The Body of Christ...

During a phone call a while back, a friend was bemoaning the fact he was spending Easter alone. I thought, “Easter alone...so what? What happens on Easter anyway?” The difference between his and my families is that they were Italian and ours, Irish. His family threw out the great spread of food and everyone shows up. He missed his now long dead relatives, but mostly all that food they would bring over. The Irish, who have NO culture of food to speak of, don't throw spreads out like that. We're incapable. As a kid, I remember very little if anything was done on Easter except give us kids candy. If our families were going to do anything, it would be to invite each other over to drink, but on Easter? The Irish can be drunkards but not that bad. Not on Jesus's biggest celebration. So that holiday took a back burner. 

One Easter, my brother's sick humor got the best of him as he was watching me eat miniature chocolate bunnies. He gets up and runs to the kitchen to tell my Mom an awful lie. “Mommm! Ronnie's only eating the heads off the chocolate bunnies!” That caused her to come find me and only to find out I wasn't. We both could hear my brother's guffawing from the kitchen over that. I swear at times he was trying to convince her I was a serial killer in the making. Sibling rivalry...go figure? 

I have scant memories of most Easters.

One sticks out though, but it wasn't on Easter but close enough to it, First Communion. We kids were put through our rehearsals, dressed up and ordered not to Fuck It Up. That was a huge day when every Irish family in this town showed up at St. Joseph's. (As important as an event as this, there still was no food offered afterwards). We public school kids had to go to a catholic school once a week for catechism. It was called “Released Time” and it was when I discovered how Catholic schools were just as violent or if not more so than public. It wasn't the nuns, the one I had was actually human despite the horror stories I heard about them, it was the other kids who were headbreakers. The first day we public kids showed up, the toughest, meanest Fenian bastard Catholic 8 year old chose to pummel John W. in the schoolyard. The nun's broke it up with a, “well, this is first of six fights today” attitude. 

Our classes consisted of this: Repeat the Lords Prayer and Hail Mary a thousand times till we got it stuck into our heads. The other lesson was our First Confession. Either we were stupid, rambunctious or both, the nun had a hell of a time trying to get us kids to remember what to say in the confessional booth, how to line up, what to do after. I can remember some of the boys hoping to tell the Father their most vile, disgusting and worst sins. They were proud of it! I heard one weird looking kid telling me he was going to say he was “sorry” for pulling a clump of hair out of his sister's head once. I told him perhaps he shouldn't as telling the world his little crimes as the people will adjudge him a sick mofo. He was the type of kid with a barely misshapen head topped with a bad crew cut. A very slight hint of an extra chromosome there in him. 

My sins? I took a boring route. Fighting with my brother, yelling back at my mother and using the cat's tail as a handle to lift it up once. I barely understood the mumble coming through the screen but I did hear the penance, three Hail Mary's. That was easy! I knew the Hail Mary by heart! By now I did. 

The Big Day came. I was dressed in gray wool pants, a white shirt and a red blazer. Red? I looked like a lounge lizard act. Perhaps it was in style in '73? My Dad slicked my hair with this green goop that you dipped a comb into, so much you could feel it running down your neck. I was pronounced exhibitable to the public and off we went. 

The church was packed. Everyone was dressed, even the Priests wore cassocks I had never seen before. As I was looking around, I saw the other 8 year old girls dressed in their whites when I spied one girl and she sort of shocked me, Ann Darracks. 

Ann was an accomplished 8 year old teacher's pet. She was also very accomplished at getting us boys into trouble by first inciting us, then looking innocent while she ratted us out to the teacher. She was talented. For some reason I had an especial hatred for her. Hey, I wasn't alone...the other girls hated her for her easy ability to form and destroy eight year old girl cliques. 

I saw her sitting there in the pew across the aisle in her white dress, holding a bouquet of white flowers in one hand and a white kid's sized Bible in the other. She looked completely different. Add to that, the sweet smile she shot at me when our eyes locked took me for a loop. She looked so clean, innocent and angelic. She looked like she never stepped on a worm in her life. 

I'm not joking, I can remember the feeling I had inside when I saw her. I almost wanted to jump up, point at her and yell out, “Don't believe it! She's a bitch! She's a LIAR! She's got you all FOOLED! Don't trust her! She's worse than the Bitch of Buchenwald!” 

I could see Ann's parents, relatives beam at her as she stood up to walk down the aisle for her communion wafer. Did they really believe it too? Or were they all just as bad as she, putting on a nice public show. Though true to form, when she found the right moment and again, she was good at it, she shot me a sneer as she went back to her seat. Again I wanted to alert everyone there. Vile girl...

I did OK when it was the boy's turn to go up. I got the wafer, made it back to my seat and didn't pray at all in silence, though I was supposed too. I thought the taste of the wafer reminded me of wall paper paste. I knew this because Dad was papering the upstairs a few weeks earlier. 

Afterwards when we got home, I was in the living room stripping off those damn itchy clothes when my Mom stops me. “What are you doing? We need those for PICTURES!” Jesus...I have to keep wearing these? I thought. 

Pics of me standing in front of the yew bush. Pics of me standing in front of the forsythia bush. Pics of me with Grandmom...endless. Finally...when it was all over, I could doff that itchy wool and get into decent clothing, jeans and a tee. Though there was a reward for putting up with it all after, the largest Easter bunny basket was waiting for me. If there were chocolate figurines of Ann Darracks in the Easter hay there, I would've just bitten ONLY the heads off of them...and NO confession would be necessary later.