38

We were all set to move into our new house on Monday, April 2nd of 2007. It was the day before our first confession, and four days before Easter Vigil, the Mass when we would receive our first Communion.

The soundtrack to the weeks leading up to it was the thundering of empty boxes tossed onto the floor, the crumpling of the gray-white packing paper, and the laughing of Donald and baby Elaine as they ignored their expensive toys to play with the cardboard boxes. Then, the phone started ringing. Frequently. More frequently than it had in the entire two years that we’d lived at my mom’s house. The sound of the doorbell was heard more than it had been in the past year. Word had gotten out that we were becoming Catholic, and Catholics were coming out of the woodwork to congratulate us.

Our neighbor two doors down came by to present us with a long, ceramic roof tile that had been hand-painted in rich gold and bronze tones with the face of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The neighbor to the left said that they were Catholics who hadn’t been to Mass in years, and they wanted to know where our church was located. A friend of my mom’s stopped by to present me with a crucifix necklace. Friends and acquaintances whom we’d had no idea were even religious, let alone Catholic, heard about our conversions through the grapevine and called to say they were praying for us as Easter Vigil approached.

My aunt Claudia, who had recently returned to the Catholicism of her childhood, was so excited for us that she and my uncle flew in from Atlanta to be there for Easter Vigil. Joe’s new boss at work turned out to be a devout Catholic, and he occasionally joined Joe for daily Mass. Every day there was a new call or knock at the door or email, all from fellow Catholics congratulating us on our conversions.

And then there was my blog inbox. Every time I checked it there were more bolded notes at the top of the screen, new well wishes from Catholics all over the world who had discovered my site. The subject lines read like a joyful chorus, Welcome home! followed by Congratulations, We’re praying for you, and God bless you! Every post I wrote on the blog was flooded with comments cheering us on as we got closer and closer to the Church.

Over at my personal email account, my dad forwarded an email from one of his cousins, whom I’d never met. She had heard about our conversions and wanted us to know that my great-great aunt’s grandson was a Benedictine monk and a well-known iconographer. I was floored by the news; I would have been shocked to find any Mass-going Catholic on that side of the family, let alone a monk. She told him about us, and he was as eager to meet us as we were to meet him. “We thought it was very exotic to have a Catholic in the family!” she noted at the bottom of her email.

Two days before we were scheduled to move out, my mom waded through stacks of moving boxes to find me at the back of my office. She sat down on a closed book box and handed me a folded piece of paper. It was a typed note, and when I unfolded it a check slipped out.

“Dad wanted me to write you a check from his account,” she said. Even though they were divorced, she still managed my dad’s finances while he was overseas. “He wanted you to have some extra money in case you need to buy a new outfit before Easter Vigil.”

I smoothed out the note. It said:

Dear Jen,

I’m proud of you for sticking to what you have found to be true, even though it hasn’t been easy. I’ve arranged things with the new job so that I will be there for first communion. I told them I wouldn’t miss it. Use this money to buy anything you need, let me know if you need more.

I’m proud of you.

Dad

My mom had something else in her hand, a piece of white fabric. “I wanted you to have this.” She handed me a triangular cut of delicate lace with scalloped edges. “It’s my chapel veil. From when I was a kid.”

“Oh, wow, thank you.” I ran it through my fingers, admiring its smooth texture.

She dropped her eyes to the veil in my hands. “I mentioned that Pop Pop would have been proud of you. I wanted to make sure you knew that I am, too.”

* * *

Two days later I found myself in the chaos of the new house, trying to unpack while Joe got in a few hours at work. After telling Donald for the third time to please not throw torn packing paper all over the carpet, I stood back and surveyed the scene. I felt certain that the movers had accidentally picked up the stuff from five other storage sheds while they were working on ours. Surely it was not even possible that all of this had fit into our old condo at the Westgate. I wiped my forehead, and considered the option of just giving up and resigning to live among boxes for the rest of our lives.

The sound of the doorbell bounced around the empty walls. I went to the front door, and on my porch was a Catholic woman named Catherine whom I’d recently met. She looked to be about twenty-seven, with happy curls all throughout her hair and a classically beautiful face that seemed more like that of a nineteenth-century authoress than a modern minivan-driving mom. She carried a foil-covered casserole dish, and a canvas grocery sack swung from her arm. At her feet were three young children and a boom box.

She seemed to sense my confusion. “This was the day you said it was okay to stop by, right?”

Oh! Yes. Now I remembered. Word had gotten out through the local Catholic grapevine that Joe and I could use some help. Catherine, whom everyone called Cat, emailed me and asked if she could bring by a dinner for our family.

“Oh, hi—hi, thank you, please come in,” I said, smiling at her three girls, who wore colorful dresses paired with vividly patterned sweaters and vests, giving the impression that they’d had a lot of fun getting themselves dressed that morning.

“I brought paper plates and plastic utensils and cups so you won’t have too much cleanup,” she said as I followed her through the living room and into the kitchen. “I hope you like enchiladas—this is one of our favorite recipes.”

She set to work unpacking the food, with as much efficiency and confidence as if she prepared meals in this kitchen every day. She slid the foil pan into the empty refrigerator and produced a smaller, round, foil pan from the bag, this one labeled Spanish rice. Another, this one announcing chocolate chip cookies, was scooted to the back of the counter. The last thing she pulled from the bag was a bottle of wine, a Napa cab that happened to be from one of Joe’s favorite vineyards.

“Thank you again,” I said. “I can’t tell you how much this helps.” I readied myself to follow her back to the front door, but she didn’t move. She wiped her hands on her jeans to dry them from the condensation on the pans. “So, should we start in the living room?”

“Umm, start . . . what?”

She laughed. “Oh, I thought you’d need help unpacking. But if it would be any trouble, we could get out of your hair.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. . .” I stopped myself, and took another look at the wreckage of my living room. “Actually, that would help me so much. And yes, the living room would be a great place to start.”

“Great!” She picked up the boom box that one of her daughters had carried to the kitchen. “But first, we’ll need some music.” She cleared off a space on the counter next to an outlet and set down the portable stereo. With the click of a button, a toe-tapping Ella Fitzgerald song filled the kitchen.

Her youngest daughter was only a few months older than Elaine, and the two babies sat next to one another, mesmerized. The older kids had discovered a crafts box that contained both plastic grocery bags and ribbon, and they created impromptu kites by tying the string to the bag handles. It was a blustery spring day, and as soon as they stepped outside their poor-man’s kites floated high into the air above them. Before we began working, Cat and I stood at the window for a moment, watching our children as they screamed in awe and delight to watch the wind whip their bags through the air.

We started in the kitchen and quickly developed a system for tackling two large boxes of glasses. She would unwrap each one and set it on the table, and I would take it, rinse it in the sink, and put it in the cabinet. We repeated the process about thirty times.

After putting the last of the tumblers on the shelf, I saw the herd of kids run by in the back yard below. The wind had snatched Donald’s bag-kite out of his hand, and the kids shrieked as they chased it around the yard, their hair blowing as wildly as the kites. Over the swingy, happy sound of trombones and string bass that poured from Cat’s stereo, I could hear the laughter of the children outside. And I was reminded of Noe Rocha’s words from our first night in RCIA: Remember, Jennifer, you’re not doing this alone.