Stained Glass
I turned sixty-two-years-old yesterday and even now, in full retirement with clearly fewer days in front of me than behind, I love birthdays. Like so many, I’m working to live in the moment and appreciate each day, looking forward to what’s ahead. But on my birthday I get reflective and think back on all the other November 19ths of my life and remember bits and pieces of how they were celebrated. And I think, too, about how, for me, my birthday marked the beginning of the holiday season which, as a child, was the absolute best time of year.
I suppose that’s what started me thinking yesterday about my earliest memories, and how, as a young girl, mid-November marked the start of rehearsals for the school Christmas pageant. And then, as only memory can, I was there ~ in St. John’s Elementary School in my small hometown of Ypsilanti, Michigan.
In 1968 I was in the second grade and, in those days, the first through third grade classes were in the original building of the school that dated back to 1925. A second building – connected to the original by a long corridor – was added three decades later to accommodate the growing classes filled with all the baby boomers who tumbled in during the 1950s and 60s. But the newer building may as well have been a mile away from that narrow, original brick school. To me, those rooms felt like a safe cocoon tucked away on their own. Always warm and cozy, there were six rooms in total on the two floors with the boiler for both the old and new building directly below in the basement. The old radiators would hiss throughout the late fall and winter months, and we knew better than to touch them. On snowy days, wet mittens and boots would be lined up on top of, and under, that radiator. Wet wool. Warm bologna. Elmer’s glue. Old wood. All these smells I remember. The windows in the rooms were six-feet tall, and on sunny days the brilliant blue skies and warmth streamed through. On cloudy and rainy days the lights, large white frosted globes that hung from long cords on the ceiling, hugged the room in a soft, gentle glow. The nuns wore white, too and had long rosaries hanging from their waist. They were kind women.
In the spring we were outside often. On warm days we had reading hour under the canopy of a tree making its way back to green. There were field trips and outdoor contests. I placed third my first-grade year in the hula-hoop competition held on the playground that was nothing but the Church parking lot; but the asphalt landscape was no hindrance to our imaginations. In summer, the school rested. But in fall and winter the building came to life.
The old, carved banister between the floors steadied our tiny hands as we went up and down, quietly, and in single file, to our classrooms. Always single file. To gym, in the Church basement. To Mass. At dismissal. There was no cafeteria. We ate lunch in the classroom. Every student brought their own in metal lunchboxes or brown paper bags; save for the few times throughout the year when a group of moms would prepare a hotdog lunch that included a small bag of potato chips. And of course, there was always milk; half-pints lined up daily at 11 a.m. on the ledge of the blackboard. That ledge also served as an easel for our artwork. In the Fall, drawings of pumpkins, leaves, Pilgrims. Poems of thanks. In December, construction paper scenes of the Nativity. And, that year, Sister placed all colors of bright tissue paper that we had cut out in varying shapes on every inch of those tall windows. Reflecting the impossibly blue and yellow light when the sun was shining, those windows seemed as brilliant as the stained-glass throughout the Church next door.
We were rarely in school in the evenings, but on the night of the Christmas pageant we waited our turn in the classroom to be led – single file – down the stairway to the first floor, and yet another, to the Church basement where our families waited on folding chairs to see each grade perform a Christmas song or hymn, or reenact the birth of Christ. On that night in 1968, mercifully naïve to the world spinning fiercely all around us, we giggled with friends and marveled at how different the room and building seemed in the evening. We felt so grown-up being out so late. That night, looking up at the stained-glass windows we had created, I was disappointed how they really didn’t shine at such an hour with the dark sky behind them. But then I thought about the people who lived in the older houses just across the street or those who might be passing by – looking up into the warm, colorful glow of the windows. Tissue paper stained-glass lit by those frosted globes on a cold, December night – reflecting all our creativity. Illuminating our Faith.
So much has changed. But how safe and loved I felt at that moment. And I wonder if the people outside, looking in, had ever felt such belonging as I felt that night, so long ago.
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