At Once, At Last, At All

I had spent much of the last two years inside my Delhi apartment, trying to write about how the pandemic and the Indian government's catastrophic response was affecting more than a billion people, trying not to catch the disease myself. I came home in December because my mom had a stroke. Alone except for her dog, she took a cab to the hospital E.R. My boyfriend had lost his job as a student teacher three weeks short of graduation because of the timeliness of his grading. We all needed Christmas. Badly.

But this was Chicago at the end of another difficult year of the pandemic. The new coronavirus variant was as contagious as measles. Robberies and carjackings were up. So were murders. The cops were solving only one out of every five violent crimes. 

I had my heart set on Chicago's ice skating ribbon in Maggie Daley Park. J. first wanted to go to confession, so we stopped at St. Peter's, a Franciscan order in a beautiful Art Deco church downtown. I kneeled to pray while J. found the confessional. "You're up," I heard him whisper a few minutes later. I went downstairs and into a brightly lit space that reminded me of a middle-school band practice room with a divider in the middle. I sat down quietly. After a minute or so, my confessor said, "is anyone there?" "Yes, I'm sorry, I don't know what to say." "Are you a Catholic?" "Yes, I am. What I mean is that I don't know how to begin." He walked me through it. I told him I was there to confess that I was having premarital sex. With whom? he asked. A man I love but with whom I strongly disagree on some of the biggest issues dividing our church today. Such as? he said. Such as abortion. And the vaccine. I believe that getting vaccinated is an ethical duty. I have tried to persuade him, but he is immovable. Stop right there, he said. You said he is immovable. People who are that rigid terrify me. Relationships are about compromise, he went on. The pope says it is right and good to get the vaccine. All the priests here are vaccinated. Soon the hospitals will overflow with the sick.... This is probably not what you wanted to hear, he continued. Your penance is to think long and hard about what you are doing. 

I returned to J. in the pew. I wanted to hold him, or run away. I felt the tears pressing against my eyelids. The skating rink was full and would be all night. We found a beautiful little Italian restaurant in the South Loop. We sat in a tent on the sidewalk decorated with Christmas wreaths tied with red ribbon with a heater blasting at us. It was sweet and fun, and I was able to put away what the priest had said, what I had told him, the feeling that I was intentionally disregarding wisdom for pleasure. But not for long.