Life Savers

WHEN THERE WAS NO OTHER SOLUTION, I went fishin'.

Connections Upstairs

SISTER JO JO WAS MY AUNT. Her real name was Sister Marie André, OP. (OP meant Outstandingly Pious.) Her actual real name was Joan, which is why we called her Sister Jo Jo. She was my favorite. She was a nun, but not like the nuns at school. She was just like us. We roller-skated and went fishing together. She brought presents when she visited — scapulars, medals, statues of Mary or St Joseph, holy water fonts for our bedrooms. (I couldn’t imagine Mother Mary Paul giving me any of these things without me having earned them.) Sister Jo Jo really wasn’t like most nuns. Ma even said that Sister Jo Jo nearly burnt down the motherhouse when the cigarette she was smoking in the basement caught the sisters’ laundry on fire.

When she visited in the summer, Sister Jo Jo raced us to the field for a baseball game. She had an arm on her and could slam the ball right into the river (an automatic home run), and when bat met ball, she blasted off of home plate, a flurry of black and white. We fought over whose team she’d play on because she had Connections Upstairs that guaranteed a win. She was even better at baseball than Lenny Walczak, and he was the best. She taught me how to hit and to pitch and to break in my new mitt.


When Sister Jo Jo visited, Dad lit the grill and Ma loaded the metal tub with ice and filled it with pop and beer, then put it out on the grass. We pulled the folding chairs from of the garage and situated them in the front lawn. The Walczaks and the Dornwalds came over with badminton, hula-hoops and Jarts. We got out our stilts and the big tire. We played and ate hot dogs and turned our lips purple with grape Nehi. After we ate, the lightening bugs came out and so did the peach tin. We played kick-the-can until it was time for bed.

Sister Jo Jo always tucked me in. She knelt with me at the foot of the bed to say our Angel-of-God together. It always ended with, “and God bless Ma and Dad and Sister Jo Jo.” But before closing with an Amen, I’d fling myself into Sister Jo Jo’s arms, wrapping mine around her waist, adding, “I love you T-T-T-H-H-H-I-I-I-I-S-S-S much,” squeezing with all my might.

I sunk my head into her habit. After a day of running and jumping and skipping and hopping and slamming and blasting and laughing and talking, her crisp, cool linen smelt like a summer night and her strong, patient hands felt like sunshine on my back. We stayed this way for a moment, quiet for the first time that day.

I climbed into bed and she tucked the covers up around my neck, kissing me on the forehead.

“Good night,” she said.

“Sleep tight,” I answered.

“And don’t you let those bedbugs bite,” she ordered, turning off the light.

I didn’t want the day to end and she was about to close the door. So as fast as I could, I blurted out, “andiftheydojusttakeyourshoeandhiththemtillthey’reblackandblue!”

“Good night!”

She quietly closed the door and I lay in the dark, listening to the crickets chirping over the laughter of the grown-ups as she silently walked down the hall.

I fell asleep wondering what sorts of games we’d play when I woke.

Observational Inquiry

THE NARROW PASSAGE BETWEEN THE GRADE SCHOOL AND THE HIGH SCHOOL WAS A PECULIAR PLACE. It stood in continual shadow except for the noon hour when the sun aligned itself to brighten this dark alley. Whispers echoed off the canyon-like walls and allowed us to play telephone at recess without the use of tin cans and strings. Darkness gobbled up color between the two old buildings — even the spring-colored Easter banner we carried to Mass took on drab hues as we processed through this walkway. The wind blasted furiously between the two schools, causing rain and snow to defy gravity and fall upward.

It was this gravity-defying character of the passageway that gave me hope of discovering the continually debated question of whether Mother Mary Paul had red hair. (Her temper indicated as much.) When the wind was right, this brick chasm did to the Sisters’ black veils what the subway vent did to Marilyn’s white dress in The Seven Year Itch. I figured if I followed behind Mother Mary Paul at a discrete but calculated distance, I might catch an improper glimpse of her hair from beneath her airborne veil.


Alas, the only thing I caught was heck when Mother Paul discovered me sidling up behind her, my neck craned and my face contorted, trying desperately to discern whether she had any hair at all. My observational inquiry earned me one detention and one very long Boston Cooler (and I’m not talking about the fountain drink). Curiosity killed this cat. After that botched attempt, I kept to my place at the front of the line and decided to leave the sleuthing to someone else. For now.

'Twixt Earth and Air

SAILING THROUGH THE AIR wasn’t something that came naturally to me, like it did to other kids. While Jay-Bird was agile and flew through the air (as his name suggested), I was clumsy (so he called me Bo-Bo). Stretching or bending or moving like other kids was impossible for me. I was a rock. A Bo-Bo. Whenever I tried to reach the heights, I invariably toppled through the air, landing with catastrophic consequences.

I was embarrassed that local ER nurses knew me by name.

To my credit, I wasn’t stupid. I learned not to climb up into things that I could tumble out of, or to lean over gaping expanses that I could spill out into.

But the tree house that Jay-Bird and Stover built was too much. Their treetop fortress tempted me as I sat drawing on the forest floor far below. What did they do up there? What was all their laughing about?

I’d seen them climb the tree a million times, so I knew how. They started by stepping onto a cement block then jumped up to grasp the lowest branch. Then they pulled themselves up using only their arms and swung their legs sideways, up into adjacent branches. For a moment they hung upside-down before pulling themselves upright into the tree where branches spread out to create a vast network of ladders and stair-steps. They made it look so easy.

But even the first steps of ascending the tree eluded me. When I jumped up from the cement block to grab the lowest branch, my belly collided with the tree trunk, ricocheting me backward to the ground. If I did manage to reach the lowest branch, it was all I could do to simply hang there — I found it impossible to swing my legs up to yet a higher branch. I couldn’t even keep hold of the branch — slowly, its barky roughness slipped through my fingers and I landed with a thump.

“Hey, you guys! I wanna come up, too!”

Their heads popped out from the tree house and disappeared again. Laughter ensued.

“Stover! Jay! I wanna come up. I need help!”

“We don’t wantcha up here!”

“C’mon! I’ll buy you guys some pop and chips!” I pleaded.

I could hear conferring whispers before Jay called down, “Okay. Butcha gotta get ‘em now.”

It was a deal. So off I raced to the corner store to secure my bribes.

I returned, as breathless as I was penniless, with two Hires and two bags of Ballreich’s. Jay-Bird and Stover were slinging a rope over the tree’s upper branches.

“Whaddaya, whaddaya doin’?” I asked between gasps.

“We’re gonna getcha up the tree,” Jay announced.

“Whaddaya mean? You just need to give me a boost up.”

“That wouldn’t be any fun,” Jay said as he cinched the rope around my waist. Then Stover gave the other end of the rope a firm tug, and I was airborne!

“Help me hoist him up,” Stover grunted. “He’s heavy!”

As Jay-Bird and Stover strained with the rope, I rose higher and higher. I felt like Peter Pan. Or like Sandy Duncan playing Peter Pan.

“Tie it off,” Jay commanded.

And as suddenly as my ascent started, it stopped.

I hung there like a lifeless yo-yo. Yo-yo. Bo-Bo.


Stover and Jay-Bird clatter back up into the tree house with their pop and chips. I swirled about, neither in the tree nor on the ground. But I wasn’t on the ground. And I wouldn’t fall. (Jay was a good knot-tier.) So I lurched myself forward. Then back. Then forward. Then back. As chip crumbs landed on my head, I swung around under the tree house, laughing giddily and getting dizzy.

“I wanna try!” shouted Stover, starting down the tree.

“Me next,” yelled Jay.

We spent the rest of the day hauling one another up into the air. Jay-Bird and Stover eventually got me up into their tree house. It wasn’t long before I learned to make it all the way up, unassisted. Unfortunately, I never outgrew my clumsiness. But that’s another story…