12.5.15 Something terrible

       When I'd been with Kevin for a year or so, I started going to his family's weddings and funerals. His dad's family came over from Italy,  a huge traditional working class family, with a million siblings, and cousins from here to eternity.

      So off I'd go, prim young WASP, to some ornate Catholic Church, with so-high ceilings and all the rest. Of course, raised a Unitarian, where anything and everything are just fine to do, thank you very much, the beautiful dramatic stained glass windows and Mass and other ways were amazing.
     As a teenager, I'd snuck into Episcopal Churches sometimes, enamored with the concept of ritual and communion. Far from the stark plain white with nothing at all ornate, that my church had been. Where there were no sins, where as far as I could see, so much was AOK it was troubling.
     With his extended family, during funerals, would be groups of enormously muscular, huge dark men, with beautiful dark suits, gold bracelets, and fine watches. Slicked back black hair, subdued movements and serious faces.

     Along would come the old women, all in black, with black veils and dresses, and the huge young powerful men would usher them, would be at their beck and call, as they bustled about and settled themselves in. Making order, wherever they went.
     This being the time before cell phones, messengers would quietly come in, lean close to some big guy's ear, whisper something, and several would be told to go off somewhere. It was evident to me that they relished the intense call of what they were living.
     So I sat there, newly pregnant, watching everything, wondering what it was like to grow up a small child, as my husband did, visiting these churches. Going to Mass. To Catechism School. The culture a million lights years away from so much I'd lived.

      At the time,I was young, my faith something I hadn't even set eyes on yet.
      When he first brought me home to meet his parents, I was still a bit wild. When I was done with my part time job and my Umass schoolwork, I'd race myself up the winding roads to the house he and his friends rented, clocking to see if I could beat my Montague-to-Conway 15 minutes-in-the-winter time. I was big time itchy and no time patient.

     His mom took me aside, out in the breezeway, and sat me down. She said "I hear you've had other boyfriends. Are you ready to settle yourself down? " She inferred that hurting her son was not an option.
     But I'd known the first moment I'd seen him, somehow. Hard to believe. But something like the essence of him shot right through me, like lightening.

As if I was the pinball machine, and just looking at him set off all the bells and whistles something terrible.