The Girls Go to Catholic School: Road to Eternal Damnation Paved with Kelloggs Corn Flakes

            

It seems pretty ridiculous now — my childhood  p r e d i c a m e n t

But at t e n years old, nothing about it felt silly.

I believed a single cornflake had j e o p a r d i z e d my eternal soul.

The incident happened eons ago, but I remember it like yesterday.

I grew up Catholic in the 1950s and attended a small parochial school in St. Clair, Michigan. It was staffed by Dominican sisters in full habit — faces floating in black fabric. They seemed like extraterrestrial beings, awe inspiring but also scary

They had strict rules. Not guidelines. Not suggestions. R U L E S!!!

Not just about grammar or math or classroom conduct.

Rules that applied to eternity.

My twin sister and I were allowed to skip ahead and join the older students preparing for Confirmation at my school. We felt chosen. Spiritually advanced.

Each of us received a little green catechism book — 421 numbered questions with answers. Bonnie and I made flashcards and studied morning and night.

WHO  made you? God made me.

WHY did God make you?

To know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this life and be happy with Him in the next.

We were only ten, but fluent in salvation.

We even won the Catechism Bee. Sixth graders fell. Fifth graders fell. The Red Sea parted, leaving two small fourth graders standing when the bell rang.

We were ready.

In 1958,  WE HAD A RULE which required fasting from midnight before receiving Communion. 

 My dad would gather the hungry grumpy kids for 6:00 a.m. Mass.  Then afterwards,  drive straight to Dewey’s Bakery for doughnuts. Seven-Day Adventists  kept the Sabbath on Saturday.

Even at ten, I appreciated ecumenical cooperation.

If you knowingly ate after midnight and received Communion anyway, that was a mortal sin.

And at ten, I understood mortal sin this way:

If Die before confessing it — and you went to hell.

On the morning of my Confirmation, I walked past the kitchen table. My three-year-old brother sat there with a bowl of Kellogg’s Cornflakes.Without thinking, I reached in, took one flake, and swallowed.

Then I froze.

Midnight meant midnight.

One flake was still food.

Cold realization dropped straight to my stomach the hunger feeling turned to nausea

 This was my CONFIRMATION! — A once in a lifetime event. The archbishop was coming. The church would be full. We had practiced walking up the center aisle two by two, according to height. Bonnie and I would lead.

Joy flipped to dread in a single heartbeat.

In my state of panic, I had a decision to make.

Tell someone about the cornflake?

Or keep quiet?

THE  humiliation was already creeping in MY FACE BURNING 

 While Hell remained abstract concept to my 10 year old self.

I quickly decided to keep quiet...my only witness was 3 years old.

 So I received Communion knowing about the cornflake thus in my 10 year old mind committed a Mortal Sin.  My heart was beating like a bird in my chest but WHEN I LOOKED AROUND, everything else seemed the same.  

Then Confirmation began.

Edward Cardinal Mooney stood above me in full red regalia, enormous shepherd’s staff in hand — as if he had stepped out of stained glass. I wondered: could he see sin the way Superman sees through walls?

“Betty Jean Margaret…”

The Arch Bishop made the sign of the cross, three times on my forehead with scented holy oil.

“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

Amen.

A gentle slap on the cheek.

“Peace be with you. Go forth with the strength of the Holy Spirit.”

Peace?   Everything inside me felt like it was unraveling. Being Confirmed with an unconfessed Mortal Sin was also a Mortal Sin. 

BY NOON, I HAD COMMITTED TWO MORTAL SINS.  

HELL was still abstract — flames without detail, eternity without edges —but I knew one thing for certain:  I preferred not to go.

I had options, a place left to go and not make matters worse C O N F E S S I O N

The very next morning, before school, I reentered the scene of my sins, the church held a holy stillness.  There were two types of kids at Monday Morning Confession, the guilty and the Spiritually ambitious.  

The confessional was a dark wooden closet — red velvet curtain, narrow kneeler, the faint smell of furniture polish and fear.

In a small, shaky voice:

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

I started with the easy things — disobedience, anger, fighting with siblings, small lies stealing from my grandmas candy drawer.

But when I reached the cornflake — silence.

Because there is a vast difference between knowing and saying.

If spoken aloud, it would become real.

Instead:

“For these and all my sins, I am truly sorry.”

According to 1958 theology, deliberate withholding counted. Was also a Mortal sin.  

Cornflake. Communion. Confirmation. Confession.

 I was in Moral quicksand.

I needed something tangible to hold onto.

So I wore a scapular.A scapular is two small pieces of brown wool worn under your clothes, connected by strings over your shoulders. Catholics believe it places you under the protection of the Blessed Mother — especially at the hour of death.

Because I clearly was not confessing the cornflake.

This was Not magic, SUPERSTION or  forgiveness.

It gave me comfort. Protection. Hope on a string.  It promised I wouldn't die without the  SACRAMENT of the Sick, in 1958, Extreme Unction, which  included, a Final Confession. 

THEN THE 60'S HAPPENED!

Everything changed — including the Catholic Church. It felt as though I grew up in one church and WOKE UP in another without leaving the PEW.

The fasting rule shifted from midnight… to one hour.

Which raises the question:

IF the cornflake was a mortal sin in 1958, what did it become in 1963?

Did it expire?  

If your entire theology can be undone by breakfast, you may need a sturdier theology.

Faith survives mistakes.

At ten years old, I thought heaven hinged on breakfast.

Now I know heaven might be the place

where ten-year-olds are forgiven

BEFORE they even ask.

A cornflake did not cost me my soul —

It fed me:  

with compassion for people carry something small but it  feels enormous and that laughter and and faith can live in the same body.

My Gospel Truth

When I wanted to name a program, "The Gospel Truth,"  I was not thinking of the words in the most literal sense.  I was thinking about truth more generally.  When my daughter Lauren was in second grade, she had a vocabulary test and one of the words was, "truth."  Her initial answer was, "what really happened."  She must have considered her answer again and used a caret to insert "you think" after what....so it read, "what you think really happened." I have never found another definition of truth that I think is more accurate.

When I was 19, I was in nursing school in downtown Detroit near where the DMC is now located.  I went there in September after the 1967 riots.  The struggle happened just a few blocks away.  That first year changed my life in so many ways.  It was a time of social upheaval and personal growth into new ways of being.  One Sunday morning, a friend of mine and I walked just two blocks to a small Black Church.  We sat inconspicuously in the back but as the service continued with hymns and praise, I felt something new, an awakening of Spirit that I had never experienced in my years as a Catholic Christian.  I could almost feel the ground move below my feet and a very real fullness of heart.

My next thought was to wonder.  Wonder how this music came to be, why it resonated with me in such an intimate way? What connected the two?  Through years of reading and listening, I have a partial answer.  I have read many African American writers such as Zora Neal Hurston, "Their I Eyes Were Watching God,"  "The Slave Narratives," The Confessions of Nat Turner by Gray,  Te-Nhesi Coates, "The Water Walkers" and  "Middle Passage" by Charles Johnson and more.  What has struck me, is the resiliency of the human spirit against all odds.  For me, this resiliency comes through and touches my very being in Gospel Music.  

Gospel music is so moving because it speaks directly to the soul. It’s born out of struggle and hope, sorrow and joy—rooted in the Black church experience, where music became a lifeline for survival, praise, and resistance.  It tells the truth. Gospel doesn’t shy away from pain. It names grief, fear, doubt—and still dares to rejoice.  It’s embodied. The rhythm, the harmony, the call and response—it pulls you in. You don’t just hear it, you feel it.  It’s communal. Whether in church pews or concert halls, gospel is about togetherness. It invites everyone to lift their voice.  It connects. To ancestors. To faith. To something bigger than yourself.  It transforms. Even in my darkest hour, a gospel song can stir hope, shift my spirit, and send me back out stronger.  Some of my favorites singers are Sweet Honey and the Rock, Canton Spirituals, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Aretha Franklin and anywhere Motown meets Gospel.

This is what I think of when I think, "Gospel Truth."  It is a truth contained in the human spirit, voice and rhythm.

At its best, gospel music doesn’t just entertain—it heals.

 

 Gold Beads 

    Janet Margaret Bell, 10/15/1924-01/10/2023 lived her life joyfully.  Her desires were few but those she held were not a requirement for happiness.  She welcomed new situations and people with a contagious curiosity always looking for the good in people and situation..  That doesn't mean that she was never sad or disappointed.  She would have what she called, "pity parties" and then move on after a good cry.  She recommended to everyone, a tear duct flushing when necessary.  

    She cherished the gold beads. In every picture from the time her mother passed until the day I removed them from her neck as my sister and I prepared her body for her final journey., she wore those beads.  That was except for the one week they went missing.

    Mom was living at American House Assisted Living near me in Charlevoix, MI.  One day she called, frantic, "My beads are missing!!!.  I can't find them anywhere."  As I drove over, I knew how important they were.  She and her sister had split the necklace in half when their mother died and each had completed their necklaces with new gold beads.  We all knew the story of how our Great-grandfather Kleihower had purchased them for his wife at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901.  It was the very place that President McKinley was assassinated. When anyone commented about the beads she would launch into the story.  

    As I drove I could not imagine how they would have been removed and then lost.  Mom's eyesight was seriously affected by macular degeneration and the clasp required sight and agility having a double catch system.  She was also affected by a worsening short-term memory loss.  (She liked to say, "my memory is getting shorter." 

When I arrived she was visibly upset and I began searching her small apartment, over, under, between, behind and in every bit of space.  Nothing.  I went out to the director because I knew someone had to have helped her get the necklace off but I could not imagine why.  I tried not to think that anyone who worked there could stoop so low as to steal it.  She knew nothing but would pass the word for everyone to keep an eye out.  I had done all I could and was heart sick about the loss of one of the most precious items my mother owned.  She had long ago instructed us to divide the beads between her 6 grand daughters when the time came. They would skip the daughters as her sister, Lois had also done.  

    The trouble wasn't over because Mom could not remember from one day to the next.  I got the same frantic call every day, sometimes twice in a day.   I would go over and search again and comforter her.  "We'll find them."  We prayed to St. Anthony.  I thought of telling her the beds were out being repaired.  I had been on line researching a necklace that would maybe feel like the missing necklace.  She could reach up and touch it and think nothing of the loss.  

    About a week later, I stopped by and saw that the missing gold necklace was there, on  mom's neck in all its glory.  "Oh mom, you have your gold necklace on!!!"  She answers, "Of course, I never take it off."  She had no memory of the recent loss and search.  When I asked the administrator, who found the necklace.  She had no idea either......if she did, she was not saying.  More grateful than wanting to get to the bottom of the theft?, I pursued it no further.

    Recently, while spending some time with a local member of the Anishinaabe Band of Odawa, he mentioned the almost universal presence of "little people" who populate stories in Native Cultures across all regions of our country.  I remembered my mom talking about the Lutron's and Pipsiwas (little people) who could be blamed for unexplainable mischief such as missing objects when we were kids..  That is the only explanation that makes sense to me.

Blue

Blue

She smiles and turns to the water's edge, wades up to her knees,

fingertips gently combing the surface, welcoming the wetness.

Lifting and bending knee and waist,  

her body propels forward into an arc that pierces the surface.  

She disappears below.

Ripples mark the spot and sparkling reflections follow the form below

With a flowing motion she rolls and wet face emerges  in the setting sun.

Reborn in River-water, she smiles, turns, swims with graceful strokes trailing memories that glow in the wake.

Written on the first anniversary of my mother's death, Jan. 10, 2024 

WHAT IS IT MY LITTLE CHICKADEE?

What Is It My Little Chickadee?

    It is a cool Fall day.  I am putting a shine on my windows.  I see a dark darting and then BOP next to me.  There, at my feet, a crumpled chickadee lies, neck twisted, beak open, toes curled, motionless.  My heart sank.  Are my window efforts worth this tiny life.  This joyful, brave and curious bird endures the cold Michigan winters, visits the feeder, flutters near me.

    Scooped into my palm, the body still warm, I kiss the black cap and am so sorry for the mirror windows.  I say, "Shake it off my little chickadee."  The bird is still except a tiny vibration under the chest feathers.  I lie the body down on the deck and continue cleaning.

    At the table inside, I am not so happy with the sparkle.  Out the window expecting a corpse, I see a chickadee standing, appearing to be disoriented.  Getting bearings my little chickadee took flight and so did my spirits.

      

                                                            HOMECOMING

  

In 1980, Bill and I and our three young children moved back to my home town, St. Clair, Michigan on the St. Clair River.  I had been away for 15 years but I had friends and family still living  here.  

I loved our mid-century cape cod house.  I could never leave home without first admiring the traditional blue color, the white shutters , two dormers evenly spaced on the steep roof, flower filled window boxes and a white picket fence.  

And so it was, that I stood on the sidewalk admiring my house on an August summer day in 1981.  I was on my way to teach a Lamaze Childbirth Class at a local church within walking distance. 

The three children were inside with a teenage babysitter, Maryann.  I needed a babysitter because their dad was 15 miles away leading a board meeting at his office in Algonac.  

I was in mid-sentence of explaining how the partners were to time contractions during labor when two men burst  in.  I recognized the friends as they came toward me, men on a mission.

  "Betty, you need to come home, Ross is missing!"

My first reaction was to laugh at the absurdity. " No, not Ross," my  extremely shy 4 year old middle child.  In crowds or unfamiliar surroundings, he hid behind my legs.  He rarely spoke to adults, even relatives he new.  

The two looked back at me solemnly, "Betty, many people have searched your house, yard and neighborhood, Ross is gone. 

My class surrounded me, silent,  staring blank-faced.  I threw my self into the best defense humans have against the unthinkable, complete denial.  Even though I was told he was not in the house, I knew he was.  He had to be. 

It was denial speaking when I told my class I will be back in 20 minutes.  Walking out, I made a plan B,  "If I'm not back in 20 minutes, leave and the door will lock behind you."

The ride home took just a few minutes.  I was too dazed to think anything. 

My yard was filled with people. A police car with the blue light flashing had pulled up to the curb. Neighborhood kids hung on the fence and everyone was very concerned about Ross, the missing child.  The atmosphere was electric.  

My dad was there, too.  He had been in the Special Police, a volunteer group supporting the local police during emergencies, festivals, Friday night football games and also helped form search parties.  He was busy doing just that.  He looked  professional, giving instructions and asking for volunteers to search the nearby field and woods. My other two children were safe in the back yard with my mom.  The babysitter was being consoled by her mother.  

My sisters met me in the driveway.  "Let's search the house again." We went from room to room starting in the basement and systematically searched the house top to bottom.   We did not find him.  I felt  cold fear creep up my spine.

That same year a little 6 year old boy, Adam Wash. went missing while shopping in a mall with his mother.  The family tragedy was carried non stop in the news.  The missing children milk carton  campaign had started with pictures of young children and the words, "Have you seen me?"   The Stranger Danger instructions to school age children had created a general panic.  

After the fruitless search, I told my sister to go outside, leave me alone, I will make one more search.  I began to talk to Ross like he was there and could hear me.  I fought to stay calm as I began in the finished basement.   

I told a favorite story that I read at bedtime almost every night, "The Spooky Old Tree."  I knew it by heart after so many readings. "Three little bears, one with a light, one with a rope and one with a stick. A spooky old tree...Do they dare go into that spooky old tree?  Yes, they dare."

I searched every room down there, under and behind every object.  I struggled to stay calm.  Ross had to be here, somewhere. The alternative  was that he had  been abducted.  

On the first floor, the house was as quiet as a tomb.  I continued with the Spooky Old Tree Story in a calm and gentle voice.  I was being comforted, too, by the familiar story.  I looked everywhere, even impossible places like the stove and refrigerator and down the laundry shoot.  I looked in closets, behind the hanging clothes, the curtains the  couch.  Under tables  and beds, in the bathtub behind the shower curtain.  

I heard a sound and turned to find Ross standing in the hallway.  "Here I am Mommy."

I swept him into my arms with joy and blubbered, "Sweet mother of God, all the angels and saints Alleluia and amen."

So relieved to see him, in an instant  my worst fears were cast away. I teetered on the  edge of both laughing and crying.  

I rushed outside  with Ross in my arms, the gathered crowd let out a collective gasp of both relief and wonder like a crowd watching a magic trick.   "Where was he?" someone shouted.

My house had been searched multiple times, his name being shouted in the house, yard and neighborhood.  

Some of the faces, including my father after first  appearing relieved, became shadowed with exasperation.  "Aren't you going to spank him?"  After all, he had caused my family to 

panic concerned the neighbors, terrified the babysitter brought the police.   Couldn't he have just come out and spared us all?

Ross hugged me tight and turned away from the gathering not wishing to be the center of attention.  First the police left and  eventually all went home relieved if not overjoyed.

Once inside, I asked Ross to show me where he had been.  I had not found him.  He had revealed himself.

He took me upstairs to the master bedroom, rounded the end of the bed and pointed at a space below a built in-desk in one of the dormers typical of cape cod houses. We didn't use the desk and there was no lamp.  It was like a cave underneath.  He had hidden there after an embarrassing accident.  Unwilling to go to an unfamiliar babysitter, he found safety in a little hidey-hole.  The unfamiliar voices made him draw further into the shadows. Refusing to come out until he heard the familiar voice of his mother.

I put the kids to bed following the usual night time rituals which included reading the Spooky Old Tree, a Bearinstain Bear story, a momma, poppa and three siblings bears matching our own family.   

I heard the back door open as Bill returned home oblivious to the chaos  that ensued while he was gone.  Pre cell phone era and no  office staff to answer phones kept him from being contacted.  Fortunately, I didn't need the Algonac Police.   I gave a blow by blow account.  We were comforted by the angelic sleeping faces of our children.

  Ross is 47 now, has his own family and is anything but shy.  After marrying, his first house coincidentally was a cape cod.    The ending of book I was reciting that day in 1981 has become  a sacred incantation for our family when we return from trips.

In the story, After many  big scares in the Spooky old tree, the three little bears run home to momma's open arms.  Every one says in unison, "Home Again Safe at LAST.