By and By

   If you were Catholic in the fifties, there's a good chance you attended a Catholic School and have stories to tell about the experience. Lucky me, I do. Kindergarten didn't exist for us, so first grade was a mixed bag for me. I cherished Sister Michael Marie's stories about Jesus, his sweet mother, and his kind carpenter father. I adored hearing that God loved me no matter what. Yet, I wanted my mother, and most days, I'd cry like it was the end of the world. Sister would send upstairs for my sister, Beth, who would scoot down the wavy wooden staircase to pat my shoulder and say sweet things to settle me down (she has a knack for doing that to this day). A contributing factor could have been that I already knew how to read. Beth was a born teacher, and I was her first star student. We were a family of book lovers, and a favorite pastime was peeking into my Mom's big chapter books to see what words I could decipher. Given my mother's taste for all things spiritual, I may be one of the youngest human beings to grapple with words from the mystics.

At St. Charles, my fellow fifty-odd first graders and I spilled over in rows that seethed like waves on a disjointed ocean. We, hands folded girls, froze attentively while the flank of boys at the back of the room straddled seats, laughed, and waved their arms about. Pretty, moon-faced Sister stood at the front of the room, brandished her pointer, and croaked out Girls and boys! Girls and boys! in her valiant effort to teach us. No wonder I longed to be home reading books with my mother.

One surprising activity from the parochial pedagogical paradigm that distracted me from my angst and saved me was circles - Sister's go-to solution for class management. After morning prayers, she'd pass around a box of little waxed cardboard disks that sealed the tops of milk bottles in those days. Our task was to trace rows with these little bottle caps and fill the expanse of our 8 ½ x 11 manila paper with round shapes. While we scrunched our foreheads over the first step of this activity, Sister would be at the blackboard chalking out the rest of the day's assignment. At the beginning of the year, we'd fill these circular spaces with drawings, like an apple, to match the letter A, or we would practice numbers we were trying to master. As the year passed, we'd write words and phrases and graduate to higher math problems like 3+4=7. 

Despite the challenges of an overcrowded classroom, we ensconced our academic progress in rows of two-inch circles, and our class bulletin boards boasted the proof. Say what you want about education in the 50s. Sister Michael Marie's trace-and-fill approach was brilliant and served a double purpose. The practice of penciling the lines of milk caps settled me down and, at the same time, raised my curiosity about how I'd fill the circles. I don't know about the boys, but it did the trick for me, and before long, I forgot my burning need to go home.

Who can resist the circle's perennial allure?  The simple two-dimensional space inspires endless realities. My creative writing students used to love jamming for metaphors, songs, and lyrics inspired by the circular image: Circle of Life, The Circle Game, and Will the Circle be Unbroken were well-known titles then. Socially, we move in circles and refer to upper, outer, inner, and charmed circles. You might lead us to a fairy circle if you are Irish. Or you might talk about the family circle as a circle of safety and create the Parochial School System to circle the wagons in the face of perceived danger figuratively. And who doesn't, in the grip of life's Ring of Fire, become inventive and alternatively flounder at times when swirling in circles of cultural confusion? 

A sincere goal of the Catholic School mission was to cultivate faith in God, educate the whole child, and help kids embrace a religious identity. Life, like first grade, is such a mixed bag. Attachment issues and rowdy boys may have been my distractions as a kid. These days, a whole gamut of disturbances can knock me off-center. At 78, I trace the mystery of my relationship with God in widening circles of understanding, as Rilke suggests. Like my teacher, who created conditions that cut through the chaos, quiet times become portals for little here-and-now moments, amidst the ups and downs; during dark and light times, I sense glimmers of God's life within me and all around. In the spirit of Easter, may the circle be unbroken. Here's to life's empty spaces, imbued with the divine and radiating possibilities.

Pencils out, please!