The White Lily Blog

My name is Janet Baker.  I have had other names and many adventures, most of them my own damn fault. That’s me, second row, far left, with the slightly manic look. There’s dear Father Trombley.  Look what a slight man he was.  He barely spoke ten words to me in my life, except in the confessional, but I pray for him every mass. Because he was big enough to protect me from the devils in my life, because he was holy. I knew he was there. If it got out of hand. Not many little girls are so lucky.

And those are my classmates from Holy Angels, on the Sunday of our First Holy Communion.  It was May. The world smelled wonderful. Look at us. Look at Annie Carter. She’d had polio, but she went on and joined the Madames of the Sacred Heart, who made a deep curtsy to Christ in the tabernacle, rather than an ordinary genuflection. Look at our faces. Find the genius among us (there were several). We did not know what was ahead of us–the sixties, LSD and birth control, Vietnam, our marriages, our children, our divorces, and, now I know, the worst of all, the implosion of our Church.  

I thank God for it all and ask for your prayers.