White Easter Lilies and Little Girls in Dresses

Daff photo from Holland Bulb Farms in Milwaukee.

Easter Mass at 9:30 was nice, with banks of pure white lilies, purple hydrangeas and pink azaleas. A branch with flowering white buds was behind me where I stood (I was too late, so standing room only) and at one point, I got my hair caught in it. The little girls were there--sporting tiny white shoes with bows, hairbands, gingham and floral print dresses, sparkly ballet slippers. I thought back to my two little girls, and smiled. To these new little girls, though, I was just a stranger in a pink dress wearing lipstick and why was I smiling at them? One mini miss clung closer to her mother's coat hem.

A packed church, as happens on Christmas and Easter. 

It saddens me that Dan and Punch and Figgy don't join me for church anymore, except rarely. That's a separate story, or three. But I still enjoyed the quiet prayer. Somehow, there was a bit less pomp and circumstance this year. I don't know why. A bit less magic. Father Marc, our young pastor of many years, was recently transferred, and we miss him. Change is a bump, or a spike. And in the Catholic church, transferring priests happens a lot. (Often because they are needed somewhere else but as you have likely read in news reports, sadly, sometimes, it turns out, to cover up a trail of abuse*.)

Then a simple midday meal at home. Sis brought ham, Easter bread, homemade cookies made from dough tinted pink. I enjoyed filling the Easter baskets and I roasted lamb, browned baby potatoes, steamed spring asparagus.

I walked all the way back, along Norwood. I passed that pretty Tudor, the little cottage that was built up into a bigger house, the house that has clutches and clutches of daffodils on the hill every year, their faces, in ruffled bonnets, turned to the sun. The house where the man was an expert gardener and a rose whisperer. The house where little Figgy went to Paulina's bday party with our nanny, since I was working full-time in NYC. And she made a point of telling me about it, as though it was important for her Mommy to know about the big thing she was doing without me. 

"That's Paulina's house," she said. 

"What? Whose house?" I couldn't understand the word in her raspy three-year-old voice. I didn't know anyone in that house on Norwood.

"Paulina," Figgy said. Maria, our Nanny, told me the name later.

Somehow, I felt the significance of Figgy's report. A bridge to her life while I was away.

It took me a LONG time to get home today, almost  twice as long as it used to. I haven't been exercising, between pandemic nesting and Punchy stress. I'm older and stiffer. But I'm turning a corner, I hope. I'm glad I made it.

I'm going to rest a little and go to bed early. Punch has spring break this week. Good night.

*I've been a Catholic all my life, 63 years. I feel disloyal to the church and my family writing about sexual abuse accusations (and convictions) in this public blog. You better not write that here. Don't say something against the church. The priests you knew didn't do this, not those two tall priests from Saint Mary's. Mommy and Daddy and your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, Jim/Gloria, Jack/Mary, Malachy/Peggy, Anthony/Claire, Aldo/Edith (all gone now, on both the Irish and Italian sides, and you miss them) would not like that you wrote that here. If the last of the 10, Aunt Gloria, your godmother, had not just died, maybe you would not even write that here. To put it out in the light. Did they keep those secrets for decades, stories from their own childhood Catholic parishes? But keeping secrets, that is why the sexual abuse progressed. Such buried whispers are cloaked in shame, darkness and denial and caused irreparable, cutting damage to victims in the parishes. They can't get their innocence and trust back, trust in men who were supposed to be holy. I am not implying anything about the priests I have known in my home parishes in Dumont or Montclair. And there you go again, participating in a cover-up. You know someone who was part of a group that went to court against a priest formerly in Montclair. And a priest you and your young girlfriends knew for a while at Saint Mary's (neither of the two nice tall ones) was on the published list of sexual abusers who were transferred. You found his name there. And look at that. Just like that, you do not want to write his name here. Perpetuating the sickness, the cloaked crimes.