When I was 25, I took a teaching job at a small Catholic school in a beautiful mountain town in northern Arizona. I was in charge of the sixth-grade homeroom — “home” for a year to a motley band of 12-year-olds.
Educator and author Harry Wong had mapped it all out in his book that was like a Bible to me: The First Days of School. Harry and I were ready with procedures and routines — we had a prevention plan for everything. Those kids weren’t going to have a second of free time to cause trouble.
By the end of week one, they were testing me. By week two, they had dug in, getting chatty, snarky and near mutiny each day when it was time to diagram sentences. By week three, my giant bottle of multicolored Tums was two-thirds gone. One girl even called it my “teacher candy,” which would’ve been funny if she hadn’t asked me to share.
And then, something shifted. They softened. Or maybe I did, once I started joining their sweaty, cutthroat soccer matches after lunch. Either way, school — even recess duty — became energizing for me. Exhausting, but fun. I started to love them.
Friday rolled around — our first school Mass. We marched across the street in a crooked little line, the kids giddy to escape social studies. I prayed to the patron saints of good behavior. I was still the new teacher, and Sister Yolanda hadn’t so much as smiled at me. She was the head of discipline, and in her presence I was 9 years old again, waiting for her to discover that I had no idea what I was doing.
Sister was also the guitarist at Mass, which gave her a bird’s-eye view of my kids, and of me.
We filed into the pews. I clenched my teeth, scanning for poking, whispering and gum-chewing. Miracle of miracles: My kids behaved. They even bowed their heads in what could almost pass for prayer. I thought: Thank you, God, and also, thank you, Harry Wong, and the strategic seating chart.
Communion time came. The kids knew the drill. I exhaled, my body halfway in weekend mode. But that’s when I saw it: Henry, the boy whose red cheeks brightened whenever his crush walked by, pretended to put the host in his mouth, then slipped it into his pocket.
I blinked. Was I hallucinating from Tums withdrawal? Did that 12-year-old just pocket the body of Christ?
For a second, the teacher in me thought, Oh no. The troublemaker in me thought, Oh yes. And the hopeful believer in me thought, Same, kid. I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to carry Christ around in my pocket.
But Sister Yolanda’s hawk eyes had also spotted Henry mid-strum. If glares could incinerate, that boy would’ve been ash in the pew.
After Mass, I intercepted him first, in the vestibule.
“Hey, buddy. You put communion in your pocket?”
“Yeah.” His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“OK. Why?”
He darted his eyes toward heaven. “I don’t know.”
I waited. He finally whispered, “I wanted to see what would happen.”
Of course he wanted to know. Isn’t it wild that we invite kids into this seemingly ludicrous experience where a cardboard-looking wafer becomes God Almighty — cells, sinew, miracle — and then expect them to swallow the greatest mystery of all time without a question? I wanted to hug him.
“And?” I asked, my wide eyes meeting his. “Did anything happen?”
“Not really.” He started digging in his pocket. A few dozen crumbs later, plus lint and a gum wrapper, he dropped the remains of the host into my hand. His lower lip trembled.
“Oh, no. You’re fine, buddy. You’re perfect,” I said.
Right then, Sister Yolanda stormed in, guitar case swinging. “Henry Edwards. Show me what’s in your pocket.”
Henry looked to me. I offered my handful of crumbles and lint. Without missing a beat, Sister plucked the mess out of my palm and popped it in her mouth — lint and all.
We all stood in silence, processing.
Then, shouldering the weight of 12 whole years and wonderfully impossible beliefs, Henry shrugged. And maybe in that moment Heaven shrugged too, because Sister winked as the corner of her mouth curled into what might have passed as a half-smile.
The vestibule breathed with mystery, forgiveness and letting-go.
On the way back to class, Henry’s buddies elbowed him, and the girl he liked rolled her eyes his way, turning his ruddy cheeks crimson. Henry cracked a grin. “Phew.”
That night, too tired to turn off the lights in my apartment, I prayed Henry’s single-word prayer, the one that still feels like the truest I’ve ever heard, the one that sounds like the voice of God himself, like he’s effortlessly retying his shoe, unifying us all now and in the end:
“Phew.”
Kerith Mickelson teaches high school English. She lives in Phoenix.