Of Bad Colds, Locusts, And Catholic Moons
2006-02-12, 1:19 p.m.

The liquid inside a Dayquil liqui-gel capsule thingy? Nasty. Bad nasty. Trust me on this.

Instead of the world slowing down a little so I can feel better, things are barreling forward at breakneck speed. Nearly every day for the next week or so, there is a list of things to do and people who have asked for help, and for the past few days I�ve also received several calls from friends neeeding a willing ear or a bit of advice, for which I am intensely flattered and humbled and glad to be of assistance. And it also makes me consider the possibility that should I say the wrong thing, and they act upon that, their children will be delinquent and their homes will burn and locusts will swarm and the moon will turn to blood and a whole manner of things will be very bad, indeed. So basically, no pressure.

Hence, more Hail Marys. Being Protestant, the only part I know is �Hail Mary, full of grace�, so I went for quantity, with the childlike faith that God has a really big sense of humor.

You Catholics may not realize, but Catholicism is intimidating. And if you want to scare the bejeebers out of a Protestant, stick �em in a Catholic wedding. So it was with my first big experience with Catholicism, being matron of honor in my best friend�s wedding.

(Waiting for all the menfolk to stop bobbing their heads at the �prison warden� analogy wrought by the term �matron�.)

My bff and her betrothed were to be married in an exquisitely beautiful church buried so deeply in the bowels of Nashville that not even the CIA could get a fix on its location. After everyone managed to find it (miracles do happen), there was the fact that the only Catholic members of the wedding party were the bride and groom. How do you keep a pack of nervous Protestants and one Jew on track during a full Mass? With booklets, of course. All we had to do was read along and follow the instructions. We could handle that. The two priests and Monsignor Methuselah began the ceremony, and 3.7 minutes into it (after my other heart-stopping moment which was my daughter being flower girl, who abandoned her typical 3-year-old defiance and was a PERFECT ANGEL), began skipping entire sections.

::::::::::::::::cue panic:::::::::::::

The bride and groom were enrapt in the ceremony, totally oblivious to the rest of their party sweating bullets, trying to flip pages inconspicuously, all the while painfully aware that WE ARE BEING VIDEOTAPED and one mistake on our part will ruin the ceremony and maybe their marriage and their children would have three heads and locusts would swarm and the moon would turn to blood and the whole manner of things would be very bad, indeed. So somehow, psychicially, we all did the one thing we prayed would work. We all kept silently mouthing the word �watermelon�, which is the oldest trick in the world to make it look like you know what you�re saying when in reality you don�t know what the hell is going on. As far as the genuflecting, we gave our peripheral vision a workout watching the happy couple and when they moved, so did we. It may not have always been appropriate, but en masse at least it would look good.

For the congregation, of which the groom�s family is Catholic and the bride�s family Protestant, half the church kept up and I suppose the other half just did as best they could. They weren�t being videotaped so it didn�t matter, but I�m certain there was the teeniest fear that too many mistakes and they would be mobbed by an angry horde of nuns with rulers and much knuckle-rapping would ensue.

At last the ceremony was nearly over and the newlyweds rose, preparing for the last blessing before walking down the aisle, when to my abject horror I saw her gown was caught ever-so-slightly in the folding part of the folding chair, so all the while aware that I AM BEING VIDEOTAPED, I had to inconspicuously dislodge her dress before she turned to leave and took with her what could in no way be passed off as a curiously large grey sequin.

My bff and her new hubby walked down the aisle happy about their ceremony going off without a hitch, the rest of us hobbled out behind them in need of defibrillation, the two priests got the Monsignor back to the super-secret hyperbaric stasis chamber (which is the only reasonable explanation the rest of us could devise as to how he kept going through the centuries, because the whole undead theory didn�t mesh with the theology), the reception went without a hitch, no one made drunken fools out of themselves and no family feuds were kindled, locusts did not swarm and the moon did not turn to blood, and ten years later it has come to this

So later this spring when a certain little angel has her First Communion and we go to the (hopefully easier to find) church in Gallatin and her godmother panics over being in the congregation not knowing what to say and when to kneel and when and how to cross oneself, I hope she knows that I would push all that aside to fight off the locusts and turn the moon from red to gold and just how very, very much she is loved.

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