At Marquette School every day, Monday through Friday, started with Holy Mass.
Each class sat together with their Benedictine nun sitting proudly in charge of the group.
Once I received Holy Communion, I was able to partake every morning. This was back during the days when it was the rule to abstain from food after midnight in order to receive the Sacrament.
So I received it every morning. Recipients would file into the lunchroom to break their fast after Mass. My mother tied a dime and a nickel into the corner of a handkerchief. This bought me a cup of hot chocolate and one glazed donut. At that young age, this seemed the prize, and I confess to you now that – more often than not – it was that cocoa and that donut in my head when the priest placed the Host on my tongue.
At one point I needed rubber boots. I dreamt of getting a pair of white boots with a big tassel on the front. I’d seen the drum majorettes wear them and that was exactly what I wanted!
The next memory that comes to mind is me, late to Mass, shlepping down the aisle in big, brown rubber boots. Christ the King church was filled with every student in the school, and was dead silent except for me, age six, clod hopping my way down that center aisle to the front pews, where the first graders sat. I wished the marble floor would swallow me up.
When purchasing them my mother had pointed out, quite briskly, that my brother could wear them once I’d outgrown them which – give the size – would surely have taken several years.
I hated my mother, I hated my brother, I hated those big brown boots, and I hated myself for all that hatred. I knew, in my freshly ordained young heart, that hatred was a sin. So I hated, more than anything, the hatred that I had.
It seems like I wore those big brown boots for years. At first every time I pulled them on, I willed them to be white boots with a big tassel on the front.
They never were anything but brown rubber.
Such a big lesson in humility for a six year old.
candle shined in the kitchen window. The basket on the front gate filled up with decorated cookies: Santas, Christmas trees, bells, stockings, and gingerbread men.
them on a platter, and placed it on a little table underneath the basket on the gate. She watched through the kitchen window with a twinkle as the school children ooh’d, aaah’d, and tore in to the delicious treats. “Happy Birthday to me,” she whispered happily. 
basket. Inside it read,
Cece Writes 