Fat Tuesday / Ash Wednesday

Yesterday we had a holiday. I woke up early, of course, and headed to the grocery store for a big shopping trip and was home by 9 a.m. I don't really remember what I did. Oh yeah, I went on a run. 3 miles on a beautiful day. Then I had an impromptu lunch with M. and my favorite five-year-old, her daughter. We ate BBQ chicken pizza and drank frozen lemonade and it was great to have some girl time. I went to a cooking store where the owner fussed at me for not having cash, snarling that she might as well give me the shamrock cookie cutter for free for what running the charge would cost her. Made mental note not to return to stores where owners fuss at you for buying something. Eventually, I headed to my parents' house, where my mom and I ate king cake and watched Slumdog. (A copy on DVD arrived in my mailbox one day last month, a surprise from a friend. No idea where he got it; didn't ask!) I was able to watch the entire movie with my eyes open this time instead of shielding them at certain tense moments, and I caught things I missed the first two times around, including one really big thing involving Salim and Latika when they were kids. It was great fun to watch this movie with my mom, who covered her eyes, shrieked, writhed in her chair, laughed, and cried in all the right places. It is always fun to watch someone you love fall in love with something you love. I tell myself that I like sharing things I love regardless of how they're received, but it's always a bit deflating when something falls short of what you want it to be for someone (which is as awesome to them as it is to you). So I was unspeakably psyched to see how psyched she was to watch this movie. She actually called it "a gift." Good times.

Today is Ash Wednesday. I am giving up junk food for Lent. This feels like a monumental undertaking. My mom says that Lent, in part, is about emptying yourself of bad things in order to make room for good things. I think she meant spiritually, but I am taking this sort of literally, in that I am emptying my body of food that is bad for me and hoping it makes room for me to feel better, sleep better, look better (always a bonus), and most of all, live better. I realize it's only day one, but I feel oddly freed by this decision. Of course, in a week, I will probably be all "my kingdom for a Twix!" We'll see. Also, I abandoned my no-coffee resolution after less than a week, and I've decided my morning cup of coffee will have to be pried from my cold dead hands.

A few co-workers and I went to noon mass today for Ash Wednesday. It had been so long since going to Ash Wednesday mass that I was thinking you get the ashes the same time as you get communion. But no. You file up separately for each act. I have to tell you. I could not believe how many people showed up for noon mass in the middle of a workday. I mean, I could believe it, but I couldn't believe it. People were pouring into that cathedral like ants. We were squished together as tightly as possible in the pews, and still a huge group of people was standing in the back and people were lined up standing on the sides. Hundreds upon hundreds of people is what I'm saying. And it's not like this is the only service around ... all of the parishes have multiple masses throughout the morning, day, and evening today. The ash getting took a very long time. At communion, they ran out of communion wafers. The bishop gathered a few of us who were left around and started randomly and somewhat apologetically blessing us after they ran out. One of the ushers, a wrinkled old man, leaned over, realizing they'd also run out of wine, and whispered to us, "If we'd known there'd be this many people, we'd have brought more liquor!" Eventually someone ran in with a plastic bucket of more wafers and we all were able to receive them. At the beginning of the mass, before the processional, the cantor was announcing the song pages and then said, "Oops, I forgot to mention this mass is being presided over by the bishop. Sorry, Bishop!" and started waving her hands in the air like she just didn't care at the bishop who was in the back of the cathedral. It was all very comedic in a way, this solemn holy day.

What struck me about sitting there around these bazillions of people was not only the reminder that I live in a town of a bazillion Catholics who will march through the streets at lunch time to fill a cathedral on Ash Wednesday and what a possibly peculiar thing that is but also the reminder that maybe it isn't so much about what you necessarily believe but about rituals and tradition. I never know what I believe on any given day, but I believe in family and in growing up with certain traditions and that it's important to revisit those traditions sometimes. Thinking about that made it all a bit easier to stomach when the bishop went on and on about how we are all going to die physically but live on spiritually. It was a bit much to take on an empty, growling stomach that was dreaming of ordering a stir-fry as soon as this mass was ended and we went in peace. I found myself wondering about the people around me and the reasons why they were there. Was she a fervent believer with all of her heart? Was he there because he wanted to remember his mom or dad or grandma who used to take him to mass when he was little? Were they praying for sick relatives or friends? Were they there hoping that God exists and will save our country from this mess we're in? Were they there in case God exists so they won't go straight to hell? Who knows? Whatever the reasons, I did feel a little sense of community in that big church and with my colleagues as we returned to work with big black smudges in the middle of our foreheads.

This evening, I lay on the floor of my bedroom taking my bed apart, cursing and shaking out my throbbing hands as they turned purple from trying to unscrew totally shot screws with all sorts of sub-par tools. I wondered if there were some I would never be able to unscrew and about taking a hammer to them in blind rage. Finally, I got them all out. It was an Ash Wednesday/pliers miracle. Even though it was a huge pain, it felt good to do it all by myself, a very Mare Winningham in St. Elmo's Fire/her own peanut butter and jelly in her own apartment moment. My new bed is arriving tomorrow after 3.5 weeks of waiting for it; more on that later. I hope that it radically changes my life.