Day: Eighteen
Location: Judy’s House, Beavercreek, Ohio
Mileage: 2349.8

That’s right: if you look at the mileage, you will see that Penelope has not moved for a day. We drove around a little the day before to find Judy’s new Mac, but today she rests. Roger complains that I have “parked her like a woman,” which I take as a compliment, and so does she.

We spent yesterday wrestling with Windows XP and its arcane and offensive religion, but the new Mac is up and running, and we are pretty much free from the tyranny of Microsoft. Today, we worked on the wireless issue, and my big sister played the geek and troubleshot the thing herself and determined that she needed a new router. She was right, and we found ourselves on the floor switching out cables from a hub to the new router, and I thought “This is exactly what Microsoft wants: us on our knees before the stupid PC tower if we want to “think different.” Nevertheless, we managed to set up the new wireless, ensure that printing still happened from the PCs, and that the Mac was free to play.

As you may have noticed, I am constantly referring to the Marys in my life, and I have been asked off-site and off-line to sort them out a bit. I have three of them, and they are all strong, intelligent, and beautiful. They embody their sacred name in various ways, and I am honored to call them my friends and saints. I will use the term “Saint” because the Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on the term; in fact they have profaned it by making saints the outcome of a committee process not unlike tenure: two holy acts a year and a major miracle and you get sainthood. Saints are really people who bring the sacred into your life, and I hereby proclaim that the term “saint” may now be used in such a manner. Like U2 says about The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter,” I will say that “saint” is a word the Catholic Church stole from the spirtual, and I’m stealing it back. The Marys in my life are all saints and deserve a post all to themselves. Let me describe them for you in order of appearance.

St. Mary of New York
As we discovered when I was there, she is one of my oldest friends. We began as student and teacher during my first year. I was asked to read a poem at something called “Coffee Tawk,” and I decided to read Louise Erdrich’s “Christ Twin,” a poem that I am still trying to figure out. She was a reporter for the school paper assigned to do an article on the event. She asked me about the poem, and we have been talking about poetry and life ever since. St. Mary of New York is now an excellent teacher herself, and her greatest poem is Noah, a righteous man in the midst of a world that has lost its way. He will be great because his mother is great, and I’m still not sure she knows how wonderful she is. St. Mary will not kick your ass, but she is quietly strong and has a heart that is as good as any I know. She has my deepest respect.

St. Mary of Boston
Mary and I also met as student and teacher, and she has become a dear friend after her move to Boston last year. Also known as Mrs. H., she is a law student at a major university in Boston where she is learning to do the work most of us can’t do– engage the legal system in the search for justice. She may become the best lawyer in a southern state, or she might just as easily be a supreme court justice. Neither would surprise me, and remember that you heard it here first. St. Mary of Boston is strong and will kick your ass, but she’ll also cry when she sees you in pain, and will hold your hand through it all. I am proud to call her my friend.

St. Mary of Virginia
She once left a message for me that my sister had called, and I thought it was my birth sister. When I actually saw the note, it read “your redneck sister,” and I knew immediately who it was. St. Mary of Virginia is one of the two best teachers I know (the other is St. Mark of Georgia), and what she does with students is nothing short of miraculous. For example, she was telling me about a student of hers who is a bouncer in a bar and who also can’t end a sentence. He just keeps running words together until the reader gets lost. She told him to treat words like patrons in a bar; namely, he can only let a certain number in at a time or the bar will be overrun. Brilliant. St. Mary of Virginia will kick your ass too, then she’ll pick you up, buy you a beer, and give you ideas about how you can write about it. She is also fiercely loyal, and I am lucky to have her as my friend.

These women embody Patty Griffin’s song of the same name, and as Patty sings, they’re all covered in roses.

And speaking of music, check out Andy Mason’s wonderful tribute to St. Dorothy of Oz.