Keeping Faith by Cindy Bradford (serial 35)
PART THREE
Conquering Fears
And looking back along the past
We know we needed all the strain
Of fear and doubt and strife and pain
To make us value peace, at last…
chapter 14
Boston, December, 1976
Like the title of Eugene O’Neill’s book, Patrick’s flight home was a long day’s journey into night, both literally and figuratively. He didn’t know how he was going to break it to his parents, the quintessential Catholics, the unquestioning, undoubting followers of this doctrine. How could he explain without explaining? He would just have to do his best and leave the rest unanswered.
The week before Christmas, Patrick played the good seminarian, still acting like a student searching for knowledge in the Eternal City, just home on a holiday break.
The day after Christmas he broke the news to his parents and it didn’t go over any better than Patrick had expected. His mother cried and his father shouted. Knowing his parents thought they had failed him somehow, Patrick tried to make them understand that none of this was their fault; it was a decision he made after years of struggle.
“You have disgraced the family. What will Father Michael say?” his dad shouted. His mother wept, walking around the living room, wringing her hands. After three hours, he packed a few items of clothing and headed to his brother John’s apartment.
“Whether you agree or not, I just need a place to stay for the night,” Patrick told him, after riding the “T” to his place.
“You’re welcome here as long as you want to stay, Patrick. You’re the strong one, the knowledgeable one. I’m just a blind Catholic follower. If you tell me you quit, I respect that without question. You have obviously fought the good fight.”
“I couldn’t say it better, big brother. May I sleep on the couch?”
“You can sleep in the bed; this good Catholic boy is spending the night at his girlfriend’s house, the girlfriend who is on the pill,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “So help yourself to the beer in the fridge and watch television or whatever. If you are here tomorrow, I’ll see you about five o’clock.”
“Thanks John. I’ll not forget your help.”
“Please don’t. I may need a place someday.”
Three days later Patrick went home.
“Mom, Dad, I have to talk, so please try to listen. I’m truly sorry about all of this. I would never hurt you for anything, but I am a grown man and I’ve made a decision I can live with. I only ask you to accept it, not agree with it. I still pray to the same God as you. I would like to stay here until the end of summer when hopefully I can start my life over somewhere else. In the meantime, I need to work enough to help pay the bills.
“Oh Patrick,” his mother said, “I’m so glad you’re home. Your dad and I have talked many hours since you left. You’re right. You’re grown. You have to decide. We can’t do it for you.”
“Patrick, I apologize for the things I said. We were just shocked; your mother is right. You stay here as long as you want. We are who we are and we can’t change that, but neither can you. We will just have to accept each other’s choices.”
Hugging them both, he said, “I’m tired. I’m going to bed. I’ll go to the marina tomorrow and see if Mac has any work for me. I’ll pay my way, I assure you.”
In January Patrick wrote to the Maine Seminary for Theological Studies asking for admissions information. He had done his research and knew the teachings there were non-denominational, Protestant, with a leaning toward the Presbyterian, Congregational and Methodist churches.
In the introductory letter that he returned with his application and transcripts, he explained his background and waited.
The next two months were especially cold as he helped his old friend Mac, the lobsterman, repair traps and sand and paint the boat he had been using in the waters off Boston Harbor for well over forty years. He had missed Mac, their talks and easy banter.
“How many more years you think this boat can take the waters?” Patrick asked; glad to have on his heaviest coat as the wind whipped against him.
Not looking up, Mac answered slowly, “Eh, we’ll leave together, me and MicMac. I can’t imagine me in any other boat or anybody else with the Mic. We both have a few more good years. I guess one of us will let the other know when it’s time.”
“You think you’ll ever put a GPS in her?”
“I know these waters better than any damned electronic equipment could ever possibly know ‘em! Hell, no! When I can’t find the lobsters, I’ll quit!”
Patrick smiled. He had known Mac since he was a toddler when his dad had brought him to the docks to see the traps. That had been more than twenty years ago when Mac was in his early fifties. The crusty old salt was now even more set in his ways, weather-beaten, impatient, a no nonsense kind of guy.
Patrick was drawn to him immediately and begged his dad to take him to the docks on the weekend where he knew Mac would be. He had fished out of Gloucester for a few months and then Rockport, but he always came back. “This harbor is my home,” he would say. When Patrick was old enough, he pressed his dad to let him work for Mac in the summers and on weekends, rather than at the grocery store where his older brothers had sacked groceries. At first his dad had been unwilling, worried about the dangers, but Mac convinced him that the sea would teach the young boy to appreciate the sunrises and sunsets and the responsibilities in between. His father had liked that.
Mac was right about the sea. Patrick loved the openness and quickly gained an appreciation for it and the hard life that came with it. He couldn’t imagine working it all his life, but knew it was Mac’s whole world. As a nine year old boy Mac had worked in the processing room of the lobster cannery to help out at home. With his mother and a host of other women he picked the meat from the shells, washed it and put it in cans. When he was thirteen he joined his dad and other men in the factories where they boiled the lobsters, but he knew he couldn’t stay inside so he took the first chance he could to work on the docks.
It took him years, but he saved enough to make a down payment on a boat and christened it the MicMac after the Mikmaq Canadian Indians who had been fishing the seas before the Europeans settled in The New World. Of course, when he told the story he added that it went well with his own name. Patrick had heard his stories countless times but he never reminded his old friend of that. Besides, they somehow changed a little each time he told them. Mac wasn’t always keen on the details.
Patrick had stirred him up with his questions and now he was going to have to listen.
“I can’t imagine not going out in this boat,” Mac said with a pained look.
“I don’t see that happening ever.”
“Ayyup, you’re right. I want to be buried at sea, so I might as well make it easy on everybody and just keel over out there someday. Don’t let them look for my body; that would be a waste. I’ll be right where I want to be. Just don’t let anybody else take ole MicMac out, ‘ear?” he added, nostalgically.
“I hear you, Mac, but I figure you have another twenty years or so. Don’t be getting sentimental on me now.”
“Well, hell, I’m seventy-four years old. I can’t live forever, but I have outlived two wives, a daughter and six dogs. Not bad, ‘eh,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes. It was becoming increasingly harder to even see the exact eye color.
“You need to have your cataracts operated on if you’re going to keep going out there,” Patrick cautioned.
“Screw the cataracts. No doctor is going to take a knife to my eyeballs!”
Laughing, Patrick said, “I don’t think that’s exactly how they do it.”
By this time, the two friends were inside the shop and Mac had popped the top of a Schlitz beer. “Here, have some of what made Milwaukee famous.”
“Believe I will. Thanks.” Patrick took a gulp, “Not exactly Guinness.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers. How’s your old man taking you not going to mass?”
“He doesn’t like it, but we’ve agreed to disagree.”
“Hmm, don’t sound like a comfortable situation. He should just be glad you believe in something. Lotta men don’t. I didn’t used to, but as I get older, I do a lot more thinking. That damn old man sun don’t just come up on its own.”
“You’re right, Mac.”
“What have you heard from that fancy college up in Maine?”
Patrick grinned. “Nothing yet. I don’t think it’s very fancy.”
“Anything past sixth grade sounds fancy to me.”
That very day, his letter of acceptance to begin his master’s degree came in the mail with the extra good news that they were giving him credit for eighteen hours he had taken in Rome.