The Seattle Chronicles: Day Two

"For unto us a child is born; unto us a Son is given. And the government shall be upon His shoulder..."

As the southern and eastern USA prepare for a white Christmas (the first in DC in years, and I just had to miss it this year, huh?), it is a cloudy day in Seattle. I'm told it usually is.

Of the eleven Rosselot children that included my mother, my Aunt Shirley was one who, as my dad might have said, "marched to her own drummer." It shows in many ways. Thankfully I identify with most of them. Her husband, Jack, is a professor at the University of Washington. The presence of a true renaissance man fills the house, with items of many interests filling the bookshelves. On one wall of my guest room, there hang at least two dozen photographs. They include the "foster cousin" I never knew. But there are also pictures of my maternal grandparents on their wedding day, and the familiar family photograph of the Rosselot children, my mother among them, standing in front of the farmhouse in northern Brown County, Ohio, just south of Fayetteville. I am in a place so far from home, but at its heart is my heart's true home.

The reminders of home didn't stop there. That evening, there came time for the midnight Mass. Shirley and I went across the bridge on Route 520 toward her former home in Bellevue, to the parish across the street from that home, Sacred Heart. It has been her spiritual home these last three decades. We passed the baptismal font, a lovely sight for those who might prefer such innovations (and they don't bother me, as long as there aren't any blue stone toads in the water, right Emily?), and took our seat in the octagonal seating around the sanctuary, a raised platform extending from the choir section and the place of Eucharistic reservation behind them. I stepped briefly into the place where Our Lord was in the tabernacle, paying my respects for the safe journey.

Returning to my seat and listening to the choral prelude, I glanced at the front of the bulletin. Under the name of the pastor, was that of the pastoral associate. "Oh... my... God!" I turned to Shirley and showed it to her, and excused myself for a moment. I went to the vestibule and found the person I was looking for as she went by. "Doctor, do you remember me?" She looked straight at me for a moment. "I'm David Alexander, class of 1973." It came to her immediately, and I had a joyful reunion with my Humanities teacher from senior year of high school in Cincinnati. She asked how my sister was doing, how I was doing. Seems she just started her assignment in November. She introduced me to the pastor. He remembered my aunt and cousins from his previous tenure there, and told me of one of them being on the pastoral council.

I could get used to "altar girls," even though we don't have them in Arlington. But there was the pastoral associate, standing next to the priest during the entire Mass. I believe I was one of a select few who knelt during the Consecration. And for once during Communion, I partook from the Sacred Chalice. Hey, what the hell, it's Christmas. After Mass, I dragged Shirley to meet my old friend, who introduced us both to her husband. We returned home afterwards, to more lively conversation. The night ended watching the broadcast of Midnight Mass in Saint Peter's Bascilica in Rome, and the seated figure of the man who now wears the Shoes of the Fisherman.

"O holy night, the stars are brightly shining; this is the night of our dear Savior's birth..."