Musings on the Rosary and Our Lady
by Annie Callan
As dusk cloaked the sky in shades of sapphire blue, and the moon rose, night after night, our voices settled into the steady whispers of the blessed. We had rows over whose prayers had more heft; it seemed that every request we presented to the Lady on High was answered, and in record time. We took extra care in composing our outdoor shrine, centerpieced by Santos, Betty's well-worn statue of Mary. Santos comes from the Philippines and has a broken arm, which may, I sometimes muse as I stare at Mary's beautiful son cradled on her good shoulder, stem straight out of her huge, shattered, holding heart. Betty says if our house ever caught fire, Santos is the one item she would fight to save. Not her son's presidential scholar photos; not the love letters penned by her beloved dead husband, Jack; not her antique desk. Santos is Her Lady, and by extension, she becomes mine.But for all my Hail Marys, I know next to nothing about her. I remember the Marian procession in June through our parish in Dublin, the tattered communion dress and yellowing socks I squeezed into year after year, singing off-key plaints to the Star of the Sea; I travel back to the May Altar at school, where all the Mystical Rose got from me year after tired year was a load of lilac stuffed in a glass jar. I recall the nights spent round our family kitchen table, on our knees, all eight of us, racing each other to heaven. How my father barked out his orders: You give this decade out, Paul, Anne, Mary, David, Frank... Giving it out, we called it, our pleas to the heavens. When did I give up?
The last and maybe only time I remember really communing with The Grand Dame was a busy Dublin Saturday afternoon, also a year ago last summer, when I was home for a brief visit. The streets were exploding with tourists, and I sought refuge in the sanctuary of St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street. Our Lady's porcelain image was alight with the glow of blue votives; I lit one more and invoked her, and I remember how a serene ease settled over me, a flutter of silk, the closest I may have ever been to what is called peace.
Two days later, I was rammed over the skull by a load of flying wood and knocked into the middle of next year. I forgot all about Our Lady in those dark days of recovery in Ireland, though I prayed and prayed hard to the blank ceiling. Yet it was that blow to the head that eventually led me to the landlady I so dearly love back in Oregon, and whose abiding faith has kept us both going. I had to forsake my rustic houseboat on Multnomah Channel north of Portland for a more hospitable home. During the first months spent healing in the concrete jungle of Dublin, a kind of desperate petition had risen on my lips: Take me back to the garden, please take me back to the garden. Soon as I set foot in Betty's verdant oasis half a world from Dublin, I knew I'd come home.
Betty laughs easily. For my first months I lay virtually paralyzed on my back in her basement, and the swell of her laughter would seep down the air vent and flow over me in welcome waves, just as the lullaby of my father's laugh back in Dublin, the chant of his litanies downstairs, would weave a path heavenward past me in my healing bed: familiar sounds the world over, of life and love, that I could still believe in and cleave to.
"Hide me while I heal": Wise words from the venerable Oregon poet and author, Kim Stafford. I tape them to my fridge. For months, Betty is the only living creature I see -- her and the flowers and trees, the rich earth and sky. The lure of our communing drives me night after night to the sun porch, which transforms itself into a moon porch as we pray. Rosaries are little roses, Betty explains, and I lament the hundred pairs my father shipped to me over the years. In fat manila envelopes they arrived, carefully wrapped inside our parish newsletter and leaflets on how to become a nun. After my accident, which was its own rehearsal for death, I felt impelled to shed the old life; it wasn't mine anymore, but a long-ago myth. I gave everything away, including the glitter of beads that had made jewelry boxes of my cupboards.
Betty insists we take a pilgrimage to Mount Angel Abbey, so I can buy myself a decent pair of rosary beads. I've been using Indian Mala, a similar but larger strand of prayer beads, only it's not divided into decades, so I would keep losing my count and butchering our rhythm by interrupting to ask how many I had given out. In the abbey store, I find a perfect pair of gleaming blue beads, and we are both satisfied. Betty is a two-fisted prayer -- she uses her mother's ivory beads in her left hand and her beloved Jack's in the other. They are forever getting tangled as she lets the twins of her hands collapse into their own sweet unity by about the fourth decade, and I have to challenge my eyesight to unravel them by moonlight.
Our prayer sessions grow longer and longer, sometimes past midnight down to the candle's tapered wick we burn, asking The Lady Upstairs for help and more help. Even though I don't feel a personal intimacy with her, I'm not shy about eliciting clemency for those who aren't in a position to ask. At Betty's age, many of her friends are ailing; we add each one to our list. Sometimes our litany of requests stretches for a half hour: Betty's son John, who's recovering from a stroke; her dear niece in Colorado paralyzed after a student ran her down by mistake. We pray for Betty's ailing knees and her cholesterol levels; she prays for my back to reassemble itself the way it used to be, for my head to heal, for my brother's exams, her blind friend, the wounded tree up on Riverdale Road. In this way, I get to know her people and she mine.
Then September 11 erupts, and America collapses into rubble. Betty's lovely face is darker than I've ever seen as she pulls out her literature on the power of prayer, among them the prophecies of Nostradamus. She shares Our Lady's prescription: Fast and pray. Pray and fast. But I am a descendant of famine; I crave food, especially in these uncertain times, and I turn my back, or stomach, on half of her formula. We keep praying, stubbornly stepping up our inventory. The Comforter of the Afflicted must be worn out.Over the months, Betty's only brother, Baird, is seized by his imploding heart. He is hospitalized. For a string of weeks, almost relentlessly, one more friend of Betty's passes on. Then Baird himself dies. We find solace in our tears and prayers, comfort in shared words and held hands, sometimes in just staring at the dark.
Rummaging for gifts at the cusp of Christmas, I come across a large portrait of the Virgin. Her tiny head tilts a little sadly to the left, her porcelain skin looks like glass, but her eyes are steady, fathomless pools, and I fall into them. I purchase her, as much as something as priceless as the Madonna can be bought, and she finds a comfortable home in the back seat of my car. Over time, I find myself chatting amiably to her as you would to a passenger on the freeway of life. I tell her my day's troubles, small triumphs, and she listens -- what choice has she? - as I ramble. I keep meaning to hang her on my wall, but I like her where she is, even when other passengers tilt their brows at the Beatific Bride in the back. She becomes a lucky charm and never once questions my choice of music. I compliment her on that. I've driven many a decent person out of my car for want of peace and calm.
On Christmas Eve, I decide to sleep out in the garden and be the first to welcome Jesus into life. Betty is charmed by the idea; we imbibe our nightcap of strung beads before she tucks me into my padded sleeping bag with an extra hot water bottle. I wake to a delirium of birdsong and clouds and then, O glorious mystery -- the sun's ascent, swaddled in streaks of crimson gold, ravishing the horizon.
The monk Blathmac had an intimacy with Mary that I envy. He spoke to her easily: "Your fair renowned Son, O Mary, was warm in kin-love." As was she to many of my tribe. When people were leaving home in that long exodus out of famine-wracked Ireland, it was to Mary that they turned for succor on their uncertain journey.
Even though I abandoned her, Betty still swears it was an angel's master plan to bring us together; she throws me a tea party to celebrate the anniversary of my moving in. She invites her dear friend Sue from across the street; I sit on the settee sipping tea from Betty's delicate cups as she serves up her baked fineries.
