Late for Church

Losing stuff was one of the banes of my mostly bane-free childhood. Objects would disappear on a regular basis, vanishing into the fourth dimension, an alternative universe, or perhaps Limbo, that place where the souls of unbaptized babies awaited the Final Judgment. Of all the things I lost, my chapel veil, my gloves, and my hair ribbons were the most troublesome. This was because, #1. they were part of my public persona, and #2. I usually discovered that they were missing just as my mother and I were leaving for Mass.

For the two millennia preceding Vatican II, head coverings were de rigueur for females in church. Saint Paul had said that women should cover their heads while praying, and one didn’t argue with Saint Paul. In Spain, this meant black mantillas for grown women, and white doily-like things for small girls.  “Go look for it, and hurry,” my mother would say when I couldn’t find my chapel veil. “If we’re late we’ll miss the Offertory.” If you arrived after the Offertory, you hadn’t met your Sunday obligation, and you had to stick around for the next Mass.

The chapel veil usually materialized before we left the house, perhaps thanks to the miraculous assistance of my Guardian Angel. But then my gloves—usually just one of them—would also vanish. In those bygone days, ladies did not leave the house without gloves, knitted or leather ones in winter, and cotton ones in summer. I had no idea where my gloves went, and would scurry aimlessly around the apartment hoping that they would manifest before my mother got really upset.

But of my disappearing triad—chapel veil, gloves, and hair ribbons—the ribbons were the hardest to keep track of. I wore my hair in two fat braids that barely reached my shoulders. My hair was thick, and the braids tended to sort of explode and come undone as if they had a will of their own, despite the rubber bands securing their ends. My mother thought that no self-respecting woman should let her daughter leave the house with rubber bands exposed, so she used to tie carefully ironed, red satin bows around them. Between the braids’ unruliness and the constant tossing of my head, those bows didn’t stand a chance. Like the gloves, they tended to slither off one at a time.

Fortunately, I hardly ever lost chapel veil, gloves, and hair ribbons all on the same day, and since the church was only a couple of blocks away we could trot there in just a few minutes. Standing on the steps in front of the church, my mother would pin the veil to my hair, and give me a final once over. Then “Mother of God!” she would exclaim, spotting a smear of grime on my neck. She would whip out her monogrammed handkerchief (one of the twelve she had embroidered for her trousseau), spit on it, and, in a gesture common to mammals from the merest mouse to human mothers, rub away at the spot.

Oh, the smell of maternal spit! Who could forget it? I loved my youthful mother dearly, and thought she was as beautiful as the statue of the Virgin Mary in the side altar of the church we were about to enter. But I recoiled at the odor of her saliva, wrinkled my nose, and tried in vain to pull away. She would scrub until the spot was gone, tuck her handkerchief back into her purse, open the big wooden door, and lead me into the cool, dark church. I was too short to reach the font, so she would offer me a couple of drops of holy water with her fingertips, reminding me to first remove the glove of my right hand. Then, having genuflected in the direction of the tabernacle, she would choose a pew and gesture to me to kneel next to her.

Introibo ad altare Dei (I will go in to the altar of God), the priest recited at the foot of the altar. And my mother, heaving a sigh of relief, would whisper, “Thank God, we made it before the Offertory!”