November 1

St. Francis, Chapel, St. John’s University- Collegeville

Who Wants to be a Saint? Father Michael Patella’s homily focused on the legions of saints relating to “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” in a relevant pop culture connection.  Both large in size and style, the Abbey was Bauhaus modern, a term I knew from previous tours. Starting with the eye-catching, towering wall of stained glass, I was drawn to the evening light filtered through a huge honeycomb wall of colored glass.  Adding to the visuals, a generous helping of incense wafted from the sparse altar  and voices carried over the sonorous organ in a multisensory blast. Much of the music was in chant form with voices harmonized in unison throughout the huge church. Clearly the acoustics had been carefully considered during construction. I hadn’t been to a Mass at the Abbey for decades.  Though the physical church had not changed, the shortage of religious was apparent. Previously, I recalled the two large sections of wings behind the altar filled with priests and monks, but tonight only one side was partially filled while laypersons sat in the other. These wings were ringed by a high concrete wall and atop the wall, candles flickered between relics of Saints. We were literally surrounded by Saints!

Thankfully the Benedictine hospitality was alive and well as two monks helped us lay people navigate the Monks’ seating area with individually sectioned-off, thick black wooden seats. The kneelers were up and we were instructed to also put up our seats at communion to make room, but the single aisle and unusual seating made it a challenge to return to our places, thankfully the ever-present Monks helped shepherd us back behind the high wall. Perhaps pulled in because it was a Holy Day of Obligation, dozens of students attended the Friday evening service. Regardless, seeing the Spirit alive and well in the youth inspired me.

Sainthood

Could I be a Saint?  I feel like I would know in advance, right? I had been working on my soul while I tried to keep my body intact too. By far the most interesting point spiritually was the increased awareness of  THE END than ever before. I was grateful everyday, rest assured, but lines like “the hour of my death” repeated 53 times per rosary would often cause me to pause, a jolt in the prayer reminding me that I needed to get my spiritual poop in a group.

After Mass, I had the pleasure of dining in the Refectory (main dining hall) with a living saint, my dear soul sister, Barb. I have never known another teacher who inspires students with social justice issues and concern for the environment like Barb. Even while we ate, a former student sought her out. Her generosity is amazing; she easily gives out four times her caloric intake every day. Best of all, she gave me the encouragement I needed to write. Her suggestions prompted me to take my reflections and weave my cancer story as each Mass connected to my experience, not in chronological order, but the pieces together sharing my story.

But, Could I be a saint?  The setting I grew up in seemed bucolic enough:  a small 240-acre dairy farm with verdant pastures for the Holstein cattle and a few sheep, a Shetland pony who hated humans, a rolling cast of dogs, and a colony of feral cats. We had an immense vegetable garden and multiple strawberry patches, apple trees, and a babbling brook that ran through the fields.

But I was kind of a brat. I blame my parents who were over-the-moon about being parents. (Even blaming my parents should alert you to the fact that I was not a simple brat, but a conniving miscreant). My parents struggled with fertility issues and after being married for nine years had my older sister, Patti, with the help of fertility drugs. After more fertility drugs, I arrived two years and nine months later, a pudgy, devious creature. If I was sent to the corner as a punishment, I peeled the paint off the wall. Maybe it was possibly lead paint, but I didn’t eat it. When I was around three, I replied to Patti in a single snort followed by words. According to Mom, I singled her out for this behavior and kept this up for months.

Patti: “Should we go outside?”

Linda: Snort. “Sure.”

Patti: “Here’s your mittens.”

Linda: Snort. “Thanks.”

As an adult I was proud of my resolve at such a young age but ashamed of my temerity. There is no Hallmark card for apologizing for months of snorting.

I was a stubborn little bugger who vehemently insisted at age three that I did not have the chicken pox, but instead had “the dots.” I wore my ruffle underwear with the ruffles in the front so I could see them. When I was four, my brother Joe was born and became the adorable blue-eyed, curly blonde-haired center of attention. Probably resented his intrusion, so I didn’t exactly dote on him. Decades later, I can still see the panic on his face when we would prank him.  I would sneak over to the television set, turn the volume down and then mime a conversation with Patti.  Joe would shake his little head, tug at his ears and begin to wail and then realize he was not deaf.  Four years after Joe was born, my sister Amy was born early in the morning with hydrocephalus and was quickly baptized before she died in the late afternoon..

At six, I was impressively stingy, coming home from Christmas shopping with the tooth fairy’s dime from my first lost tooth still in my grubby hand. (For years, I believed the tooth fairy looked like FDR since his face was on the dimes left under my pillow–an exchange rate of one dime per tooth. )  Looking back, none of these feels entirely saint-like.

However, from day one I loved school. The day after I turned five on December 22, 1975, I put on my snowmobile suit and boots to follow my sister to the end of the driveway to wait for the bus. I had been told I would go to Kindergarten when I was five and had to be herded back to the house, stomping my feet and protesting.

Surrounded by my Mom’s special education materials, piles of children’s books and an older sister who liked to play school, I was reading before I started kindergarten. I loved all things book. In second grade, our teacher had us create what I realized later was a slam book. We stood in front of the class and the teacher wrote down comments about us from our classmates. Many were prompted by her and horribly unkind. “X is messy,” “X smells like the barn.” I was absent 18 days that year, more than all other years combined. (I learned a lot of how not to teach from that experience. Please, if you do not like children, do not become a teacher. On the positive side, Miss S. in third grade made me appreciate those teachers truly called to the profession. I learned a lot of how to teach from her.) I found the mimeographed copy when I was purging before we moved. At the bottom of my green construction cover, I had written my own ISBN (International Standard Book Number). What a book nerd. My future was already leaning toward being a school library media specialist and English teacher.

While in primary school, I drew a picture of myself in a nun’s habit, ready to join the convent at age seven, but when my dad’s sister Sister Ann saw the drawing while visiting the next summer, she closed her eyes and shook her head at my career choice. “No, it’s not for you,” she told me. I don’t know what she saw in me or perhaps what was lacking, but I trusted her fully and probably just ran off to play. Though I have not had a calling to join the religious life, being around the nuns and other people with strong faith has always made me yearn for that deep connection.  So, I could be a saint, right?

Life on the farm also provided a lot of life lessons. When the butcher shop called to say our cow had been processed, but that cow was still in the yard, all trust in the butcher was lost and we learned how to butcher cattle.  I had an end-of-the-line job, sitting on the kitchen table, wrapping the meat in waxed butcher paper, tying it up, labelling it, and adding it to our huge freezer. It was actually one of the best jobs in the process, but I resented spending the day working with the cold meat. A few months later, Mom called me to the kitchen with three packages of meat labelled, “Oh, God.” I spent some time in the corner as she unwrapped the mystery meat.

But sainthood? Not the martyr or sinless version for certain since I had plenty of darkness in my soul. Mom had many illustrated Lives of Saint books that I devoured as a young child. The stories were short but filled with drama.  No one seemed to get out without a horrific, violent death, oftentimes at the hand of a family member.  The pictures that accompanied the stories were of beatific faces juxtaposed with bloody wounds. Not exactly an endorsement for sainthood.

The power of guilt was always a strong motivator for me but I felt that canonized saints were so good they did not need a threat to keep them on the right path. I remember rehearsing my first confession and every subsequent confession, alarmed if the penance was more than one Our Father and three Hail Marys.  I would leave the confessional determined to avoid the near occasion of sin, but the intention wore off quickly as I pinched Patti in the arm or tickled Joe to get him in trouble while I knelt and did my penance.

In school, I peaked early: third grade as the class checker champ and first for girls in the jump rope contest

and also tied for the shortest in our grade with Pete and Amber.  I am not sure why I count being shortest as a triumph, but I knew early I would be of short stature and must have decided it was a worthy objective. And I was right.  At graduation practice we were separated by gender and then lined up by height. With my head held high I was near the front, watching all those 5’3 girls slouching, just hoping to make the highly coveted front row.

Outside of school and farm work, since Dad was particular about his milk cows, we rarely traveled and never took a vacation. Instead we made dozens of trips every summer to Van’s Beach on Lake Koronis to swim for a few hours after evening chores. We’d load up a five gallon pail with beach towels and cool off in the early evening playing keep away with an old tennis ball. It was an idyllic childhood: siblings as playmates, lots of pets, Mom’s great cooking, Dad’s inventive spirit. It was a simple life and one I cherished.

I am not quite sure if I was ever or will ever be cut out to be a saint, but looking back it really doesn’t matter.  I was always surrounded by them.