Ash Wednesday Musings

Pics.

I have been sick with a bad cold since our first weekend in Florida, so I feel I'm not signing up for any Lenten penances. I'm actually feeling better today after a good night, but am worn out from coughing, sneezing and many nights of poor, interrupted sleep. On the mend, I hope.

St. John Vianney was crowded for 8:30 Mass -- no handshaking for me, but at least I didn't cough on anyone (how I think I got sick myself). The homily was the usual Lenten fare, full of resolve and good intentions. My mind wandered to the Ash Wednesdays of my childhood in Temiscaming, when all the schoolkids would show up for 8 o'clock Mass and have breakfast afterward in the classroom.

My breakfast was always a disgusting tuna fish sandwich which had been sitting for several hours by the time it finally got opened at my desk. The tasteless white bread, often old and stale, was by then soaked through with fish oil. I would sometimes open the damp waxed paper and sniff the sandwich before squishing it small and putting it back, uneaten, in my paper lunch bag, also blotted with fish oil. It was not a "store boughten" lunch bag, but, rather, a re-purposed bag from my mother's paper bag collection, too large to be considered lunch-worthy and altogether too conspicuous. I was envious of some kids' colorful tin lunch boxes or neat lunch bags.

Some students had milk, either white or chocolate, purchased from the teacher. I think some of them had strips of tickets that they used every day for milk. I rarely had milk, even the palatable chocolate stuff, since it made me want to throw up. Instead, I sometimes drank Kool-Aid or a related product called "Freshie", transported to school in an old jar that still tasted of dill pickles.

Some kids had cheese sandwiches; others  had pastries; many had salmon or tuna like me. Apples and oranges were shared as we talked quietly among ourselves. The jokers in the class created something of a party atmosphere, and we all tried to stretch out the meal to delay the start of the school day. Despite a late start, it stretched on an on, literally "ad nauseam".  With thirty or more paper bags full of garbage sitting in the classroom all day, the smell was overwhelming.

By the next day, we were firmly into the Lenten long haul.