He'll be sorry now

By Felix Carroll

The evening was moonless and foggy, as you would want such an evening to be. The stained-glass saints had faraway eyes, as you would wish saints not to have. And the church door was heavy, and it slammed behind us medieval-style, just as a child would fear.

The heavy-handed imagery ends there. But it would have been really great if a raven looked on from a dead tree branch unable to mind its own business. Better yet, I'd have welcomed helicopters circling overhead, casting searchlights blindly and aggressively.

But we had the fog, the backlit saints and the medieval door that could hold its own against a battering ram, and why ask for more? Really, for parents escorting their 8-year-old boy on a perp walk to his first confession, we had hit the jackpot.

His First Holy Communion is later this month. Confession is a prerequisite. We brought him to our parish church beside a river that swerves out of town like a getaway car. Despite what he might have wished, the white smoke of the chimney-topped town did not signify the election of a new pope who would nullify the requirement of confession.

He was going. That was that.

Up the wintry sidewalk we went, a sidewalk lightly sprinkled with salt. Hey, wasn't Lot's wife transformed into a pillar of salt during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? Can't we add that to the heavy-handed imagery? Yes, of course we can!

All that was left now was for our boy's teeth to start chattering, for the priest to call him into the confessional with a crooked finger and for our boy to be repentant as each of his sins was named and dislodged from his soul like the barnacles of a boat brought to dry dock. Minutes later we'd fetch him and maybe tussle his hair and maybe marvel at his state of grace.

And maybe when we would ask him how it went, he would answer, "Wonderfully. After all, Father and Mother, ours is a God of mercy, and I now fully understand my special covenant with the Lord."

It doesn't work that way, of course. Still, in our preparation for his first confession, a grand opportunity presented itself to give more than passing consideration of our personal favorite of the Ten Commandments: "Honor thy father and mother." He's a thoughtful, loving, funny little widget, but sometimes he's, um, (can I say "a jerkface"? No? OK, then ... ) difficult. I had taken to pulling up an image on the computer of Moses and his two stone tablets. "Look, it's right there," I said to him. "It's a commandment from God!"

To any parents out there taking notes, this tactic has its most powerful positive impact when coupled with a shrug and saying, "Hey, I'm with you, good buddy. This isn't my idea, this whole thing about honoring our fathers and mothers. It's kinda stupid, huh? But a rule is a rule, right? And there's always the other option of burning in the fires of hell. Anyway, you want ice cream?"

Other than the Fourth Commandment, he earns passing grades on the other nine. (He hasn't revealed any signs he's a budding criminal mastermind. For one thing, he leaves his fingerprints everywhere. The only thing he's killed is his Blue Bear. He certainly doesn't covet his neighbor's goods. The only goods his neighbor has worth noting is a gray-haired golden retriever named Nelson, and Nelson is an idiot. And I'll ignore those two days when he continually marveled at how "Cheez-Its!" sounds so incredibly like "Jesus!")

Last Wednesday evening was D-Day. He had memorized the Act of Contrition. He had plenty of things to confess. God, his mother and I had him surrounded. And, not for nothing, he's always been intrigued by heavy-handed imagery.

"You're going to tell Father Murphy everything, right?"

"Yep."

"The yelling at Mommy?"

"Yep."

"And you saying that you want pasta and being served pasta and not eating the pasta and getting mad about the pasta?"

"Yep."

"It's the yelling at Mommy that drives us bonkers."

"I know."

"We love you."

From the church vestibule we stepped from darkness to light, from coldness to warmth, from metaphor to metaphor. He lined up with his classmates. One by one they visited with Father Murphy. One by one they exited and solemnly returned to the pews, knelt and prayed. When our boy emerged from the confessional, he looked at me squinting and with a goofy half-smile that seemed to say, "Are you pulling a fast one on me?"

Still, he knelt and prayed with the rest of them.

Mission accomplished.

The helicopters now circle the sins of the father.