First Holy Communion.

Wait a minute... didn't I just write a post about her baptism?

That was then...

...this is now:

After my coffee, I went into her room in the morning to wake her up. She was all alone in the double bed she shares with her next younger brother; he had come into our room in the night. I still had my pajamas on, so I crawled into bed next to her and put my arms around her. She turned over sleepily and murmured, "Today seems too good to be true."

Here is what I want to remember:

Buckling the tiny ankle straps of her shoes for her.

Arriving early and stopping in the adoration chapel for a moment. I thought for sure that there would be other children with parents in there, but there were only a couple of regular adorers and a visiting priest (probably a relative of one of the first communicants, come to concelebrate). And then I thought, they will look at us and smile; but none did, all stayed lost in prayer as if we were not there. So I felt as if I was in a safe cocoon of solitude as I knelt and waited for my daughter to make her little benison, whatever it was, and said my own prayer.

Snapping the picture above, inside the elevator on the way down to the church basement.

Finding her seat, one of forty-four children receiving first Eucharist.

Taking too many pictures, I guess.

A crowd of chattering children, however attractively dressed, however sweet, is just a crowd of children... until you are a mother and it is a crowd that contains your own particular child.

Then wherever she is, there is a center, somewhere, and it draws you.

 

At the last minute before I went up she said suddenly, "I don't want you to go!" and clutched at me, impulsively. I didn't know what else to do, so I prayed a Hail Mary over her, kissed her hair, and went to go.

On the way out she had disappeared in the crowd.

 

We were assigned (by lot) a pew in the back, so I caught only a glimpse of her veil and a glint from her hair as she trotted by during the procession.

The pastor said to us in the congregation: think back to the innocence of our own first communions, and pray to recapture it. "Have to go back a long way," said an elderly man seated behind me, and his wife chuckled softly. And my mouth turned up in a little smile, because I had made my first communion at age eighteen. My husband, now on the opposite end of the pew so he could take pictures of our daughter, had been there for my first communion too, in a time before cell-phone cameras. We had been dating about six months then.

I was on the wrong side of the church to get a good picture. I prefer not to watch my family's big moments through a camera screen. I tried to get both: a quick picture and a glance. I saw her upturned chin, her standing and turning. She caught my eye and I smiled.

At our parish, altar boys who are brothers of first communicants get to assist at the moment their sibling receives. Her two older brothers (along with three other pairs of brothers) had to play rock-paper-scissors in the sacristy to find out which one would get to hold the paten for her. The ten-year-old won. She complained later that he poked her too hard with it.

Even though I didn't get a good view, I feel good that her two big brothers did.

Afterward, there were more pictures, then pizza and egg rolls with family and friends. She spent most of the rest of the day sitting on the porch with her best friend. The sun came out for us. In the evening, a walk to the park to play Frisbee with her dad and grandpa.

A beautiful day.

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Comments

[Rebekka]

Congratulations!

[Jenny]

Congrats to your daughter! Was she excited about her Second Communion? That phenomenon always amuses me. How long can they keep up the count?

You have such a lovely church. We, of the temporary store front parish, are jealous.

G made her First Communion last year when I was 38 weeks pregnant. I would like to say I had lots of spiritual thoughts that day, but mostly I was concerned about not going into labor during Mass.

There is one thing I will always remember. We, too, had to sit in the back where you could not see and there is not room for anyone to stand to the side without being in the way. I saw her stand and file out into the aisle and at the moment when she must have received (I'm guessing as I could not see), M kicked me hard. Right after that I saw her walk back toward her seat.

I very much felt like Elizabeth at the moment when John the Baptist leapt for joy. A consolation for not being able to see which is quite sweet in my memory.