{"id":90,"date":"2017-05-04T17:08:29","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T17:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-teaching-autoethnography\/chapter\/sundays\/"},"modified":"2017-05-04T18:15:54","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T18:15:54","slug":"sundays","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-teaching-autoethnography\/chapter\/sundays\/","title":{"raw":"Sundays","rendered":"Sundays"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n\r\n\u201cJillian, let\u2019s go. Time for church.\u201d For years those were my Sundays. Wake up later than expected, hop out of bed, throw together an outfit clad in a sweater and dress pants, shove a granola bar in my mouth and go. Always show up late, run in and sit next to Baba, and let the hour begin. An hour of mass weekly was not only a part of my routine, but my family\u2019s. St. Nicholas of Myra Byzantine Catholic Church was built in 1892, and my great great grandpa helped build it. Our family line had stayed there through the turn of the century. My great grandmother was raised in the church, as well as my Baba, my mom and aunt, then all the way down to my sisters and me.\r\n\r\nThe church was old, very old. It was beautiful, with icons lining the walls telling different biblical stories. Detail was found in every nook and cranny of the church. From the pew ends with wood carvings to each and every pillar lined and curved. My favorite was the ornate glass windows. There were about twenty windows. Each window had the same pattern with different colors and names. A window dedicated to every man who helped build the church. That was why we sat in the row three up from the back every week, no exceptions. That was the row that stood next to the glass window with the name JOHN YURINA FAMILY. The family name on my Baba\u2019s side. Despite all of the detail and beauty in each of the carvings or the icons or the windows, there was damage. Time had done its part. If you looked past the wall trimming in teal and brown paint the wall itself was chipping. If you looked past the windows and followed up to the ceiling, large masses like tumors formed due to water that the roof could no longer keep away. The church was beautiful, yes, but was also so hurt and damaged, in constant need of repair. But for the remaining twenty to thirty people it held during my generation\u2019s time it was still just as beloved. Just as loved as when it was full and jam packed, with aisles filled with fold out seats because it could not hold everyone. Though numbers had dwindled as the years passed it was just as loved for, and I loved it too.\r\n\r\nI had loved the church, but only the building. As we shuffled in each Sunday all I thought about was what I was doing next. Assignments due in school, friends I would see in the upcoming hours, when I could check my phone again, everything but what I should have been thinking about. Every time I was caught stuck in my own daydreams I got a squeeze of the hand.\r\n\r\n\u201cJillian Mary, stop.<\/i>\u201d We would go through the hour\u2019s routine. Pray, sing, sit, stand, Communion, kneel, sit, stand, and out we would go. We would leave and I wouldn\u2019t think about church again until the next Saturday when I was reminded to go to bed early once again. Despite my inability to sit still or focus in church, I was proud to tell anyone who asked what I practiced. Kids who would run off to CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) for the Roman Catholic Church every week would give me a confused look when I would say, \u201cYes, I am Catholic,\u201d and, \u201cYes, I was confirmed as a baby.\u201d Byzantine Catholicism is a religion that derived from Orthodox Christianity. A group of priests from the Orthodox broke off and swore their allegiance to the pope, a tradition the Orthodox had abandoned. So while we still had almost exactly the same beliefs as Roman Catholics, I took pride in our deep traditional roots to Eastern Europe and always enjoyed it when a kid in school would look at me with complete confidence and say, \u201cYou\u2019re not Catholic.\u201d\r\n\r\nThere was not just one building to my church. Right next to our church was the carriage house. The \u201creception hall\u201d for holidays and luncheons. That\u2019s when we would be excited to go to church, or better yet, get out of church. Because following church would be the best food ever.<\/i> Etta and Martha were the two Hungarian ladies in a parish of Slovaks. Rather than hide among the crowd, they shone and brought their food to the top. It was the most desired. They were truly the best chefs around. While we all sat in church, the two Hungarian sisters went to town and finished cooking the great feast they had begun preparing weeks in advance. We would get to the hall, sit in our assigned seats (usually with a temporary frown because one of our names was always spelled wrong) and we would wait. With forks in our hands and nothing in our stomachs, we would sit patiently and then not so patiently.\r\n\r\n\u201cCan we please help them? It\u2019ll bring the soup out faster.\u201d\r\n\r\nWith a reply from Baba, \u201cDon\u2019t be foolish. Sit down and put your napkin on your lap and quit shaking your leg!\u201d But alas the first course had arrived. Three carts rolled out from the kitchen, each with soup on their trays. This was not a \u201csave the best for last\u201d type of meal, because the best was certainly served first. With broth so warm and perfectly salty with noodles cut by the Hungarian sisters\u2019 hands, the soup was the best part. You always filled up with two or three bowls, as many as you could get your hands on. But it would finish and the next course would come. Chicken, pork, mashed potatoes, and cabbage all lined the tables and were eaten just as quickly as the soup. Then dessert would arrive. The lightest yet sweetest Krezchiki: a fried dough with powdered sugar sprinkled on top, it would melt in your mouth or break in your hands because it was so thin yet so delicately scrumptious. But food was only a small part of the festivities. By the time my sisters and I were born, we were one of maybe two or three families with kids in the parish. That was compared to the dozens of kids my grandma and mom had when they were our age. So with no one to really entertain us, we turned to entertain ourselves. We would explore for as long as we could in between courses or in between announcements, try to get our feet onto as many new places as we could. Each time would be a new discovery. Once we found an upstairs with an old map falling off the wall. There was a desk but the rest was empty. We took it as our own and sat on the dusty floor with cards in our hands. Another day we found an old bar. Yes, the church had had its own bar for social events. We would climb up behind it now and giggle as we ordered our cosmos and Old Fashioneds. These were measly findings compared to what we found one day. After climbing the bar and playing our cards we wanted to see more. So we kept looking. From this room to that closet, we left nothing unturned and nothing untouched.\r\n\r\nAnd then, gasp, \u201cNo way, guys check this out.\u201d\r\n\r\nWe had found a bowling alley. Not only did our church have a barren room with a map falling off the wall and a parlor with a bar inside, but a bowling alley. Just one single lane, but just as official as one at Lucky Strike or Homefield Bowl. It was a lane just as nice, or better yet, it had been. I looked at the alley and got mad and ran upstairs.\u201cBaba how could you let a bowling alley get so\u2026ruined<\/i>?! We come here every Sunday and you never thought to tell us there was a bowling alley!?\u201d I could not believe that this small church with all of its little treasures had this truly awesome<\/i> treasure, and they had let it run itself into the ground. Like time\u2019s toll on the church itself, the alley was completely unusable, boards coming up, and probably not turned on in decades.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe used to use it at coffee socials like this Jillian, but who can play now? You, Jenna and Jolie? That\u2019s it. There\u2019s no one else to play on it so there\u2019s no use in keeping it up.\u201d I knew she was right.\r\n\r\nThis was why the church was run down too. Of course the oldest things anywhere can be kept nice, look at museums with pristine artifacts dating from centuries before us. But museums had a leg up, they had money. With a diminishing parish almost all over eighty now and priests who had lost the will to bring members in, the parish was decreasing by the day. With each parish member\u2019s wake I attended as a little girl, there was no one to refill their seat. As one left, no one returned, and the numbers went down and down and down. I look at pictures of the church in black and white and see the carriage house jam packed. Tables so close together I don\u2019t understand how anyone got into their seat. But now we are small. Tables filled at these luncheons only by family members forced into eating with us, a measly attempt to look united again. But I don\u2019t know these people like Baba knew her parish. Her parish was her family, mine is just a group of eighty year olds, those who either tell me I\u2019m an \u201cAdorable little one\u201d or yell at me to, \u201cStop touching that. Don\u2019t play with that!\u201d Awkward encounters with people that I don\u2019t know as well as I should. As well as Baba knew her parish, friends she holds dear to her heart now, I don\u2019t have that. Baba\u2019s best friend today was her best friend when she was four, and now when her grandkids come and we see a desperation in their eyes for us to be friends. There is nothing, nothing to really talk about other than answering our parents\u2019 questions of, \u201cSo how\u2019s school going?\u201d It\u2019s forced. A lot of it\u2019s forced. Yes, there are some members of this church that I do consider family, those like second sets of grandparents. So when we have lost them I feel like I\u2019ve lost a grandma or a grandpa. Mrs. Lash whose wake that I attended I had cried at because I was scared for Mr. Lash, who died a few years later. Mr. Russo whose cross I still wear, it\u2019s my favorite. I get close to some but not many. The Hungarian sisters or the Valkos, but still it\u2019s not the same as Baba. My church family is quite different than hers, I won\u2019t have mine when I\u2019m the eighty year old in my parish.\r\n\r\n\u201cBaba who are those people?\u201d I whispered one day at mass.\r\n\r\n\u201cHush we\u2019ll talk about it later.\u201d So I kept turning my head and looking every so often, quite curious. Like I said, we don\u2019t get new members, and if we do they\u2019re usually another elderly couple in New York on vacation thinking that it\u2019s a Roman Catholic Church. But when we do, they don\u2019t look like these two. One in a pastor\u2019s uniform with a white band on the collar sitting next to a friend or something, but they\u2019re young, really young. So I wait until we process out of the doors, wait for mom to throw her shoes back on after another successful cantoring and look at Baba again, waiting for an answer.\r\n\r\nShe sighs, \u201cThey\u2019re looking to buy the church.\u201d\r\n\r\nThen I think out loud, \u201cWhy would anyone want a church that isn\u2019t theirs? Are they even Byzantine?\u201d I shouldn\u2019t keep pushing questions but I do. \u201cNo, we think they\u2019re Baptist, but Father Hospidar refuses to tell anyone.\u201d And then, like the bowling alley, I\u2019m mad again. I don\u2019t get how these strangers feel okay coming and taking this church from me, it\u2019s mine<\/i>. It\u2019s my family\u2019s, I\u2019m a part of the JOHN YURINA FAMILY remember? And what are they going to do when they have a mass? Ignore the three bar crosses and the icons, accept the details in the wall and the benches but not understand how old they are, or how I looked at it for an hour every week? It\u2019s not fair this is our church. Yes I\u2019m not as close as Baba is but I\u2019m there, I still like seeing all the old ladies shuffle out of church and touch my mom\u2019s shoulder to tell her she has the voice of an angel. I like to run gifts around at coffee socials. I like seeing the cats because I see the same three every time. And it\u2019s beautiful<\/i>. My church is truly beautiful. I get it, it\u2019s old and needs a lot of repairs that we can\u2019t afford but what are these new people going to do? I\u2019m sure any repairs they can afford will involve tearing down beautiful wall details and icons, and I bet when they clean up the empty room we played cards in they\u2019ll throw out the map that hangs itself up with only three corners.\r\n\r\nAs upset as I am, Baba\u2019s heartbroken. She tries everything. Petitions and e-mails to the Bishop but they do not do anything. It\u2019s simple, we can\u2019t afford repairs and these people can. We can put money into the more lucrative church at White Plains. So that\u2019s it, there\u2019s nothing we can do. So she does the next best thing, and calls the local news to come on our last Sunday. I sit in the church that day with two buttons. Two big red buttons. This was when I was in my button phase. I sewed them onto bags and wore them on my neck so I thought, what better way to leave my mark here than to hide a button somewhere that no one can find it. I hold both in my pocket the whole mass shifting the two in my thumb and forefinger. Usually I squirm and wiggle, make one bathroom trip too many anxiously waiting to leave and go back home, but not that Sunday. That Sunday I dreaded every turn of the page of the hymn book and every step up to receive communion. And as my mom sings the last song to close the mass, Baba\u2019s eyes well up with tears. I look up and mom closes her book and puts on her shoes, that\u2019s it. It\u2019s over. Baba whips out a camera trying to capture everything she can, then insists on a picture of my sister\u2019s and me at the JOHN YURINA FAMILY window. But it doesn\u2019t work, the camera\u2019s not working well with the light.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy can\u2019t we take the window Baba? They don\u2019t even know who John Yurina is!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cUncle John wanted to but I said no.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cReally why wouldn\u2019t you let him it\u2019s his grandpa too-\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat\u2019s enough Jillian let\u2019s go.\u201d I hold my buttons as we walk away. Baba\u2019s holding a tissue in one hand, holding my hand in the other, and I hold the buttons in my other hand as my eyes search frantically to stash the button. And then, I just stop. I turn back around and look into my church and then I quickly turn and walk out. What\u2019s a button going to do, either I\u2019m here or I\u2019m not. We go out and Baba gets interviewed by the news reporter. I hug Baba tight after the interview and then we drive away, drive away from the little church on Ash Street. St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church, 1892-2012.\r\n
\r\n

Discussion Questions<\/h3>\r\n
    \r\n \t
  • Why would somebody want to read this piece (the \u201cWho cares?\u201d factor)?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Can you clearly identify the author\u2019s intention for the piece?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • How well does the author support the intention of the piece? Cite specific details that support or take away from the author\u2019s intention.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Is there information missing from this piece that would make its intention clearer? What else would you like to know?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Does the author portray herself as a round character? How does she do this?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Do you trust the author of this piece? Why or why not?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • How clearly does the author establish a sense of setting\/space in this piece? Cite specific details that support your claim.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • How clearly does the author establish characters other than the self in this piece? Cite specific details that support your claim.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Did you learn anything new from reading this piece? If so, what?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Are there particular passages with engaging language\/description that stood out to you? Describe the appeal of these passages.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Would you read more writing from this author? Why or why not?<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"
    \n

    \u201cJillian, let\u2019s go. Time for church.\u201d For years those were my Sundays. Wake up later than expected, hop out of bed, throw together an outfit clad in a sweater and dress pants, shove a granola bar in my mouth and go. Always show up late, run in and sit next to Baba, and let the hour begin. An hour of mass weekly was not only a part of my routine, but my family\u2019s. St. Nicholas of Myra Byzantine Catholic Church was built in 1892, and my great great grandpa helped build it. Our family line had stayed there through the turn of the century. My great grandmother was raised in the church, as well as my Baba, my mom and aunt, then all the way down to my sisters and me.<\/p>\n

    The church was old, very old. It was beautiful, with icons lining the walls telling different biblical stories. Detail was found in every nook and cranny of the church. From the pew ends with wood carvings to each and every pillar lined and curved. My favorite was the ornate glass windows. There were about twenty windows. Each window had the same pattern with different colors and names. A window dedicated to every man who helped build the church. That was why we sat in the row three up from the back every week, no exceptions. That was the row that stood next to the glass window with the name JOHN YURINA FAMILY. The family name on my Baba\u2019s side. Despite all of the detail and beauty in each of the carvings or the icons or the windows, there was damage. Time had done its part. If you looked past the wall trimming in teal and brown paint the wall itself was chipping. If you looked past the windows and followed up to the ceiling, large masses like tumors formed due to water that the roof could no longer keep away. The church was beautiful, yes, but was also so hurt and damaged, in constant need of repair. But for the remaining twenty to thirty people it held during my generation\u2019s time it was still just as beloved. Just as loved as when it was full and jam packed, with aisles filled with fold out seats because it could not hold everyone. Though numbers had dwindled as the years passed it was just as loved for, and I loved it too.<\/p>\n

    I had loved the church, but only the building. As we shuffled in each Sunday all I thought about was what I was doing next. Assignments due in school, friends I would see in the upcoming hours, when I could check my phone again, everything but what I should have been thinking about. Every time I was caught stuck in my own daydreams I got a squeeze of the hand.<\/p>\n

    \u201cJillian Mary, stop.<\/i>\u201d We would go through the hour\u2019s routine. Pray, sing, sit, stand, Communion, kneel, sit, stand, and out we would go. We would leave and I wouldn\u2019t think about church again until the next Saturday when I was reminded to go to bed early once again. Despite my inability to sit still or focus in church, I was proud to tell anyone who asked what I practiced. Kids who would run off to CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) for the Roman Catholic Church every week would give me a confused look when I would say, \u201cYes, I am Catholic,\u201d and, \u201cYes, I was confirmed as a baby.\u201d Byzantine Catholicism is a religion that derived from Orthodox Christianity. A group of priests from the Orthodox broke off and swore their allegiance to the pope, a tradition the Orthodox had abandoned. So while we still had almost exactly the same beliefs as Roman Catholics, I took pride in our deep traditional roots to Eastern Europe and always enjoyed it when a kid in school would look at me with complete confidence and say, \u201cYou\u2019re not Catholic.\u201d<\/p>\n

    There was not just one building to my church. Right next to our church was the carriage house. The \u201creception hall\u201d for holidays and luncheons. That\u2019s when we would be excited to go to church, or better yet, get out of church. Because following church would be the best food ever.<\/i> Etta and Martha were the two Hungarian ladies in a parish of Slovaks. Rather than hide among the crowd, they shone and brought their food to the top. It was the most desired. They were truly the best chefs around. While we all sat in church, the two Hungarian sisters went to town and finished cooking the great feast they had begun preparing weeks in advance. We would get to the hall, sit in our assigned seats (usually with a temporary frown because one of our names was always spelled wrong) and we would wait. With forks in our hands and nothing in our stomachs, we would sit patiently and then not so patiently.<\/p>\n

    \u201cCan we please help them? It\u2019ll bring the soup out faster.\u201d<\/p>\n

    With a reply from Baba, \u201cDon\u2019t be foolish. Sit down and put your napkin on your lap and quit shaking your leg!\u201d But alas the first course had arrived. Three carts rolled out from the kitchen, each with soup on their trays. This was not a \u201csave the best for last\u201d type of meal, because the best was certainly served first. With broth so warm and perfectly salty with noodles cut by the Hungarian sisters\u2019 hands, the soup was the best part. You always filled up with two or three bowls, as many as you could get your hands on. But it would finish and the next course would come. Chicken, pork, mashed potatoes, and cabbage all lined the tables and were eaten just as quickly as the soup. Then dessert would arrive. The lightest yet sweetest Krezchiki: a fried dough with powdered sugar sprinkled on top, it would melt in your mouth or break in your hands because it was so thin yet so delicately scrumptious. But food was only a small part of the festivities. By the time my sisters and I were born, we were one of maybe two or three families with kids in the parish. That was compared to the dozens of kids my grandma and mom had when they were our age. So with no one to really entertain us, we turned to entertain ourselves. We would explore for as long as we could in between courses or in between announcements, try to get our feet onto as many new places as we could. Each time would be a new discovery. Once we found an upstairs with an old map falling off the wall. There was a desk but the rest was empty. We took it as our own and sat on the dusty floor with cards in our hands. Another day we found an old bar. Yes, the church had had its own bar for social events. We would climb up behind it now and giggle as we ordered our cosmos and Old Fashioneds. These were measly findings compared to what we found one day. After climbing the bar and playing our cards we wanted to see more. So we kept looking. From this room to that closet, we left nothing unturned and nothing untouched.<\/p>\n

    And then, gasp, \u201cNo way, guys check this out.\u201d<\/p>\n

    We had found a bowling alley. Not only did our church have a barren room with a map falling off the wall and a parlor with a bar inside, but a bowling alley. Just one single lane, but just as official as one at Lucky Strike or Homefield Bowl. It was a lane just as nice, or better yet, it had been. I looked at the alley and got mad and ran upstairs.\u201cBaba how could you let a bowling alley get so\u2026ruined<\/i>?! We come here every Sunday and you never thought to tell us there was a bowling alley!?\u201d I could not believe that this small church with all of its little treasures had this truly awesome<\/i> treasure, and they had let it run itself into the ground. Like time\u2019s toll on the church itself, the alley was completely unusable, boards coming up, and probably not turned on in decades.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe used to use it at coffee socials like this Jillian, but who can play now? You, Jenna and Jolie? That\u2019s it. There\u2019s no one else to play on it so there\u2019s no use in keeping it up.\u201d I knew she was right.<\/p>\n

    This was why the church was run down too. Of course the oldest things anywhere can be kept nice, look at museums with pristine artifacts dating from centuries before us. But museums had a leg up, they had money. With a diminishing parish almost all over eighty now and priests who had lost the will to bring members in, the parish was decreasing by the day. With each parish member\u2019s wake I attended as a little girl, there was no one to refill their seat. As one left, no one returned, and the numbers went down and down and down. I look at pictures of the church in black and white and see the carriage house jam packed. Tables so close together I don\u2019t understand how anyone got into their seat. But now we are small. Tables filled at these luncheons only by family members forced into eating with us, a measly attempt to look united again. But I don\u2019t know these people like Baba knew her parish. Her parish was her family, mine is just a group of eighty year olds, those who either tell me I\u2019m an \u201cAdorable little one\u201d or yell at me to, \u201cStop touching that. Don\u2019t play with that!\u201d Awkward encounters with people that I don\u2019t know as well as I should. As well as Baba knew her parish, friends she holds dear to her heart now, I don\u2019t have that. Baba\u2019s best friend today was her best friend when she was four, and now when her grandkids come and we see a desperation in their eyes for us to be friends. There is nothing, nothing to really talk about other than answering our parents\u2019 questions of, \u201cSo how\u2019s school going?\u201d It\u2019s forced. A lot of it\u2019s forced. Yes, there are some members of this church that I do consider family, those like second sets of grandparents. So when we have lost them I feel like I\u2019ve lost a grandma or a grandpa. Mrs. Lash whose wake that I attended I had cried at because I was scared for Mr. Lash, who died a few years later. Mr. Russo whose cross I still wear, it\u2019s my favorite. I get close to some but not many. The Hungarian sisters or the Valkos, but still it\u2019s not the same as Baba. My church family is quite different than hers, I won\u2019t have mine when I\u2019m the eighty year old in my parish.<\/p>\n

    \u201cBaba who are those people?\u201d I whispered one day at mass.<\/p>\n

    \u201cHush we\u2019ll talk about it later.\u201d So I kept turning my head and looking every so often, quite curious. Like I said, we don\u2019t get new members, and if we do they\u2019re usually another elderly couple in New York on vacation thinking that it\u2019s a Roman Catholic Church. But when we do, they don\u2019t look like these two. One in a pastor\u2019s uniform with a white band on the collar sitting next to a friend or something, but they\u2019re young, really young. So I wait until we process out of the doors, wait for mom to throw her shoes back on after another successful cantoring and look at Baba again, waiting for an answer.<\/p>\n

    She sighs, \u201cThey\u2019re looking to buy the church.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Then I think out loud, \u201cWhy would anyone want a church that isn\u2019t theirs? Are they even Byzantine?\u201d I shouldn\u2019t keep pushing questions but I do. \u201cNo, we think they\u2019re Baptist, but Father Hospidar refuses to tell anyone.\u201d And then, like the bowling alley, I\u2019m mad again. I don\u2019t get how these strangers feel okay coming and taking this church from me, it\u2019s mine<\/i>. It\u2019s my family\u2019s, I\u2019m a part of the JOHN YURINA FAMILY remember? And what are they going to do when they have a mass? Ignore the three bar crosses and the icons, accept the details in the wall and the benches but not understand how old they are, or how I looked at it for an hour every week? It\u2019s not fair this is our church. Yes I\u2019m not as close as Baba is but I\u2019m there, I still like seeing all the old ladies shuffle out of church and touch my mom\u2019s shoulder to tell her she has the voice of an angel. I like to run gifts around at coffee socials. I like seeing the cats because I see the same three every time. And it\u2019s beautiful<\/i>. My church is truly beautiful. I get it, it\u2019s old and needs a lot of repairs that we can\u2019t afford but what are these new people going to do? I\u2019m sure any repairs they can afford will involve tearing down beautiful wall details and icons, and I bet when they clean up the empty room we played cards in they\u2019ll throw out the map that hangs itself up with only three corners.<\/p>\n

    As upset as I am, Baba\u2019s heartbroken. She tries everything. Petitions and e-mails to the Bishop but they do not do anything. It\u2019s simple, we can\u2019t afford repairs and these people can. We can put money into the more lucrative church at White Plains. So that\u2019s it, there\u2019s nothing we can do. So she does the next best thing, and calls the local news to come on our last Sunday. I sit in the church that day with two buttons. Two big red buttons. This was when I was in my button phase. I sewed them onto bags and wore them on my neck so I thought, what better way to leave my mark here than to hide a button somewhere that no one can find it. I hold both in my pocket the whole mass shifting the two in my thumb and forefinger. Usually I squirm and wiggle, make one bathroom trip too many anxiously waiting to leave and go back home, but not that Sunday. That Sunday I dreaded every turn of the page of the hymn book and every step up to receive communion. And as my mom sings the last song to close the mass, Baba\u2019s eyes well up with tears. I look up and mom closes her book and puts on her shoes, that\u2019s it. It\u2019s over. Baba whips out a camera trying to capture everything she can, then insists on a picture of my sister\u2019s and me at the JOHN YURINA FAMILY window. But it doesn\u2019t work, the camera\u2019s not working well with the light.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWhy can\u2019t we take the window Baba? They don\u2019t even know who John Yurina is!\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cUncle John wanted to but I said no.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cReally why wouldn\u2019t you let him it\u2019s his grandpa too-\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cThat\u2019s enough Jillian let\u2019s go.\u201d I hold my buttons as we walk away. Baba\u2019s holding a tissue in one hand, holding my hand in the other, and I hold the buttons in my other hand as my eyes search frantically to stash the button. And then, I just stop. I turn back around and look into my church and then I quickly turn and walk out. What\u2019s a button going to do, either I\u2019m here or I\u2019m not. We go out and Baba gets interviewed by the news reporter. I hug Baba tight after the interview and then we drive away, drive away from the little church on Ash Street. St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church, 1892-2012.<\/p>\n

    \n

    Discussion Questions<\/h3>\n