Lessons in Hopeful Waiting

    The school year started with Father being laid off and  Mother, tearfully retching in the bathroom while the girls tried to eat breakfast. (As it turned out, Mother was pregnant with   her fifth child). Once at school, the combination of a bulging  baby boomer population, a  bust in the number of new nuns and the ever present Catholic school lack of finances, the twins entered a class room with 72 students squeezed in like a New York subway during rush hour.  Sister Boniface or as the girls "lovingly" called her "Bonyface" daily displayed her great displeasure with the situation both in word and action.  After a few month of increasing chaos, the class was split in two.  Thirty-six students headed to a make-shift classroom in the basement and 36 students stayed in the now very large airy classroom with Sister Boniface.  The girls were happy to be rid of "Bonyface" but now had an unqualified, ineffectual teacher impostor.  A pall fell upon their lives like the clouds of an approaching storm.

   Ten going on eleven, the larger world began to inhabit a greater portion of the conscious mind.    As the days grew dark and dreary and winter winds blew, Father remained unemployed as a recession gripped the nation.  The factory where he worked since before the girls were born, locked its gate and closed.  Father and Mother rallied and scraped together what they could to feed and clothe the family.  As the first snows of winter fell,  the girls and little sister still did not have winter galoshes.   The girls went to school but during lunch time were met by Father with three boxes containing new boots.  Father agonized that morning of the first early snowfall, the girls sensed the tension in his voice and abrupt demeanor over their morning oatmeal eaten in silence.  Their hearts lifted with the smile, and sparkle in his eyes as the girls jostled in the back seat of the car while slipping on their colorful new boots over top their shoes.

   Christmas was coming soon and the girls kept their wishes modest but couldn't  help but envy little brother,  bright and hopeful in his innocence, Santa still very real.  This  year  the girls appreciated probably for the first time the comfort of the ever repeating rituals of the Advent season.  However meager the trappings of the consumer driven, Santa centered holiday season, the deeper meaning dawned in the growing awareness of the girls.  Each Sunday another of the four candles was lit. "Oh come, Oh come, Emanuel, and ransom captive Israel who morns in lonely exile until the Son of God appears."  Grandma and Grandpa set a near life size manger between two Jack Pines in their front yard each year.  Shivering in the cold, eyes drawn to the infant,  the girls imagined greater hardship than their own.   A story that must be told,  the Infant born to us, a baby who would save the world.  Mother, now very large with child herself, stood surrounded by Father, the girls and little brother.  All were anticipating a birth, this was Advent, the season of hopeful waiting