Not long after my sister was born, when I was two, my parents heard that a mother fox had been killed nearby and there was a litter of fox kits. My mother bundled me up so Dad could take me to see them. Somehow, we came home with one of the kits. [...]
It was eighth grade CCD class…those were the classes we went to at church on Wednesday nights. We never knew what CCD stood for, but it turns out it’s “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine”, something established in Rome in the sixteenth century. Basically, it’s religious ed for those of us who weren’t attending a [...]
I went through confirmation in fifth grade. As a Roman Catholic, this was the sacrament where we made our real commitment to the church. Through baptism, we were already a part of it, but that had been conferred onto us by our parents. With confirmation, we were confirming as adults (ahem) that [...]
Nobody in my family was big on drinking. There would be wine at Sunday dinner; each of my parents might have a glass of a sweet wine, and we were allowed to have a sip to taste. It almost never appeared at my grandparents’ house, but when it did, Grandma was known to [...]