Sin Zapato

Purification

It was a gray and rainy start to the Great Facebook Pause.

I was a bit disoriented this morning, not knowing what to do with the attention I normally place on my phone. But I kept myself from reaching for it. For hours.

At first my senses landed on sound.

Car wheels along the wet road just outside my bedroom window. A bird’s chirp in a nearby bush. The thunder of a freight train in the distance. The silence in between.

Then they landed on sight.

I read a few pages in a book I started years ago. Stared out my kitchen window. Made eye contact with a squirrel that I swear heard me call it “darling.” He hopped right over so I could watch him skillfully retrieve and repack a snack in the patch of dirt two feet away. Pat-pat-pat-pat-pat.

Then my senses landed on touch.

One moment, my hand was holding open the fridge door so I could ponder breakfast. The next, both hands were at the cutting board chopping up cucumbers and tomatoes and spinach and queso de freír. Cool, firm, leafy, spongy.

Later, I decided I needed a walk in the cool air and a visit to my local church for Ash Wednesday. In a moment of sheer genius I realized, WAIT, I can WALK to CHURCH!

Can you imagine?

And so it was that before 4:00 PM mass, I quietly made my way to St. Cecelia’s, about a 15-minute strut downhill.

No tracker. No announcement. No car keys.

Mass was full. But not as full as I knew it would be later in the evening. El Padre spoke of hypocrisy. Of humility. Of prayer and contemplation. And of purificación.

After mass ended, I knelt before Saint Thérèse, The Little Flower, and lit four candles. One for the tribe I was born into, one for the tribe I found, one for the communities I’ve lived in, and one for the world. My heart full of worry and gratitude.

While walking back home, my previous life paid me a visit. The person I was before the suburbs forced me to drive everywhere, before tech told me to record steps and strides and speed, made herself known.

Hello, sister. It’s just you now. And this ache in your legs. And a Holy Cross of dust on your forehead.

And as I tackled the uphill back home, taking breathers on those steeper spots, it occurred to me that maybe the word for this Great Pause is the one that stuck. Purificación.

“Del polvo eres y al polvo volverás.”

Amén.