The Christmas mass

It is Christmas Day 2009, 10:45 a.m. mass at our local church. Families fill the pews, but there are not as many people here as there used to be. Church going has fallen off in the United States over the decades.

Next to me in the pew is my wife and then our three beautiful girls and then my mother-in-law on the other end. The two younger girls are in fancy Christmas dresses, and my oldest girl is in a nice pair of pants and shirt because she no longer wants to wear a dress in public. She is a "tweener."

I look around the church and see the families together. Since my wife revealed weeks ago that she wants our marriage to end, my senses have been heightened to the extreme. I wonder if this is similar to those rare circumstances when a person thinks he is about to die, when the person's entire life flashes before his eyes. In my case, as I look at the families in the pews, I realize how precious it all is, and how fleeting it can be. There is nothing holding these families together except will and the immediacy of time, because eventually time changes everything.

I look at my wife standing next to me, tall and blond, striking in appearance with her high cheekbones and oval eyes as she stares ahead. I ask God to not let her leave me. How could she leave, I wonder. How could she want to walk out on a beautiful family that is part of the fabric of this church and society? But she does want to leave.

I look at her there in the church, and she is aware of my gaze, but she does not look back. She stares ahead, cold, aloof, following the motions to sit, stand, or kneel as the mass continues. I am there, but like a ghost to her.

I look at her left hand, which for years was adorned with a sparkling diamond wedding ring, but which is now barren. Weeks ago, our middle girl was involved on a Saturday with her first reconciliation (which used to be known as "Confession" in the Catholic Church). We entered the church on that day, my family and me, and in the pews were other families that we had known for years. Their young children would be doing reconciliation, too.

There were friendly waves and smiles, from family to family. This was the first time that my wife had gone to church without her wedding ring on, announcing to the world that she was no longer a wedded woman. I was frantic about it, my senses on fire, desperation shooting out of my pores. I hoped that she would realize that this church experience was what family was all about, and that certainly she could not quit on it. I wondered if people had noticed that she was no longer wearing her ring. This is an upper-class Catholic parish, where husbands are often presidents of companies and their wives wear outfits off of designer racks. The diamonds on the women's fingers and in their earrings and other jewelry are expected and measured. Of course people would notice the ring's absence, I feared.

Afterward, when the reconciliations had ended, there was a cookie-and-juice get-together for the families in a hall connected to the church. We ran into a family that we are friendly with, but that we had not seen in a while. They asked us how we were doing in our two houses, the one in Westmont and the other in Clarendon Hills. I wanted to blurt out, "My wife is divorcing me!" just to see the looks of shock on the faces of my wife and this other family. But I said nothing, while my wife smiled and said something like "We're making it work."

So now it is several weeks later and we are in the church on Christmas Day. My wife is not wearing her wedding ring. I have been in denial since the day she told me she was leaving me. I am still in denial on Christmas Day. Certainly the power of Christ can make this better. Certainly God can make our marriage well again.

But the mass continues and the families sit and kneel and stand, and they walk up to receive Communion and then return to their pews. And then the mass ends and the church empties and we all walk to our cars in the parking lot.

Christmas Day has come and my wife is no longer wearing her wedding ring. The miracle that is Christmas has not shed any of its blessings on my marriage.

The charity workers

On a street corner of a traffic intersection near where I work stood four middle-aged black men in worn clothes. In their hands were sturdy plastic buckets filled with lollipops. As I drove my car toward the intersection, I caught sight of the men, who were dressed in orange-colored safety vests that made them look like crossing guards. But they weren't crossing guards. Instead, they seemed to be collecting for a charity, trading the lollipops for money from drivers. What put things out of place was that there was nothing that identified them as working for a charity, like the Kiwanis on "Peanut Day" would have the charity's name printed on their safety vests.

Right away in my head I made a silent plea to God. "Oh please, don't let me get stopped at a red light!" If I got stuck, one of the men would come over to my car window and want a donation in return for what he had in his bucket. I didn't want that. Luckily, I was on the busier of the two cross roads and my light stayed green for a long time. I was able to zip right through the intersection.

The visceral reaction I had during this incident is the same as when I see a homeless person on the street holding a sign asking for money. My "spider senses" go off, because I'm not sure if the person is truly in need or is just running a scam. Once when I worked in downtown Chicago, I gave a woman on the street $5 just for the performance she gave me....she said she was from St. Louis, and her car had run out of gas, and she had brought money with her but it must have been stolen during her time in the big city..... She was just spitting the frustration out of her mouth. It was an obvious scam, but I rewarded her for being so elaborate and theatrical.

The thing is, I guess, is that I prefer my charity workers to identify themselves. A day earlier, at another intersection, I fished around for change in my car and gave it to one of the Kiwanis peanut people. At other times, I have waved over the charity workers who are offering Tootsie Rolls in return for my money. I have even flagged over those charity workers who give away the red paper hearts.

But these four guys on the street, I didn't want to deal with them. Were they actually panhandlers instead of charity workers? Would I have had the same reaction if they were white?

At another intersection a few miles away, I noticed another black guy, all by himself, threadbare around the edges, holding the same kind of sturdy bucket. Inside were the same kind of lollipops. But this guy also had a homemade sign, just a big piece of white cardboard with three words written in black marker, one word on top of the other:

Women
Children
Charity

I surmised that this guy and the other men were collecting for their church, and that they were granted authority to do so because they would have been chased away by police otherwise.

Still, even being secure with my assumption, the thought of being stuck at a red light with these guys makes me feel uncomfortable. Does that make me racist? I hope not.