Kitchen Tables and Altars

How spying on my mother taught me about the Eucharist.

By: Renee S. Caserta

When I was nine years old, I asked my older sisters if we could start a Nancy Drew detective agency. I had it all planned out. The tree house our dad had built in the maple would be our base of operations. From there we'd poke around searching for clues and solving mysteries. My sisters pointed out a fact that I had overlooked: Nothing remotely mysterious ever happened in our neighborhood. Undeterred, I set up my own club and began spying on them.

For weeks I followed them around, jotting down notes which, thanks to my atrocious spelling, were as difficult to decipher as any secret code. But by late fall, the bloom was off the rose, for my sisters only did boring things.

Not only that: I reluctantly conceded that they had assessed our neighborhood correctly. No one had buried stolen diamonds in our orchard. The mysterious stranger next door turned out to be Mrs. Miller’s friend from out of town. And there were no secret passageways in our farmhouse.

I was a detective without a mystery to solve. I put away my notebook, hung up my binoculars, and quit creeping around … until Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving Epiphany. Very early that morning, some impulse made me tiptoe downstairs to spy on my mother, who was already hard at work…

Comments

Special Offers

• Subscription Offers »
• Renewal Offers »
• Gift Subscriptions »