Knees Burning, I Pray

The little black words

were kept in tiny boxes.

We each got our own box.

We made sentences.

The boxes were handed out each morning by the

teacher: a scary nun shrouded head to toe

in black.

How I loved the feel of those smooth little words beneath my fingers, each word contained in its own tiny rectangle of stiff paper.

Oh how I loved making SENTENCES!!!!

and oh I was so good at it.

I was so so so good.

see me there standing BESIDE THE VIRGIN MARY?

on the other side is

my cousin Lorry.

It was MAY,

MARY's month.

A bounty of flowers honors Our Lady.

I love(d)

Mary. I still do, pray to her.

You have no idea how good I was

at pressing my soft palms together in prayer.

But then there were those awful hot days in spring when the nun, that bitch, led us outdoors and told us to kneel down on the scorching asphalt the grit making my knees bleed. We needed to kneel in order to say the Stations of the Cross.

She didn't burn her knees, of course, only we first graders did.

WHY WOULD YOU MAKE A CHILD OF SIX KNEEL ON HOT ASPHALT WITH BARE KNEES? WHY WOULD THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HURT -- KILL -- SO MANY CHILDREN IN SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS? I will never understand this. PLEASE MARY I KNOW I shouldn't call the nun a bitch, I should pray to you instead, I say "Hail Mary, full of GRACE..."

BUT WAIT, Mary, I DON'T KNOW THE MEANING OF the word GRACE.

I opened the Oxford English dictionary this morning, the heavy one that my DAD and MOM gave me after I earned my Ph.D. in English, and sadly, it had no definition that I could feel in my fingertips or in my knees as I was kneeling in meditation on a soft pillow.

Dr. A says "Grace is love and acceptance amidst imperfection."

I close my eyes, hold my hands in a proper prayer position. I breathe.

I focus on

each

of

the

words

he

is

teaching

me.