I JUST MIGHT HAVE TO PLEAD THE FIFTH

I think most people can enjoy a new movie, or a best seller, or a great play, or a visit to a remarkable and memorable place, and then go on with their normal lives.  For me it's always been different. When I was a kid and saw a great movie I'd come home with a plan to re-enact it, or create my own version of it. No sooner would I get home after one of those cowboy and Indian movies than I'd have all the kids in the neighborhood painting their faces and trying to build a wigwam in our back yard. If my Dad took me to one of those great old movies about a haunted mansion, it was only a matter of time until our garage became a spooky old castle with black bats hanging on strings from the ceiling...and me wearing a cape for the next few weeks. When my friend Susan broke her arm trying to be Godzilla on roller skates....it was kinda my fault.

After one of the trips to Veronica's veil, I came home and begged for a big cardboard theater stage thing that I'd seen in a toy store, and after I quickly discarded the puppet that came with it I started work on my own version of a Passion Play. I made a curtain from an old velvet skirt of my Mom's, and dug out a set of those big old Christmas lights, and prepared to stage my own drama. I remember my parents and my ever faithful Aunt Katie sitting on old chairs in the basement while I played my little Magnus organ, and opened and closed the curtains as tableaus of Jesus in the garden or on the cross or rising from the dead "entertained" my indulgent audience.

Although our church was actually "modern', the priest was into very traditional liturgies, and my cousin and I always had altars in our bedrooms...said Mass regularly, and of course had elaborate vestments made from pillow cases. My cousin actually had an altar boy named Paul. Paul was younger...and impressionable...and my cousin seemed to have convinced him that all of this was "real". I think I put a damper on my cousin's grand plans when he wanted me to make a visit as the Bishop. I did occasionally draw the line.

With May once again approaching, I will of course still be erecting a "May Altar"...( a nice statue of Mary...blue and white crepe paper...and lots of flowers.) I got into just a smidgen of trouble as a kid when I called our local florist and had flowers delivered and charged to my mother for my much anticipated " May Crowning". Aunt Katie was the only one who attended that year...my parents stayed away in protest.

Something about all of this has never changed for me. When I read " Brideshead Revisited" a long time ago, Lady Marchmain had her own private chapel...many of you already know how that one played out around here. When my partner and I went to Capri we stayed in a hotel whose entrance walkway was covered in giant old Wisteria...which we now have on out back walkway. I read " Gone with the Wind" when I was twelve years old...I guess that partially explains why there are three whalebone hoop skirts in our attic.

Enough for today...someone might dig some of this up...it would certainly make it easier to put me away.