Long Way Back

It is 1980. I'm fourteen, and, physically, I'm peakingthinner and more beautiful than I will ever be again. But this isn't really about me. Spring has sprung in the Greater Cincinnati Area, or as Ira Joe Fisher calls it on Eyewitness News, "the Tristate." So it's a really beautiful spring day in the Tristate. The sun is shining, and we walk into St. Bridget's in Mount Lookout. The church is a squat circle built in the 1960s, and as we walk in, Mom tells us once again how she saved spare change all through her twelve years at St. Bridget's School so they could build a new church, and this piece of crap is what they built. Sometimes when I stay over at Stacey's house we go to St. Monica's on Sunday morning, which is this beautiful old stone church with a ceiling that seems about a hundred feet tall, with Christ seated at the right hand of the father painted on the ceiling and beautiful stained glass. St. Bridget's, though, has sort of abstract, garish stained glass around the round outer wall and a plain wooden ceiling. I can see why Mom is bitter, but I do wish she'd stop saying it over and over. There I am, in the pew next to Mom, who looks shockingly like I will look in 2003brown hair in no discernible style turning mostly to gray; shapeless, comfortable clothes, including jeans that scandalize some of our fellow parishioners. Woe to anyone who mentions this to Momthey are in for a lecture about the parish she worked in in Guatemala, and how the parishioners there were lucky to have shoes to wear to church, and how God loves what's on the inside, blah blah blah. She embarrasses meI'm dressed like every other fourteen-year-old girl I knowIzod sweater plastered to my chest (which, I do hate to go on and on, but look at the rack on me! What happened?), matching headband, tartan skirt. Next to Mom is Dad, who also wears jeans and a corduroy shirt. I'm seething. This is Easter, for God's sake! Dress up! I know I'm going to hear about my hippie parents from all my preppy classmates at school tomorrow. Next to me is my little brother, Francis. Francis is just starting to get that awkward, head-doesn't-quite-fit-his-body look of the early adolescent boy. Because I am a sensitive, kind, protective sister, I call him Pumpkinhead. Francis and I get along okay, I suppose. My friends are always telling me about their pesty little brothers making bra slingshots, or putting a tampon in a glass of tomato juice (I actually saw Stacey's brother, Newt, do that. Unbelievable.), and Francis never does anything like that to me. In fact, he seems to really like and respect me. So I pay him back by teasing him mercilessly until I can get him to hit me. Which always gets me in trouble, because I Don't Care What He Did, You're the Oldest and You Should Set an Example. So here we have another really boring Easter service. It's nothing special. Later, when Francis is a religious studies major, he'll call this the "capes drapes bells and smells" kind of service. So there's incense, and there's Father Mike's Easter Homily: "Today, as Christ is reborn, may He be reborn in our hearts." Blah blah blah. It's a perfectly okay sentiment, I guess, but I swear, Father Mike says the same thing every year. We go up to receive the host, and, as I always do, I will try to whisper something in Francis's ear to make him choke when we're walking back to the pew. So we're walking back, heads down, chewing thoughtfully, and I whisper, "Hey, does this taste like feHalpin, Brendan is the author of 'Long Way Back ', published 2006 under ISBN 9781400062782 and ISBN 1400062780.