The trip to Marblehead was just what the doctor ordered. The weather, though hovering at 90 degrees on Saturday, was still beautiful and there was a breeze as there almost always is by Lake Erie.
Martha and Molly's was open as we had hoped, still operated by the older gentleman we've come to admire and enjoy. My husband's comment to him when we walked into the shop and found him in his usual windowed spot by the cash register was, "Hi Martha." My retort was, "Eric, that was actually very funny." Another shopper smiled at us in amusement.
As we rode in the car back to the cottage after getting some sandals, my husband said he'd asked the owner about the nun who had always purchased her shoes there. She made the trip once a year for the longest of times, and the last pair he had ordered for her, size 16, had been on display when we first visited the shop years before. They were quite the conversation piece. He'd ordered them for her yearly summer visit, but she never again came.
Lately, I've been ruminating about deep thoughts that often come out of nowhere. The visit to Marblehead did nothing to change that, and in fact, probably made me more introspective. I've been thinking about birth, life and death. The mystery of it all. Now I'm using a two-week trial membership in Ancestry.com to ferret out more information about people I hardly got to know. People whose genes I must certainly share.
During the weekend, my sister answered more questions about our grandfather. He had started at 26 as a newly-minted American, and according to a copy of a scrap of paper related to his naturalization, he lived at that time in New York City. Using Google Earth, I typed in the address and found myself on a street looking at a brownstone with the exact address hand written on a basement door. Already knowing what came next, my grandfather's humble beginning in the US was a blip on the radar screen. Soon he became an accomplished chef (trained by his successful brother) and was head chef at a huge resort in the Catskill Mountains with 1,200 rooms and also a very fancy eatery in Cleveland, the Union Club. He and his Alsatian-born wife (as was he) built a home on West Boulevard in Cleveland in 1902. Another trip on Google Earth plunked me right in front of a handsome two-story home with almost 1900 square feet, four bedrooms, and one bathroom. The stock market crash decimated my grandfather's savings, and he and his wife sold their home to a well-known Cleveland gangster, Jimmy Patton. They moved to a much more modest home in Fairview Park, my hometown. During the last years of his life closing in on 70 he rode a trolley to work where he was a night watchman, and his home was a rented room. He spent the last two months of his life in a hospital suffering from cancer of the gallbladder. Gathered in his room, family members were speaking of his death while he was in a coma. My mother instead looked at him and kindly told them that he could hear, since a huge tear ran down his cheek. And then it was over. This man who had known such success, who had been in the Knights of Columbus, who had owned a beautiful home and beautiful furniture, who had cooked for the rich and the famous, was gone from his family. His faith was all he had at the end.
Today's readings at Mass were about the apostles' realization that Jesus was the Christ, not a resurrected prophet as many people thought. The paragraph ended with the words of Jesus, that we should pick up our own cross and follow him.
To pick up our cross means to accept all of the hardships and burdens of this life, but even much more than that -- to do the work of our Lord. There are crosses made of mahogany, a naturally red wood that might appear to be stained with blood. There are crosses of deep brown oak, one of the sturdiest of woods, revealing a loyal servant of God. There are platinum crosses that reflect the light of the sun and the Son. There are gold crosses that I imagine being carried by the saints because of their worth to the world. There are acrylic crosses that are translucent, showing a soul of great purity and one that hides almost nothing. There are huge crosses and very small ones. All of the crosses are gifts to us because according to Jesus, we help complete his suffering on Calvary not that He needed us to do that. He has given us that chance.
A bioptic on TV on Sunday about H. Graham Greene, a writer who happened to be a convert to Catholicism, described one of his books about a priest who greatly sinned. Greene was criticized by many for the book, but his comment was that the mysterious and unfathomable mercy of God is certainly found in those who need it the most. I paraphrase here, but you get the idea.
Greene traveled the world more or less trying to escape from himself. Honestly, his trips to the Congo, Mexico, Vietnam, and other remote places put no distance between him and what he feared most. That he could not wrap his mind around the Divine Mercy of God forgiving all of his sins and apparently there were many. He didn't need to go to all of those places to find meat for his stories or answers to the deepest of questions. Inspiration is everywhere -- which takes us right back to Marblehead which has oft been mine.
Have a great Tuesday!!
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