Meet An Unusual Saint

I have a friend named Christine who has a very big heart and very good sense of humor. And if you sit with her any time at all she has you laughing so hard you are crying. Perhaps it is because she is Italian and from Long Island and her New York sense of humor is so familiar: almost all the famous comedians in the world come from New York, so the cadence of the New York voice helps the humor along quite a bit. Maybe it is in the water there. Or in this case, maybe it is in the water in the baptismal font.



I didn't know Christine long before she told me about St. Helen the Patron Saint of Parking. Not being a Catholic, I wasn't sure if I should laugh at this or not. Oh yes indeed, Christine said. St. Helen the Patron Saint of Parking is her late mother, Helen B., who, upon her death achieved beatification in order to look out for all of us women who, when shopping, find ourselves endlessly in search of a place to put the car.

It was funny enough to hear that she had elevated her mother to sainthood, and funnier still that this sainthood involved parking. But it got better. As my sister and I looked on, Christine went out to her car and produced St. Helen's prayer card, something with which, as Protestants, we were not familiar.

St. Helen's prayer card, not yet sanctioned by the Vatican, is laminated and carries a picture of a halo-ed St. Helen standing by--what else?--a car. The photo had originally been of Helen B. on her honeymoon, standing by the car she and Christine's father drove down to Florida. Of course she's smiling. She's on her honeymoon. And, since she was in Florida at the time, she was wearing a big straw hat.

With a little help from Photoshop, the hat became a halo, and the halo seems to turn Helen's sly honeymoon smile into something more angelic. On the back of the card is this prayer:

Dear Helen in Heaven
Help me find my space
I don't want to look
All over the place

Give me a good one
So I'll know where to steer
When it comes to parking
You're always near

Sweet Helen in Heaven
I don't pray a lot
But please help me find
A good parking spot
Amen

My sister and I were laughing pretty hard at this point. "It seems so sacrilegious," she said sotto voce to me as she wiped away her tears. "But I just can't stop laughing. It is such a funny thing to do with your late mother's picture."

Christine looks a lot like her mother, who died when Christine was just 21. Though the death took place a long time ago, the thought of it is still painful to Christine who will tell you that in a quiet moment. It was a heart attack or a stroke--I can't remember which--and one minute Helen was there, and the next she was gone. Christine didn't even have time to say goodbye.

At the root of almost all humor is pain. Christine dealt with hers by turning her mother into the Patron Saint of Parking. And the laughter that brings to each of Christine's friends helps to keep the memory of Helen a sunny one. What a lovely thing.

Christine insisted on giving me one of St. Helen's prayer cards to keep in my car.

And I've kept it there for years through various vehicles. It reminds me of Christine and her sense of fun. And it makes me think how each of us can take the clay of our sorrow and mold it in to something else, something that will make it easier for us to go forward with our lives--not forgetting, but no longer with tears.

So I keep St. Helen's prayer card in my car, and it makes me smile.

And one more thing. I never, ever, have to look for a parking place.



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Surprised by Two Old Friends

Phyllis and John on their wedding day.

My sister and I walked to a nearby Lutheran Church this Sunday morning. It was a different synod from the one we were raised in. But, it was only a couple of blocks away, it was a clear, cool, sunny morning, and we decided to give the church a try. It turned out to be a friendly place filled with nice people who welcomed us and an hour later we felt good as we walked out into the sunlight and headed for home.

I was planning to put on some jeans and wait to hear from my college friend Phyllis. She was in the Bay Area for the Cal game and we had planned to go to brunch before she and her family headed back to Santa Monica. I told her my sister was visiting and we would be at church from 9:00 'til 10:00 a.m. and we could go out after that.

About a quarter of a block into our walk home, some people in a huge red van up ahead of us started to wave. Gee that's a friendly church, I thought. Even after we leave, they are still saying hello/goodbye to us.

But it was my friend Phyllis, her husband John (also an old friend), their son Chris, (whom I last saw as a boy of three), her daughter Annie, (whom I last saw as a toddler), and John's brother and law partner, Bill, a big handsome Naval Academy graduate. How they found us, I leave to Phyllis's husband John, who as a lawyer, is also a great detective. My address, help from GPS and Google Maps, and the knowledge that I was a Lutheran were all the tools he needed. Never try to put anything over on John. He's on to you every time.

What fun we had! We all headed to the best pancake house in town and spent two hours, all talking at once. Phyllis and I knew each other as college undergraduates, then roomed together in Los Angeles while I got my Master's Degree at UCLA and Phyllis worked in the theater and dated John. John was Naval ROTC, doing his active duty in San Diego.

Phyllis found this dress at a Hollywood costume shop when she was volunteering there and working for an LA theater company. She brought it home to wear to a party and it was very glam on her.

Phyllis has a kind nature and is also incredibly creative. The creative sides of each of us have always clicked and her calm nature is a wonderful influence on the hyper me.

Today, over pancakes, I told the Phyllis-John kids about the time that John drove up to our apartment from his ship in San Diego with a strange story to tell. It seems he had been the Officer of the Deck all weekend and he'd had to deal with a disciplinary problem. One of his sailors had been on shore leave and had been arrested for soliciting. Not a good thing in any case, and to make it even more interesting, the sailor was dressed as a woman and was soliciting men.

John held his head in his hands. "Oh, they don't tell you what to do about this in Officer Training," he had moaned. Thirty years later, it was funny to recall.

Phyllis and John also lived near me when I was a journalist in Washington D.C. I was there for the birth of their first child Christopher, now a successful engineer. Their daughter Annie, born just before they moved to Los Angeles, now edits a magazine in D.C. Their two younger children weren't along for this visit.

An Easter visit with Phyllis, Christopher, and Annie. I was in Los Angeles from Washington D.C. to interview the cast of the ABC show "Dynasty."

These are people I really love and, though I lost touch with them briefly during my last few years in Florida, when we reunited, it was just as if we had never parted.

Intelligent and funny, they spent two hours making me laugh as they treated me to brunch and we traded silly tales of days gone by. They've worked hard and been lucky and have succeeded in their marriage, something so rare today. What fun we'll have now that I've finally rejoined them in California, the land where anything, even happiness, is possible.


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