Our Lady of Manoa

Raising kids can stir up things I thought were buried. I had a conversation recently about relationships in grade school and how they form us forever. About memories that don’t leave us and how we hold people hostage without even knowing it, without realizing what we can let loose.

Here is a prose poem I wrote, not exactly about a true event but how I remember some days in early grades, about alliances, and betrayals.

Our Lady of Manoa

It was early and we were young.

We were the Sacred Heart Manoa Crusaders (some of us more than others).

Playtime was ending but

We still smelled like fresh air and hot asphalt.

We were inside removing our spring jackets...white cotton members only, blue denim, red and white sweatshirts displaying which athletic way we crusaded, or didn’t,

I remember the smell like a shot or a smack but it was just A. walking up the aisle. I thought she had a pebble in her shoe.

She was standing off balance, half shoeless in front of the bronze Virgin Mary statue with the serpent and the roses. She smiled at first, then turned to us.

Her beautiful handwriting didn’t matter,

her straight a’s,

her holy parents couldn’t save her.

It didn’t matter how immaculate she was, or that she was normally, a goody two shoes.

No one will ever let you forget

The stuff that clings to you

Even though it wasn't your fault.

We still called it dog poop except for the one kid, Joe, (isn’t it always) who was brave enough to call it what it was, to say THE word.

Joe always thought he knew things first and would, that same year, tell us his definition of an orgasm, too. He was full of shit but never got caught.

Mrs. S. knew everyone and was the teacher we get when there is still a chance to be good. She could have so easily joked that her sole smelled like “roses, roses...it’s ok...” Only she didn’t. She was quietly incensed and I never knew why.

I know A. as an adult and I’m telling you she never stepped out of this moment.

Were we the reason she never grew out her hair?

I thought of creating a closed Facebook group to absolve her publicly of this image, and ask any other other crusader out there, holding me stuck and off balance from thirty years ago, to do the same for me. Not reunion, release.

Later, I read about an ancient civilization, Minoa, like our little neighborhood. There was a statue these Minoans produced, a snake goddess, earth goddess, dark, bare breasted, proud, defiant (the things Joe would have said about her).

I don’t know what else has remained from that time.

Doesn’t something have to last for it to become ancient?

I wish we little Manoans would have learned more about who made this girl.

We were early, too, but young.

She doesn’t need us to release her,

We must let ourselves become ancient,

To see what lasts of us.