never did. But Rosie always did. She was fussing about clothing and acesssories before she could talk.

So we get to the women's department and she goes straight to the purse she wanted. It was an adult-sized, hot pink, fabric clutch that had a long pink wrist clasp and closed with a zipper. I thought it garish. Tacky. She thought it was beautiful. I had said "whichever purse you want" and that puffy pink clutch, which was at least ten inches long and about five inches wide, was inexpensive.

Hell yeah, I bought it for her. And it was worth it to see her proudly dangling it off her wrist as we walked out of the store.

She took that purse with her everywhere for a long time. She kept stuff in it, too. I never understood her choices. She didn't carry money or identification, which is what I have used purses for.  She kept a few crayons in there, a small mirror (also, I suspect, from the influence of her paternal female kin -- I have never, not once, carried a small mirror. goodness, what would I do with a mirror) and a hot pink comb that I never saw her use. She used that hot pink purse constantly. It grew dirty, then filthy and eventually it left our lives, although I don't recall its end.

What I recall, with pure joy, is the joy I felt when my tiny toddler marched from children's department to women's department, knowing exactly where she was going amidst the taller-than-her displays and knowing exactly what she wanted.

I didn't consider this back then, over 30 years ago, but as I write this, I wonder if she had spotted that hot pink purse while shopping with an aunt or a grandma. She didn't seem to ever want just any purse. She seemed to want that garish, hot pink purse that was about half her size. She was a very petite toddler. She is a very petite adult.

She has bird bones, like in that A.R. Ammons poem, City Lights. Sometimes, in my mind's eye, I still see her fine-boned features, her exquisite clavicle, her petite features.

I love her.  I find myself straining to see her now, as an adult, a thirty something, a professional, competent grown up. I never knew her as a grown up. I haven't seen her since she was a teenager.

WTF did I do to lose my only child?

my favorite moment of daily day care

When I would arrive, after work, to pick up my toddler from daycare, no matter how I tried to have a few moments observing her without her knowing I was there, I almost never succeeded. All the children knew which adults belonged to which child. When a parent appeared, even if that parent's child was completely immersed in some interaction with other children, first one and then many children would call out "Rosie, your mom is here!"

I managed to steal a very few glimpses of her playing unaware I was present. Such glimpses were so precious to me. The memories remain prescious 30+ years later.

She was the most adorable child in her day care, says the objective mother!

All kidding aside, I loved seeing little glimpses of who she was independent of me. As soon as she knew I was present, she became my daughter and, not entirely, her own self. That's why young adults individuate from parents."

But, geez, Rosie, fourteen and a half years of individuating might be enough. I note that you have become FB friends with your father, who not only molested you when you were five but who refused to participate in your life for most of your childhood. You don't know this and I imagine your father would lie and deny this but (1) a Hennepin County Judge, not me, appointed a guardian ad litem for you and issued an order that strictly limited his visitation until he participated in some therapy with you, which he never did and (2) in spite of court orders and you having your own attorney (what was her name?!), I often wrote to your father, and also his relatives, offering to arrange visits with you, bypassing court orders. I used to write to your aunt the medical doctor and offer to pay to fly you to visit her, your grandmother and your father. None of them ever acknowledged those offers. I did not discuss them with you because (1) you were a child and (2) I didn't want you to experience let down when he failed.

There were several times he agreed to come visit you and then never showed up. You didnt know about that because I didn't tell you, just in case he bailed. I reasoned you could be happy if he showed up and that you didn't need to know if he let you down.

Do you remember that he came up to see you play Titania? Did you ever consider how much effort it cost me to get him to come?

Do you know that he was in Minneapolis when you were hospitalized in your sophomore year of high school, right at Christmas time?  I know he was in town because I had the brand new caller ID feature and I got a call from a hotel by the Mall of America. He was in town Christmas shopping with Deb but he didn't bother to visit his very sick child in the hospital. And he knew you were sick. Of course I told your father any time you were sick.

Then you got to Cornell and he seemed to fill you with lies, a twisted, mistaken version of our unhappy history. Why believe and trust him but not me?

I was there for you, day in and day out, year in and year out, making so many sacrifices you don't know about because you were the child and I was the parent.

He gets to have a relationship with you? but not me?  Help me understand.

Special Glasses -- I need a pair!

if I had such special glasses, maybe I could stop seeing, and wanting, my daughter in my life.

"Special Glasses" by Billy Collins

I had to send away for them
because they are not available in any store.

They look the same as any sunglasses
with a light tint and silvery frames,
but instead of filtering out the harmful
rays of the sun,
they filter out the harmful sight of you --

you on the approach,
you waiting at my bus stop,
you, face in the evening window.
Every morning I put them on
and step out the side door
whistling a melody of thanks to my nose

and my ears for holding them in place, just so,
singing a song of gratitude
to the lens grinder at his heavy bench
and to the very lenses themselves
because they allow it all to come in, all but you.

How they know the difference
between the green hedges, the stone walls,
and you is beyond me,
yet the school buses flashing in the rain
do come in, as well as the postman waving
and the mother and daughter dogs next door,
and then there is the tea kettle
about to play its chord—
everything sailing right in but you, girl.

Yes, just as the night air passes through the screen,
but not the mosquito,
and as water swirls down the drain,
but not the eggshell,
so the flowering trellis and the moon
pass through my special glasses, but not you.

Let us keep it this way, I say to myself,
as I lay my special glasses on the night table,
pull the chain on the lamp,
and say a prayer—unlike the song—
that I will not see you in my dreams.

insomnia

I had a long period, more than ten years ago, when I had chronic insomnia related to menopause.  I might have thought I was going crazy but my friend Peggy, who I usually shared a room with at the four-times-a-year, four-day residential retreats we both attended at Spirited Work for several years, had not had the same insomnia issue. What a relief to not feel alone. We tossed and turned across our tiny room in the Farmhouse, both awake and silent and, meaningfully, not alone in our suffering.

It was awful.  Day after day, I never knew if I'd get any sleep. And most days, sleep came in tiny bits that were never enough.

In recent years, I have tended to stay up late writing. And reading. Writers gotta read, fish gotta swim.

In recent weeks, suddenly I gave up my nocturnal living and returned, for the first time in maybe fifteen years, I'd go to bed before midnight, arise between six or seven and, well, feel normal.

The last two nights:  insomnia. I cannot sleep.

And I know why.  I am roiling emotionally over a decision I have to make, tossing and turning as I weigh the pros and cons.

Right now I am full of meds that should knock me out and nothing. I remain wide awake, tossing and turning.

I don't like insomnia.

pouring rain: uncaptured

Today was the first time since I moved to CA, ten years ago, that I walked in a downpour of rain.  I've been out in the rain, although not much in the last four drought years but today's downpour, which took place just as I headed to my pool, was the closest to a gusher I have seen in CA.

The water rushing downhill, as I walked uphill to my pool, was two feet wide and, in some places, ten inches high.

I was dressed for rain with a hooded rain jacket, had my swim things either on under my clothes or inside a plastic bag (hair dryer!).

During the slight, two block, uphill walk, every step as I watched the gutters actually overflowing with water, spilling up onto the sidewalk in many places, I realized the significance of building for rainwater capture. Cisterns to capture rainwater, which can become drinking water. And systems in building to capture the rain and use it to flush toilets, as my building and the one next door does. The building next door gets the rain from both buildings, uses it to flush toilets -- when there is rain to use.

Every building, every house, in this part of the world, and everywhere else,  should have rainwater capture systems.

Doesn't the water, when it drains into the bay, which is where this gusher was headed in its rush downhill, become saltwater?

Sigh.

the space where our growth can begin

Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
~ Viktor D. Frankl

what if I can't move on?

I am floundering over the loss of my daughter. She lives but has not talked to me in 14.5 years. It hurts more, not less, as time passes.  I can scarcely endure the pain sometimes.  What did I ever do to have to endure such suffering?

my hijab wearing neighbor

I used to have a neighbor from Algeria, a Muslim, in my apartment building, on my floor and on my wide of the floor. She was an American citizen, as was her husband and her two kids had been born here.

She had just met the man who became her husband when she won some kind of visa lottery in Algeria that allowed her and a husband to emigrate to America. She told me she sometimes wondered if her husband had married her for the adventure to America.

When I first met her, she seemed happy here. Her husband worked as a car mechanic. She was in school to become a phebotomist.

As soon as she finished her training, she and her family moved back to Algeria. She said their parents were getting on and needed them. She said "My husband and I will never return but our children are citizens here, they can do as they wish when they grow up."

I was sorry she moved. Thus far, she's the only Muslim who has befriended me, inviting me over for tea regularly.

The first time had invited me into her home, she went to remove her hijab as soon as the door closed to her apartment. First, however, before removing the hijab, she said "You must promise me you will never tell a man what my hair looks like. Only my husband can know." Then she pulled off her hijab.

She had bright purple, spiky highlights!

I don't feel as if I am telling a man or a woman about her hair since (1) I don't remember her name and (2) she's long gone back to Algeria. So no one knows what her hair looks like. And there is no reason to assume it is the same as when I used to have the woman's privilege of seeing it.

breaking wills for God

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Religious vocations require a broken will, a surrender to God’s will or the will of those instructing the hapless kids snookered into the religious life.

My mom said her mother gave one of her children to god so mom was going to give me to god. This meant I was supposed to become a nun. My mom had two sisters and one entered the convent at age 17, the day after my baptism. My aunt the nun had stood as my godmother. I had daydreams and nightmares about my parents dying  and then I’d have to go live in the convent with my aunt the nun. My other godfather was a grandfather so I always assumed he’d be gone before my folks.  I dreaded growing up in a convent with nuns, sure it would trap me into a life in the convent.

My mom had four sons when she decided to give me away. When she would tell me about giving me away, I always thought “why do you want to give me away, why not one of the boys?”  I never shared this thought with my mother, for she would have considered it back talk and my mother did not tolerate back talk. She punished me for speaking pretty much about anything. Children, she said thousands of times, should be seen but not heard. And my mom meant that literally. I used to want to respond to that too. How the heck can an adult reasonably expect a child to be seen and never heard? And I longed to ask her if she had any interest in what I thought but I never dared to ask. Mom seemed to take that children should not be heard as a central tenet of her parenting.

I hated my aunt the nun, blaming her choice to become a nun for my cursed vocation.

Then my aunt the nun saved me.

Even in the summer vacations, I had to go to daily mass, our whole parish watching, or so it felt.  Our parish put out a weekly Sunday Bulletin. In that bulletin, they would ask the parish to pray for special things. One a month, the whole parish was asked to pray for my vocation.  I felt trapped. And mortified.  Catholic parishes did that when I was growing up, praying for vocations. The Church was already struggling to have enough priests and nuns and they seemed to think they could bully hapless younfsters like me into lifelong programming.

In the school year, there was a short mass at 8 a.m. I went to that mass every day for years.  I could get to my class by about 8:35, with school starting at 8:30. Any kid that went to mass was allowed to come in a little late. And we also were allowed to eat breakfast at our desk. In those days, Catholics had to fast at least three hours before receiving communion. Coming in late, eating my breakfast at school every day was a siren of shame, reminding all the other kids that I was holy and the object of what many of them thought was unfair special attention. A shy, mortified child, I never told anyone but my friend friend Tammy that I didn’t want to be a nun. There was no point telling my mom. My mom had an iron, unbending will. And my dad stayed out of anything having to do with disciplining his only daughter. I was the only girl with four brothers until my sister was born when I was 14.

Another aspect of my vocation’s curse was that I was given the honor of helping Sister Mary David, a nun I adored, clean the altar every day and lay out vestments for the next day’s mass.  I actually enjoyed this work. I enjoyed being alone in the cavernous but silent church sweeping the huge marble-floored alter. I got to know many nuns because of this work and my vocation. I knew all the priests better than most kids because I was in the church an hour or more every day after school.

In the summer vacation from school, there was only one daily mass at 7:00 a.m. so every damned day of most of my childhood summer vacations, from age 7 until my aunt the nun saved me when I was about 12,  I went to summer mass at 7:00 a.m..  That mass was held for the nuns, who sat altogether in two rows of black burqas. They invited me to sit with the but I pretended I was too shy to sit with them. The truth was I held myself apart from them, desparately hoping I might yet escape my vocation. Thank goodness there were later masses during the school year. Most summer days, it was just me and two rows of black gowned nuns, with the veils and everything. No one else ever went to that weekday summer mass.  I now wonder why Catholic nuns more or less adopted the equivalent of burqas.  Nuns wore those black and veiled robes until I was in high school, when nuns began to wear regular clothes. I could still spot a nun, even a mile away. I usually can still spot any Catholic religious person to this day.

In 1998 to 2000, I was in a Masters program for organization development. We had some classes that only met for one weekend and many of these weekend classes attracted students from other departments. In one of those weekends, I got paired up with what was obviously, to me,  a Catholic priest. Actually, he was a brother and lived in a cloistered place but he was let out for school.  During our first break, I asked him if he was a priest. He was flabbergasted. “How could you possibly know?  I am not wearing a collar, no crucifix. How do you know?”  “I don’t know what to tell you, Father,” before he corrected me to tell me he was a Brother, “but I knew the first second I saw you.  I went to Catholic school K-12 and I can always spot a priest or nun, current or former. It’s just obvious.”

And that reminds me of the time I took a class in college summer school and Sister Francesca, who taught second grade at my old Catholic grammar school but had  not been my teacher, came up to me in the student lounge. She came up to me and asked me if I was one of the Fitzpatricks from St. Gall’s. She said “I am Sister Francesca” and she was going to go on but I interjected “I know. I spotted you from across the hall, as soon as I noticed you, I knew you were Sister Francesca.” She looked around, as if trying to see what in her outfit gave her away.  “How can you tell? I am wearing regular clothes,” she asked.

“I don’t know what to tell you Sister, but I can always spot nuns.” Then she sat next to me and asked me to pick off any other nuns in that student lounge over our lunch break. I nailed them all. Sister Francesca announced that she was going clothes shopping and buy more interesting, less plain outfits. She had sincerely believed that she passed for a non-religious vocation person.

One time my aunt the nun visited us in Chicago, while I was still living with the curse of my vocation clouding my childhood. She lived in Colorado at the time and almost never visited us in Chicago. We usually saw her in South Dakota when we all visited our grandmother.  When Jody arrived for that rare visit, Mom said “you two have a lot in common, why don’t you go to mass together?” So we did. We went to 7:00 a.m. hot summertime mass. We sat in the row immediately behind the two rows of nuns in black robes. Jody, by then, was wearing street clothes but not the nuns at my grammar school. Not yet.

After that brief mass, and they were thankfully very brief in the summertime, held mostly to fulfill the nuns requirement to attend daily mass, Jody suggested we stay in church and talk.

Jody, my aunt, said, when that brief, perfunctory daily mass was over,  “Let’s sit here and talk” I was scandalized at the idea of talking in church. I noted, glancing all around anxiously,  that all the parish nuns had left and no one was in the church but me and my aunt the nun. Feeling very anxious, I agreed to talk to my aunt the nun in church.  When I hesitated, glancing around for permission, Jody had said it was okay to talk in church, that we would whisper. And besides, she pointed out, no one else was there.

“Tell me about your vocation.”

I turned very red and could not speak. I was ashamed, unable to choose which lies to tell her because I knew I had no vocation. I was afraid to lie to a nun and I as afraid to tell her my truth.  The nuns said one heard their vocation, a call from god. 

I had never heard God calling me to become a nun. I was quite sure of that missing detail. 

So I sat there, blushing, awkward, ashamed.

Jody cajoled me, speaking as tenderly as she could, saying “Come on, you must have some questions and I am your aunt. And your godmother. You can share your questions with me.” And she imbued her voice with love, or so I heard it that way. She was a stranger to me and in my misert over my doom, I hated her, seeing her as responsible for my trap, my destiny in a nunnery.

“Well,” I began, stammering and wringing my hands with my dress’ skirt, “I have one question.” I spoke haltingly.

Go ahead, ask, my aunt the nun gently urged me.

“I am worried about how they cut all your hair off like in the book Bernie Becomes a Nun. Before she takes her final vows, nuns cut off all of Bernie’s hair. Do you have to keep your hair all cut off forever?  I hate short hair.”

My mom had given me a book that was written for very young girls. It had one photo on each page with one sentence explaining the photo. I saw Bernie. I saw Bernie in church praying. I saw Bernie talking to nuns, then talking to nuns about becoming a nun. Then she became a novice and I saw her take her novice vows. On the penultimate page, I saw Bernie preparing to take her final vows around age 14. Her hair was almost completely shorn off by the nuns who had trained her. Those nuns then dressed Bernie up in a white bridal gown. By that page, there was a small class of novices preparing to take their final vows. Then I saw Bernie marching down the aisle to her doom, to become a bride of Christ. The book didn’t have to state what I knew:  for Catholics, marriage is forever, even marriage to God. The page that haunted me was the page of Bernie being scaled arbitrarily with her hair not a bit style, merely all shorn off, like a boy’s haircut.

That was over fifty years ago. I feel much love for Jody whenever I remember how she responded.  I saw her suppressed her laughter at my words, although I didn’t really ‘see’ her laughter until years later. Then she said “If that is your only question, I don’t think you have a vocation, Just forget this nun business.”

“But my mom says”, I began. I was thrilled but aware of my mom’s rigidity, her unbending will.

“Ill deal with your mother.”

And she did, behind closed doors. I heard her for I stalked them outside mom’s closed door.

“Mary Ann, honest to goodness, leave that child alone. Leave her be. She doesn’t want to be a nun. Leave her be.”

And mom did drop the nun thing.   

My mom dropped her pressure on me.  My luck had turned, to my happy surprise, when my aunt the nun saved me. My mom moved on to my Irish Twin, my brother Joe, ten months younger than me.

Mom did more than pressure Joe. She enrolled him in a seminary boarding school for seventh grade, age 12, without consulting him. Training to become a priest at age 12, just imagine.  Although ballsier than me, Joe also felt her pressure and agreed to spend half of his seventh grade – age 12 – at a residential seminary for future priests. He agreed to give it a try. Looking back, I wonder if Joe thought boarding school would be an adventure because I knew my brother Joe was never going to be a priest. I did not say this to anyone, except maybe Tammy, my best friend.

So Joe left in the fall he was in seventh grade, I in the 8^th,  for some boarding school seminary in Michigan.

A priest brought Joe home, unannounced one Sunday afternoon, after several weeks and solemnly asked to speak to our parents. The priest had not phoned ahead, just arrived at our doorstep with Joe, and Joe’s luggage.

Joe and I eavesdropped. Of course.

“You son does not have a vocation. He cannot return to our seminar”

At that seminary, all the boys, twelve years olds and up, had to get up, kneel on a marble altar floor and pray on their knees from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. Kneel and pray for an hour before breakfast. Joe would not do it. And when the priests yelled at him, my ballsy awesome brother Joe would say “There is no fucking way I am going to get up at 5 a.m., hungry, and pray on my knees for an hour before breakfast. NO fucking way.”

I believe, but don’t quite know, that his profanity shocked them more than his refusal to pray, Until Joe got kicked out of that seminary after a few weeks, I had never heard anyone say the word fuck out loud.  My brothers probably used some profanity with other boys but they had it drilled into them that they could never, ever use such language in front of a girl. In my dad’s whole life, I never once heard him use profanity. I am not like my dad. I love to use profanity now.

The priests had tried many things to break Joe. They made him knee before the whole school all day, with a piece of wood running across his arms and shoulders, made him hold up that wood, like a piece of the cross. Sometimes he had to kneel while holding up that board. And he always endured his punishment in front of the school as everyone else ate breakfast. They actually would withhold breakfast from Joe. They made him do it every day for weeks and occasionally they would ask Joe is he was ready to knee and pray at 5 a.m. Sometimes he had to kneel and hold that wooden beam in front of each of his classes.

Every once in awhile, a priest would give Joe the opportunity to repent and just do what they wanted, which was to rise at 5 a.m., kneel on a marble floor and pray for an hour. Joe argued that he would pray for an hour but not without having breakfast.

When he was offered opportunities to repent, Joe’s answer was always the same: no fucking way. Once, that priest, told our parents, Joe had said “I’ll fucking starve to death before I get up at five fucking o’clock in the morning and pray while hungry. No fucking way.”  Joe had also, shrewdly in my opinion,  wondered aloud if starving a child was legal, the priest told my folks.

Mom gave up on giving any of her children to god.  I still wish I had had Joe’s balls when I was 12.  My sister was born not longer after Joe’s failure at that seminary. If Joe had been 12, I was 13 when Joel bailed on his vocation. My sister was born when I was 14. I remember waiting, with some anxiety for my baby sister, to see if mom would try to give her away to God. Mom never did make that play. And I often wondered, but never dared to say to my mom, “Why aren’t you trying to give Margaret away? Why me but not her?”

Joe proudly bragged about how he had stood up to those seminary priests, who were expert at breaking boys. He was proud to be unbroken, unbowed. He wore his eviction from seminar as a badge of honor. I was proud too.  He loved it when people asked him what happened because he loved describing how he kept saying ‘no fucking way’ to priests. In our very Catholic world, just saying fuck was a sin. Saying it so baldly to priests with authority over him was almost incomprehensible. If I had not heard the priest tell the story, I might not have believed Joe when he told it over and over. With pride.

When he had been a baby, then a toddler, my mom often sang “Dear little Joe, kind little Joe, he’s the nicest little boy you will ever know.”  I had always felt that way about my dear little Joe. He turned out to be a very big kid. By the time he was three, he had told our brother Chuck, then age five, that if Chuck ever laid a hand on me or Joe again, for Chuck was a bully and beat us smaller kids regularly, he would beat Chuck black and blue. I was impressed. Joe really was only 3 at the time he said that but already bigger than Chuck. Bullies area cowards.  My brother Joe does not have a cowardly molecule in his being.  I guess Chuck was impressed by Joe's assertiveness because he never hit me or Joe again.  Chuck went on to beat up newer siblings, doing so even in his college years, with our parents still never saying a word of criticism, giving tacit approval in their denial.

I was glad my dear little Joe had escaped that seminary. And proud of how he had gotten out.  I was proud he had had the guts to keep saying ‘no fucking way’, provoking the priests perfectly.

Except for one brutal, vicious beating when I was 7, my mom never physically struck any of her children.  She had lost her mind the day she beat me 100 times with my dad’s leather belt and she had not lost her mind because of me. She took it out on me because as the only female in the family besides mom, I was low man on the totem pole.  There were many times I wished my mom would have struck me instead of talked to me as she did. They didn’t have boarding schools for 12 year old girls with a vocation. If they had, I might have done as Joe did and tried on boarding school to see if it was an improvement over our unhappy home.

Joe once told me, in his perpetually genial way, that he might have toughed it out right up until college because it was a Jesuit seminary and he thought it would help him get into a great college,  although no fucking way was he ever planning on becoming a priest. He said “anything to get away from her, you know?”  I did know.  And Joe got accepted into Yale, even without the Jebbies help. No one could believe it when Joel turned down Yale because he could go to a state university without any student loans. Yale asked him to take out some loans.