Xolaire

OK, so my allergies are so bad I blood test enough horrible to receive Xolaire--two injections every two weeks. I've had five now, and if you asked me I'd say I don't feel any different at all. I still have lots of chest congestion going on and cough a lot and spit stuff up.

I go to my Allergist Monday and I want to tell him the truth: that I don't feel any better, 10 weeks into these 2 injections every two weeks.

I want to get better. That is the God's truth. But I'm not feeling it yet and he's going to suggest I stop my evening pill tomorrow, I just know he is.

All Fall and Winter I've felt one dusty room away from needing a round of prednisone. And I don't feel that much better now.

I can walk 40 minutes on the treadmill, reading a book, 4 times a week, but shoveling snow or trying to run upstairs doesn't work.

I get out of breath. Not enough to take a puff of my inhaler, but enough to stop and take deep breaths.

I'm perfectly functional, so I don't have 'bad news' to tell my doctor--Dr. Randolph, who is a gem--but I don't feel any better 10 weeks in and I want to.

What next is what I want to know and what I'll ask Dr. Randolph on Monday.

Glad for Gladys

(OK, I guess I'm going keep posting stuff I find sifting through the writings of my past. This short story, unlike most of the stuff has a date on it though most of the stuff I have only a vague place in time for, this is for sure: July 28, 1974. I would have been living in Alexandria Virginia, driving every day with Sister Jeremy and Brother Roger to a huge mental hospital in Maryland to do Clinical Pastoral Education. CPE was required for Episcopal Seminarians in the summer before their final year and of some Roman Catholics who were working on advance degrees. Jeremy was a Sister of  Mercy and Roger was a Franciscan brother. We were a merry trio that summer, driving up to Spring Grove Mental hospital and pretending we knew how to talk to people with mental illness. My reaction to madness is to be sucked into it and sometimes I would keep my hand on the keys to the locked wards to remind me I would be able to leave. I just saw Jeremy last year in Baltimore when we were visiting Josh and Cathy and the girls. She came to their house and I fixed lunch. Jeremy has done a lot of ministries in her day and is a fierce feminist of a nun, but I'm not sure if she was used to being around three little girls for a meal. I lost track of Roger years ago. I liked and trusted them both emmensely.

So, "Glad for Gladys" was written during that time of my life. Odd to know that and have no idea why I wrote it. But, here it is.)

GLAD FOR GLADYS

Gladys Spinnet is dying. Not that it matters much to anyone, but she's dying and that should be worth something. It should matter--make a difference somehow.

Elsie Flowers told me today--about Gladys dying. Walking down the main road in Conklintown, along Mrs. Flowers' fence, I saw her out in her garden and she hooted me over. She asked if it were hot enough for me and since it was, I told her, "yes, plenty warm, thank you." She brought her hoe over to the fence and wanted to hear all about me and what I was doing. When I told her I was working on my doctorate, she thought I was in Med School. so I explained I wouldn't be that kind of doctor, not the kind that looks down your throat. Then she talked about her cabbages and politics and all sorts of things, and, right in the middle of something else, she said, "O, ya' know don't ya' 'bout how Gladys Spinnet is dyin'?"

I stood there, trying to remember who Gladys Spinnet was and feeling profoundly sad that knowing someone was dying didn't matter much to me, no more than Mrs. Flowers' cabbages or Senator Jennings Randolph, who she found too liberal.

She leaned on her hoe, as if to make it final, and said, "she is....Really....Dying."

A thin necklace of dirt ringed Mrs. Flowers' neck. Her garden and her sweat gave her a necklace like kids get playing ball on a hot dusty day. It reminded me of Julia, a little black girl I'd seen that morning wearing a necklace of the pop-tops from soda cans. I took her picture and asked if the tops ever cut her neck. "Jist sometimes," she said, "but I don't mind much."

I wanted a picture of Mrs. Flowers with the necklace of dirt around her neck, thinking how it would look beside Julia's picture. Julia had been leaning on her bike and Mrs. Flowers was leaning on her hoe. I imagined the photos, in identical black frames, stark against the white of my study's walls. I was on the verge of asking to take her picture when Mrs. Flowers said, "Cancer, rite here," pointing to the beads of wet dirt on her neck. "Too late to 'ketch it and she'll be dead 'for winter. It'll eat up to that little part of the brain with the long name. Jason tol' me what that's called, but I forgit. Anyways, when it does, Gladys'll  die, quick like."

I almost said, "You can't 'catch' cancer," since I thought she meant 'catching it' like the measles or a bad cold. Luckily, I paused long enough to realize she meant, "it can't be treated." Then I caught myself about to say that the part of the brain she meant was the medulla oblongata, but with Gladys Spinnet dying, that didn't seem important enough to mention. Suddenly, all I could think of was that the next time there were cabbages in Mrs. Flowers garden or a Senatorial election so she could vote for the Republican, there wouldn't be Gladys Spinnet.

And as hard as I tried, I couldn't make it matter.

"Gladys Spinnet," Mrs. Flowers told me, "went to Charlottesville las' month." Going to Charlottesville--to the University of Virginia Hospital--was the kiss of death where I grew up. You only 'went to Charlottesville' when no one in southern West Virginia had any answers. And Charlottesville didn't have answers either. In Charlottesville they did research on things without answers.

Mrs. Flowers rambled on about how her niece worked at the University of Virginia Hospital and what a good job it was and how beautiful the mountains were there in fall, "there bein' lots more maple trees there and maple turnin' bright red." While she talked, I thought about Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Charlottesville, about the big calendar clock that covers a wall of that house, keeping perfect time after all these years, counting out the moments of Gladys Spinnet's life.

When I got away from Mrs. Flowers, carrying three Big-boy tomatoes in a brown paper sack for my Uncle, I stopped at a road side grocery to buy a Dr. Pepper from a fat women whose name I couldn't remember just then. Her name is Mrs. Goins, or Mrs. Cones, or something like that, ans she asked me about her bursitis, since I was studying to be a doctor.

I stood in the middle of the store, drinking my soda, when Sam came in, his hands greasy black from working on cars, to buy some Lucky Strikes. Sam is my age--a little league teammate who dropped out of the high school where I excelled.  He asked where I'd been and what I was doing and how I came to be visiting 'home', and then he told me, matter of factly, like everything else he had said, "ain't it sumthin' 'bout Gladys Spinnit dyin'?"

For Sam, she was already dead. There's something about cancer, something about how much we fear it, something about how some people--Sam, for one--call it 'the Big C", that makes the diagnosis final, a death warrant.

"The big C'll get you, Richie," Sam told me, solemnly, "never fear. Never fear."

I was on the verge of saying that 'fear' seemed an appropriate reaction toward cancer and death and about to tell Sam that I couldn't remember the last time I was around someone who smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes when, without warning, a picture of Gladys Spinnet jumped into my mind.

I saw her, clear as day, running down the main road in winter, ignoring the icy patches on the pavement and the snow piled up almost as high as mail boxes on the shoulders. She was running like mad, in my unexpected memory, coat-less--running to her retarded brother, Casdy, who was sitting in the middle of the road, playing with something he'd found there: a small animal, a chipmunk or something, dead.

I remembered Gladys' face then. It was a soft, round, mountain face--like my mother's, like mine beneath my beard--with small eyes and thick brows, full lips and a weak chin. Sam's face...and Mrs. Goins' face, Mrs. Flowers' face, and Julia's--though her face was Black. Gladys Spinnet's face lept into my memory, as if out of the mirror in my uncle's house's bathroom.

Someone once told me that Gladys changed Casdy's diapers even though he was almost fifty and weighed over 250 pounds. I also remember hearing that Gladys' other two brothers--one not much brighter than Casdy and the other a jack-legged preacher of some kind--wouldn't lift a finger to help. And the father and mother were both long dead--Able Spinnit climbed out on the roof of his porch and died, gossip had it, in a rainstorm. So Gladys Spinnit changed Casdy's diapers and took the dead things he collected out of his pockets each night.

I remember Casdy Spinnit the way you remember a bad dream. He was so large and so retarded, drooling a lot, that he frightened the wits out of me as a child. I even remembered the dead things he carried around in his pockets. Dead things are usually frightening to little kids...or fascinating. I don't remember which it was. Or, maybe it was both at once.

Standing there, talking to Sam, I remembered how Casdy wasn't afraid of dead mice or frogs at all. Casdy would take dead things out of his pockets to show you like he was showing you something glowing, or a shiny quarter he had to buy some gum.

My 'killing time' at home with Uncle George, back where I grew up, suddenly seemed pointless. I wanted a few weeks away from my apartment and my thesis, a few weeks to try out my new camera and sleep late and walk the mountain roads without thinking or reading or writing. Instead, I happened onto the drama of Gladys Spinnet's death--a drama that depressed me because it didn't seem to matter much.

I'm going back to Princeton tomorrow. I've decided I actually want to be near the library. There are several things I need to know about Stephen Crane before I can finish what I've been working on. I won't find out those things here. All I can find out here is more about how Gladys Spinnit is dying. I realize there is nothing I can do to prevent that, or even make it matter much to me.

Gladys' dying may matter to Casdy. Someone else, after all--probably someone less gentle and loving--will have to change his diapers. But he'll most likely think of Gladys as one more dead thing he found and wish he could put her in his pocket.

I'd like to write Gladys a note, but it would be maudlin and vain and she wouldn't remember me or understand. I'd like to tell her, somehow, if I only could--"O God, Gladys, I am sorry." But for all my good intentions, it still wouldn't matter much.

What would matter is if I could tell her something hopeful, joyous, wondrous, glorious.

Like I was glad for her.

Glad.

baseball...after pondering it...

When I read the post I published today about baseball, I realized how different it is to be 13 than it is to be 66.

Today I would have done things all differently. I would have told my father why I was quitting Little League. I would have told my teammates. I would have told Benny Graham's mother and she would have told all the parents of kids on the Comet's and Jimmy Newsome would have been removed as manager of our team and we would have gone on to play in the play-offs under someone else's guidance and still lost to Gary in the championship game.

But what I realize now is that at 13 I was more concerned about causing my father pain and my teammates confusion than I would be now.

Jimmy Newsome should not have been given such intimate contact with children he did not respect. Someone should have brought him to justice, brought him down. I would do that today without hesitation. I would have probably done it at 20 or 30 and all the years since.

But I was 13 and my understanding of abuse and injustice was not finely honed.

Instead I didn't want my father and my teammates to know what I knew and live with that reality.

I wanted to protect them and live with it alone.

No wonder it is hard for children to call adults into account for their misdeeds.

I understand that now.

Ice cycles

Ice cycles for those of you who live in the Northeast (or most anywhere this winter) form when snow and ice are melting in nearly freezing conditions.

We had some enormous ones lately since we've had periods of melting between the snow storms. All have fallen from our house (one fell off the roof above our back porch roof and glanced down to knock over our trash can, but nothing was in the trash can and I don't have to drag it out to the road before next Tuesday) except one bigger than me on the roof over the side of our semi-wrap around front porch. It could fall tomorrow or the next day and crash through the roof and shatter my bicycle that is out there, except that there's several feet of ice on the roof and the Jim-sized ice cycle will probably glance off and fall harmlessly on our side walk (unless I'm taking out the trash and it crushes me!)

The other still existing ice-cycle is outside the east facing window of our bedroom. I could open the window and break off that 6 foot long, but not broad enough to be Jim-sized, ice-cycle but it might fall on my car in the driveway below. If it drops of it's own volition it will go straight down and not hit the car.

A four foot ice-cycle on the back and west facing side of the house dropped just as our Puli dog was going down the stairs to the snow covered back yard and missed him by 6 inches or so. Bern and I saw it fall and rushed across the deck to see if it impaled Bela. He just looked over his shoulder at it and then licked it and then peed in the poop patch.

Puli's, it seems, don't consider the danger of falling ice like humans do.

baseball

(looking through these old writings is making me aware of how bad my memory is. This piece--"Baseball"--was written before my father died in 1988 and I don't remember writing it. But I will share it with you here.....)


My father played baseball as a young man in a rag-tag country league that covered three or four counties of southeastern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia. Actually it is a misnomer to call what my father played in a 'league', even a 'rag-tag' one. It was more like a network of young men from scattered farm communities who knew each other from logging jobs, county fairs and cattle sales. Each of those young men would go back to their community and fire up enough enthusiasm to schedule a two Sunday double-header, home and away, during the summers. They  would play on rough hewn ball fields beside local schools or on the makeshift diamonds in the middle of some one's cow field. They would assemble early, strutting their farm grown stuff, the 1930's equivalent of "macho", drinking lots of half-fermented homemade moonshine, playing a little baseball that would end in a fight.

The next Sunday they'd do it all again on the other team's field.

I knew the names of the places these rough farm boys grew up. There were place like Waitville (my father's home), Paint Branch, Sweet Springs, Gap Mills, Union, Laural Branch, Rock Camp, Peterstown, Greenville and Wayside: names I knew from my father and because, in my boyhood, I had been there. And in all those places, according to my father, there were raw, rough, harsh, sunburned farm boys itching for sunny weekends, home brew and baseball. Not to mention it was a good way to meet the girls from other towns.

The girls would come in their home-made dresses or summer things from Montgomery Ward, full of freckles and giggles, hiding their faces behind their hands, but their eyes were sharp, focused, sizing up farm boys that weren't boringly familiar. The girls would sit in the shade of the school house or under trees on the edges of the pasture, always shaded, remote from the action but fully involved. Dreaming dreams, I imagine, that farm girls have always dreamed.

I have disappointed my father in many ways, but now two as profound as not playing baseball, beyond backyards and two years of Little League and by not being a Republican. All the other disappointments and betrayals pale beside those two. And now, in the last of the ninth of his life, with Nixon in the White House, who even confounded my father in the last months before the intricacies and failures of his own body and mind began to be his only confusion, it was my not playing baseball that causes me the most guilt.

He has never understood my not playing baseball after 13. I was 'promising'. I played first base with a grace and effortlessness that still surprises me when I pass ball with my son and daughter. I was, in the language of the game, a 'glove'. And in batting practice or in softball, I scattered hits to all fields and showed occasional power to right-center. But when the game began, when Ray Smith was on the mound for Gary and I was at the plate, people went for sodas. "All field, no bat" was my scouting report when I was 12 and 13. But everyone thought I would 'come around'. People who had seen me in practice knew it was just a matter of time and timing and all those sharply hit liners just outside first base would be landing in the alley and I'd be standing on second before anyone knew what happened. I had one year of Little League to go and people in Anawalt were counting on me to 'develop' into a hitter. I'd back second, right behind Danny Taylor, who led the league in hitting and was a constant threat to steal a base, even with the strict, no leading off rules. Danny would get on base more than half the time and the worried pitcher would serve me up some fat ones. Danny would score from first on all those doubles to right center. The Anawalt Comets would, at long last, be winners.

Then, with one game left in the 1960 season and the Comets securely in second place behind Gary, preparing for the play-offs, I quit. I walked off the field after turning a brilliant unassisted double-play that ended a 16-3 rout of the Elbert Aces in which even I had two hits, and, never explaining, turned in my uniform.

There was one out and a runner on first--one of the Subrick boys, I think, and Leo Kroll, the only decent hitter Elbert had was batting. He hit left-handed and I was guarding the bag, holding the runner on. Arnold Butler was pitching, which showed the disgust in which we held the Aces--Arnold only pitched against Elbert, allowing us to save Danny Taylor or Bobby LaFon to pitch against first place Gary. Leo dried his hands, spit into them, dried them again. We were ahead by 13 runs and most of the parents were anxious to go home to TV. Benny Graham's mother started hooting at Leo Kroll, questioning his manhood (or at least his boyhood). Benny Graham scraped the dirt around third base with his foot, hanging his head as he always did when his mother embarrassed him, which was often. Leo stepped in and hit Arnold's pitiful fastball about a foot off the ground six feet to the left of first base.

I don't remember thinking what to do. Obviously, I didn't think at all but threw my body to the right, leaving my feet as I had done so many time playing catch with my uncle Del in my uncle Russel's yard, and caught the ball in the air. The runner was already half-way to second base and not looking back. Nevertheless, I pulled myself to my knees and dived back to first, slapping my Ferris Fain mitt on the base for the game ending double play.

The crowd, whether delighted by my fielding or merely glad to be able to go home (or a little of both) cheered and cheered. Someone picked me up and suddenly the arms of my friends were lifting me up on Benny Graham's and Arnold Butler's shoulders. I was carried off the field for the first and last time in my life. They put me down into the waiting arms of my Daddy and he carried me, all 110 pounds of me, almost to the car. Half-way home down the winding mountain roads, I told him I was quitting.

There was no noise save the whizzing of the tires on the cooling pavement and the cracking of my father's heart. He said nothing. We rode in silence. When I got home, neither of us told my mother about my two Texas League singles, my run scored, my miraculous double play. My father went to the coal house, where he kept his liquor, for a shot of bourbon and I folded my uniform, #7, just like Mickey Mantle, for the last time.

(I never told  my father why I quit Little League a day and a year before I had too. I never told him because it was because of our manager, Jimmy Newsome, who my father admired greatly. Before the game, when we were taking infield, Jimmy {long dead now, I imagine, since he was 20 years older than us back then} was standing in the first base coaching box talking to one of this drinking buddies. He was commenting on the members of the team. He told his friend about me ['all glove, no bat'] but then he moved to Billy Bridgeman at second base and called him 'a good player but a f*cking thug'. Danny Taylor was at short and Jimmy Newsome praised his athletic ability but said he had 's*it for brains'. Jimmy called Benny Goodman's mother 'a foul mouth whore' and said Arnold Butler 'wouldn't know where to put his d*ck except in the assh*ole of a dog'. The worst was for Mousy Macroski, the catcher. "That little Pollock," our manager said of Mousy, "can catch, but he's a bastard and smells like a Pollock."

This was a man I looked up to, admired, wanted to emulate. And as 12 and 13 year old boys were taking grounders and throwing to me at first base, he was defaming and abusing us in coarse language and without an ounce of respect. We, on the other hand, were wanting to win the game to make Coach Newsome praise us. We looked up to him like a minor deity. I don't know what was the worse conclusion: that he didn't think I could hear what he was saying or didn't care if I did.

I knew I could never play again for him, not after that night. All the naivete of childhood was over for me. Since that evening when we beat Elbert 16-3 and I had my first and only glory on a playing field, I've never trusted authority. I drove teachers and scout leaders and professors and bishops wild by making them prove beyond doubt that they could be trusted. Never again did I willingly accept that the person in 'authority' was worthy of respect and obedience.

I never told any of my team mates why I quit even though they resented me for it. I didn't want to rip the admiration and adoration of Jimmy Newsome from their hearts and mind. I became, on that night, folding up my Little League uniform for the last time, an 'outsider', immune from slavishly accepting 'the way things were' and became, for always, a skeptic and a rebel. Jimmy Newsome broke my heart and gave me the identity I have to this day.

On one level I resent him mightily for robbing me of my innocence. On a deeper level I appreciate that he gave me, early on, a bull-sh*t detector that seldom fails me.

I started once to tell my father in the nursing home this story. But he wouldn't have known what I was talking about and why would I put that on him in the bottom of the ninth of his life....?)

Reclaiming the deck

Today's warmth caused most of the ice cycles to fall from our roof, but not all. Some huge one's still remain over the front porch.

But we reclaimed the deck.

Bern had hear on TV of a deck collapsing from the weight of snow and ice. So she move foot after foot of snow. There's still lots of snow on the deck but I don't think it will be falling down any time soon.

Small victories in the midst of a harsh winter are 'major' in some way.

We got the deck back today and I heard water in the drains, running downwards and not froze in the gutters for the first time for weeks.

Small victories matter in a winter like this.

They really do.

Wood visible on the deck, the sound of water in a drain. How can Spring be so far away?

A tad off in the season, but anyway....

Bo's Gift

Mattie knew that Paul was having heavy days. He had always been prone to brooding but it had gotten worse once Bo Freeman came home and even worse since the job interview at St. Martin's down in the capitol city. Initially, Paul had been so excited about the possibility of a new position. He had come home after the initial interview telling her what a good chance he thought he had, how he believed he had impressed the committee, how he could already imagine himself Rector of a thriving parish in a real city.

Mattie listened joyfully, so pleased at Paul's pleasure. But the moment fell apart when he said, “at last we can get out of this two-bit town.” Mattie made sure not to react, but it dawned on Paul what he had said and the thrill went out of him. He talked a bit more, with much less enthusiasm and Mattie knew he had been struck by guilt for what he said. After all, it was 'her' two-bit town, not his.

Mattie had grown up in Deep Valley, as had her parents before her. Paul was from the capitol, a big-city boy as things went in that small New England state. She imagined he didn't even know where Deep Valley was until he was hired to be the priest at St. Luke's straight out of seminary. Though, in all the years, he never said so, she knew he had seen it as a brief stop, a few years before moving on to bigger and bigger churches, perhaps even to be elected bishop some day, like his father had been. But, as Mattie's mother used to say whenever plans were thwarted, “considerations got in the way”.

In fact, Mattie was the consideration that came between Paul and his ambitions. She had always told him she would go wherever he needed to go, but either he hadn't believed her or knew it would grieve her to leave the little town while her aging parents still lived. So, in the first decade or so, he patiently waiting, putting his longings for a more prestigious parish on hold. First he waited until Bo finally had to go to the state hospital 50 miles north. Then he waited for Mattie to get pregnant, discovering through that wait that it was his fault she didn't conceive. Finally, he waited for her parents to pass on—first her father and then, five years later, her mother. Before he knew it he had been at. St. Luke's , Deep Valley for nearly 25 years. And, Mattie knew he had already waited too long.

Then, like a unsuspected marvel, Bo Freeman came home and Paul had to wait until the new realities of that homecoming settled down. But now, finally accustomed to having Bo be the child they never had, he felt free to apply for positions in larger places. But by that time he was already over 50 and the sad truth was that churches were always looking for younger priests rather than mature ones. The final interview at St. Martin's had not gone well—had gone horrendously bad, in fact, and hope was lost. Paul told Mattie that in so many words when he got back late at night. She had waited up for him—praying as she prayed...more like thinking hopeful thoughts...that the news would be good. That, his waiting finally over, Paul could pursue his dreams.

But he was morose when he arrived. His eyes were red and swollen and she pictured him in her mind, weeping as he drove home. He said very little, sentence fragments really...”too long in a small parish”...”never showed ambition”...”younger, more exciting candidates”...”our family situation”...”I'm not my father”...”looking for someone who could stay longer....”

Mattie was holding his hands in hers on the kitchen table where they often sat and talked into the night. She was so deeply, profoundly sorry for him, distressed to see him so deflated, longing to be able to give comfort, when those three little words jumped out of the jumble of his self-accusations: “our family situation”. Mattie could imagine it all, the closed door conversations of the vestry at St. Martin's, those doctors and lawyers and university professors and business men and women who made decisions for the largest church in the diocese. Their city ways, their busy lives, their attention to the 'image' of St. Martin's--”Fr. Harden is a good man, a solid priest, and we know how successful his father was here. It might just work, but he is older than we'd hoped for and, well, the family situation....”

They would have never said it out loud, too conscious of political correctness, but they would have thought it and it would have weighed heavy on their minds. How could a priest be Rector of our St. Martin's whose only child was a retarded adult that didn't really belong to he or his wife. No they would have never said it out loud, but Mattie was sure Paul had read between the lines. And though Paul loved her too much to ever hurt her with the idea, Mattie knew it must be true. How hadn't either of them anticipated it? Had they simply become blind to how 'things must look' to strangers? Not that it was the only reason, Paul had been passed over, but it would have entered in. Somehow it was Bo Freeman's fault that Paul was not moving on to receive the much delayed reward for all his loving patience. Mattie's eyes clouded with tears. She thought her heart might break. In the end she was what had kept Paul waiting, her devotion to her parents, her love of Deep Valley, and now, finally her 30 year old promise to 'look after Bo....”

Bo Freeman had been the reason for the first conversation Paul and Mattie ever had, that and church music. Mattie had been the organist at St. Luke's for two years before Fr. Harden arrived. She made an appointment and went in to play for him two days after his furniture had arrived at the Rectory so he could decide if he wanted to keep her on the staff. He stood smiling as she played through a few hymns and a Bach prelude. He started smiling as soon as she hit the first notes and asked her how St. Luke's, such a small church, afforded her.

“Oh,” Mattie said, not so much flattered as intrigued at the 'light up the night' smile of the seemingly somber and serious young priest, “I teach at the elementary school and live with my parents, so I don't expect to get rich on St. Luke's ....”

“Well, you certainly won't,” Paul said, still smiling.

They talked for a while about music matters—Fr. Barnes before him had left hymn selection up to Mattie, using The Choirmaster's Guide to help her. Paul wanted more imput—but so he would, being young and energetic. Dear Fr. Barnes had been with them for 30 odd years—he'd baptized Mattie—and didn't need to 'put his stamp' on the music. That was the term Fr. Harden had used. Mattie found it amusing. So, in the end they agreed she would keep playing and Paul promised to try to give her a raise in the next year.

She was about to go, when he said, “If there's anything I can ever do for you, let me know.” And she realized there was. She got off the organ bench and they sat together in a pew while she tried to explain about Bo Freeman and the promise she had made.

“Sally Freeman and I grew up together. We were inseparable from first grade on,” she told him. “People referred as 'S & M', like the shoe store in the mall. We were planning to go to college together, room together and come back to teach school here in Deep Valley. But none of that happened....”

She went on to explain that during the summer of their Senior year at the regional high school, Sally met a 'big city boy' and he got her pregnant and disappeared. She stopped and apologized, remembering suddenly that Paul Harden was a 'big city boy'. He waved away her apology and she continued.

“It all fell apart, Sally's hopes and dreams,” Mattie told him, “plus, her parents—very strict people—threw her out. She lives in the little apartment above my parents' grocery store with Bo.”

Paul was already familiar with “Holmes' Market”, the only grocery store in town. It was small but well stocked and saved a drive out to the Big Y on the Interstate.

“Then Bo was born,” Mattie went on. “It was clear from the beginning that something was very wrong with him. He's not Downs Syndrome, but it is in that genus of conditions....”

Paul missed the next sentence or two since he was so shocked to find a young women, a product of the small town of Deep Valley, who used the word 'genus' so casually. He knew she was a remarkable musician from hearing her play, but now she was getting interesting.

What came out in the next five minutes was that Sally (the S in the 'S & M' girls—although Paul repented thinking momentarily of the other SM, it obvious hadn't occurred to Mattie) had moved heaven and earth to keep Bo with her. She worked in Mattie's parents store, offered art classes at the local library (“I was the musician and Sally was the artist,” Mattie said.) Paul noticed that she was neither bragging or embarrassed about saying musician and artist. He was not used to such straight forward, confident talking. He had spent his life among those who thrived on irony and sarcasm and figures of speech. People who didn't offer themselves unprotected to the world. Even his father, the popular and thriving Rector of St. Martin's in Capitol City--'sure to be a bishop someday', was the conversation about Paul Harden, Sr.--even his father had never, in all of Paul's life, been so unconcealed as this somewhat lovely young woman was being on their first meeting.

“When I came back from State College,” she continued, “Bo was turning four and the real problems were showing up. He still wore diapers, he didn't speak much and what he said was hard to understand.” She paused, took a breath. “And he was big. A big boy. The last three years, since I've been home, I've helped all I could. And my parents have helped. But then....” Mattie paused, tears rising in her eyes, pain showing in her face, her body slumping in the pew. She was a slight woman who became even smaller for a moment. “Then...,” she continued, voice slightly breaking, “Sally was diagnosed.”

Sally it turned out, had a form of cancer as insidious and irreversible as Bo's condition. She had six months at diagnosis, two months now when Mattie was talking with Paul Harden, her priest, for the first time.

“I promised her,” Mattie said, near sobbing but controlling it enough to talk, “I promised her I would 'look after Bo'. He's a dear child—as innocent and pure as a spring day here in the mountains. And Sally is ready to sign guardianship over to me, but I need some references....I know you don't know me, but a priest's reference would....”

Mattie never finished that sentence because she burst into tears and fell into Paul's arms. He held her, wondering why Seminary hadn't taught him about such things, feeling a vibrant, honest, almost lovely young body against his, hers convulsing in pain, grief, loss. Paul realized he had no idea whatsoever about what to 'do', so he simply held her until the rapids of weeping subsided and she sat up, clearing embarrassed at her out burst, and asked, simply, clearly: “will you write me a letter, Fr. Harden?”

How could he not? Of course he asked her if there were other options for Bo Freeman--”Sally's parents?” “Dead in a car accident when I was a Senior at State College”.

“Siblings?” “She was an only child, like me....” And Paul added in a whisper, “Like me too....”

So he wrote the letter and Matilda Holmes, 25, his age almost to the day, became the legal guardian of Bo Freeman when Sally Freeman died. Paul did the funeral, since Sally's parents had rejected her and their pastor did as well. She was buried in the small graveyard behind the church, a Baptist among generations of Deep Valley Episcopalians. Mattie handled the expenses and the details and then moved into the small apartment above her parents' grocery, so Bo wouldn't have to adjust to a new environment. Every thing Mattie did, from that funeral on, Paul came to understand, was in response to her promise to a dear and deep friendship. A promise not easily made, a promise that had a cost, a promise made in true trust and commitment, a promise that would shape and form, over many years, both Mattie and Paul, and their lives. A promise rooted in the profound depths of love and friendship, a promise that could never be broken—no matter what the fall-out. That was what Matilda ('Mattie') promised to Sally and to Bo. And it was a promise, so unlike the vast multitude of promises of human beings, that would be kept. Cost what it may, mean what it might.

Everything went well—oh, not 'well', but acceptable, for several years. Mattie managed Bo well enough, with her parents' help and the help of others in the little town. Mattie continued to teach, play the organ for St. Luke's and care for Bo. Paul had to admit that Bo was benign enough. Since Mattie was so dedicated to him, Bo came with her to choir practice and church. He was frightening because he was so large and 'different', but the people of St. Luke's accepted him in time. He even grew on Fr. Harden, though Miss Holmes grew on him more. Paul was impressed how Bo would sit by the organ console, leaning against it at choir practice and on Sunday for the two Eucharists. It was awkward and the source of endless gossip, but over the next few years Paul wooed and finally won Mattie. They would be married when Bo was eleven and Mattie and her child born of a promise were going to move into the rectory after the wedding and leave behind the apartment over Holmes' Grocery. Most people agreed, up until then that Mattie's love and devotion could manage the incredible force of nature that was Bo.

Then it happened, a week before the wedding. Just as all the wags and lunch counter philosophers of Deep Valley could have and in fact did predict over the years: Bo, as much as Mattie had sophisticated and tamed and acclimated him to the culture of life in Deep Valley—a culture much more forgiving and accepting than the 'big city' culture that depended on social workers and institutions—did what could have been predicted. Bo set fire to their apartment between the time when Mattie's mother went downstairs to help with the store and the time, only 20 minutes later, but a lifetime in Bo's life, Mattie got home from school, having stayed a few minutes longer to speak with a parent. Bo came home from school—he was in fifth grade though, God knows, he hadn't passed the previous four. “Social Promotion”, they called it back then, in the day, and he turned on the stove after Mattie's mom went downstairs, and it would have been disastrous had Mattie not arrived and put it out with salt, bath towels and great courage born of commitment.

Yet there was no way to keep it from the state social workers. And added to that, Bo had recently hurt a much smaller classmate. Bobby was on the swing and Bo merely meant to give him a push, but Bobby saw him, panicked and fell off the swing. Bo, being 100 pounds heavier tried to pick Bobby up and broke 3 ribs. Fr. Harding had helped soothe over the reaction to that event, but when Bo started the fire, well, the state simply stepped in and Bo went to the hospital in Garden, where he stayed for years and years.

It was in that context that Fr. Harden, having waited patiently for years, married Matilda Holmes.

Time passed, as it always does, like it or not, and it was not until nearly 20 years after Mattie and Paul were married (much to the delight of the people of St. Luke's and the whole village of Deep Valley, loving them both, but loving Mattie more and wondering, some of them, why she would waste herself on such a man—a man without ambition, a man willing to be patient and wait for Matilda Holmes to 'be available'....) At that point in their thoughts, their wonderings would stop. What man wouldn't wait for Matilda? What man with any sense about him wouldn't be patient if patience was what was needed to win such a prize as Mattie? Maybe this 'big city boy' priest knew what he was doing. Maybe he was right to be patient and wait. That's what the people of Deep Valley finally decided—as odd and brooding as Fr. Harden was, if he had the good sense to wait for Mattie, well, how much better could he be?

So their married life began. They were both 30. People talked behind their hands and wondered out loud in the diner and on the street and at the coffee hour at St. Luke's when they would have a child. The widows and mothers of the village looked endlessly at Mattie's waist, but she remained slim almost to a fault, slender in a way most women first admired and then envied.

Matilda's parents wondered too. They waited, as did Paul and Mattie herself. They were patient and waited and when they finally knew—having submitted themselves to intrusive and awful tests—that Paul's sperm count was too low, much too low to induce pregnancy, well, they had waited patiently and then they knew. And they wouldn't be moving soon, Paul wouldn't take a new call because Mattie's parents were growing old and the corner grocery, well stocked and with such variety as it had—was becoming a dinosaur that people fed, from time to time, because it was 'their' dinosaur. But, all in all, the Holmes' Grocery was being laid waste by the 7-ll and the Big Y and a convenience store over on South Street that stayed open later and had a license to sell both beer and wine.

Paul and Mattie shared the aging and death of her parents, shared it equally since they had been truer parents to Paul than his own parents had been. But when both Davis and Alma Holmes were dead and buried, near Sally Freeman, in St. Luke's grave yard, Paul had called his father, now a bishop on the west coast, to ask, tentatively, if there might be some churches in his father's diocese that would be interested in him, Paul Junior.

After an uncomfortable pause and silence, Paul's father said, sadly, Paul thought, “You've waited too long. I'll retire in a few years. I really don't think it would be wise to put your name forward, knowing, as I do, I won't be here to guard you.”

They spoke for a bit longer, but Paul knew, knew fair well, he had disappointed and let down his father by staying so long in Deep Valley, by not being more aggressive or having more initiative, more ambition. Paul's father never understood that his 'staying put' at St. Luke's had to do with waiting for Mattie—someone worth waiting for. Such a thought would have never entered Bishop Paul Harden's ambitious, ironic mind.

That all took place just before Bo Freeman came home. In his years of 'incarceration', as Mattie saw them, at the State Hospital, Bo had learned even more than Mattie had taught him. And a new law decreed that people like Bo, who were able, so far as the state could determine, to live in the community, must do just that.

Mattie had visited Bo faithfully every two weeks for over twenty years. Mattie was, in Paul's mind, one of the few people he'd known who steadfastly kept her word, her promise to Sally to 'watch out' for Bo. She always returned and told Paul all about Bo's progress. She even convinced Paul to go with her two or three times a year and give Bo communion and anoint him for healing.

It was a struggle for Paul at first. He had been glad to share Mattie with Bo in her twice monthly visits, but sharing her and their house with him proved difficult. Bo was well mannered enough, but, at 34 (several years past what the doctors had predicted would be his lifespan) he was large and clumsy and often dropped things and knocked things over. Bo was polite and pleasant and very goodhearted, but he tied them down more than Paul had expected and took so much of Mattie's time and energy. Paul was jealous, he admitted to himself, jealous of the gentle giant who had 'come home' after so many years. The feelings Paul had depressed and disappointed him. It was dangerous, he well knew, to assume he could be as committed as Mattie was to Bo, but he felt guilty nonetheless. The first year was the hardest but the three of them eventually settled into their new life together. Bo called him “Poppy Paul”, having failed to be able to say either 'Father' or 'Harden'. He called Mattie “Matta” and in time Paul would come to use the nickname. Things certainly settled down, but it was another delay, another waiting for Paul. Until they were used to Bo's presence there was no way to look for a new job.

But then, when St. Martin's came open—the place where Paul had grown up and his father had been Rector for so many years. Well, he thought it was FATE calling to him. He no longer dreamed of being a bishop, like his father, but at least, he imagined, he could make his father proud by following in Paul Senior's foot steps. That was why he was so morose and depressed by the rejection. St. Martin's was the domino that knocked down all the others. That was why he became withdrawn and sullen. Mattie didn't seem able to lift his spirits. Bo was merely confused at the way Poppy Paul was behaving. “Poppy Paul sad?” he asked Mattie. She had to admit Paul was very, very sad. “Bo help?” he asked. She embraced the big man, her eyes welling up, “if only Bo could...,” is all she said.

Even Advent couldn't take the weight of loss and disappointment from Paul's shoulders. It had always been his favorite season, but this year, he barely sang the wondrous Advent hymns, celebrated communion with little passion and his sermons were less structured, less poetic than they always were in the Season of Waiting. Perhaps he was through with waiting. Perhaps he thought there was nothing to wait for anymore.

Finally, a week before Christmas, Mattie could take it no more. She found him sitting in the Rectory office in the dark.

“Paul,” she said, “I think it's time you talked to someone. Won't you call Dr. Lewis?” David Lewis was the psychologist in a nearby town who Paul had recommended to dozens of people over the years.

He looked at her. Bo was behind her, in the doorway. Paul got up and moved toward her. “Do you think I'm crazy!” he shouted. “Is that what you think?”

Mattie was startled. She didn't remember a time in all their marriage that Paul had raised his voice to her like that. The shout sent Bo running. In a moment, they heard the front door open and close. Mattie went after him, but when she stood on the porch it was too dark to see where he had gone. Suddenly, Paul was beside her.

“He didn't take a coat,” she said, shivering in the chill night.

“I'm sure he'll come back soon,” Paul said, his voice full of guilt. “He won't go far.”

But a half-hour later, Bo had not returned though Mattie and then Paul had put on warm jackets and went out to call for him.

They were about to give up when Mattie said, “there's a light in the church.”

St. Luke's was never locked. People often let themselves in late at night, turned on the chapel light and sat for a while.

“That's not the chapel light...,” Paul said as they moved toward the door, “it's candles.”

Sure enough, Bo had lit the altar candles. He had also moved the creche figures from the table by the pulpit to the center of the chancel, arranging them just outside the altar rail. Since it wasn't yet Christmas, the figure of the Christ Child wasn't out yet, but as they moved down the aisle, they saw that Bo laying on the floor in front of the little foot-tall statues of Mary and Joseph, holding something against his chest.

“What on earth....” Paul's voice trailed off, beginning to comprehend the tableau before them.

“You see it too,” Mattie said in a whisper.

By that time, Bo had gotten to his feet and came hurrying down the aisle toward them. He gripped, Paul by the arm with one huge hand, in the other he gently held the creche's Angel.

“Come, Poppy Paul,” Bo said, excited. Paul let himself be led up the steps where Bo said, “lay down, Poppy Paul, lay down with Mary and Joseph.” Paul was already on his knees, tears were rolling down his face. He let Bo help him down until he was laying on his side. Then Bo pressed the angel into Paul's hands. “Poppy Paul's Mary's Baby too....”

Paul was weeping quietly. Bo looked anxiously at Mattie.

“It's okay, Bo,” she said, holding back a sob herself. She stood rooted to the spot and watched as Bo sat beside of Paul and cradled his head gently in his huge arms.

When the tears were over, Bo helped Paul to his feet. He looked at the priest with a compassion few would have thought him capable of and asked, “Poppy Paul is Mary's Baby too?”

“Yes, son,” Paul said softly, embracing the larger man, “Yes, my son, I am....”

Mattie held her hand to her mouth. Paul had never called Bo that before. And she could tell as Paul looked at her and held out a hand to her to join their embrace that light had come into Paul's darkness and his life-long waiting was over.

Bo hugged Paul back.

“Easy, son,” Paul said, wincing, “careful with my ribs....”