OF MIRACLES

He stood in the small rowboat, the eyes of the other three men fixed on him, their nets cast out into the waters. The silhouette of lush trees wave from the shore, and the setting sky erupts with color like an impressionist painting. They are showing off like fireworks and as if the sun herself anticipates the dark mouth of sister night to swallow her up: bright-orange reflecting off of the sapphire waves.
​
That was my favorite stained-glass window at church growing up. It was the most peaceful of all the pictures and the place my family sat every Sunday morning. It didn't depict angels or heavenly radiance to blind the eyes. The image didn't show miracles or figures hanging from a crucifix. It was just a group of men fishing out on the waters. On sunny mornings the window filled the shady spots between the low-lit pews with vivid color and sunlight. The sun rays would catch the dust brushed beneath the wooden benches, and it would lift and settle like pixies hovering beneath shuffling feet or trickling out the door with the wind.

Every Sunday, I would sit alongside my mother and watch the burning head of a candle dance or the haze of incense as it rises into the arch of the rafters. Everything was old, the dark wood, the chilled marble, the words, and the books that the nuns and priests carried around. When your world feels ancient, you grow up sensing a sort of magic coursing down the aisles, and whisking around the candles, and undulating with the incense.
​
From the bathroom window of our tiny middle school of two hundred children, I would watch Father Rick glide across the parking lot and enter the school building. He's tall and slim, and his body draped in black towers over us like a giant cauldron. He would look at us with his green eyes piercing us as if we were ghosts. He was an intelligent man who carried the magic from the church in his hands: he smiled, laughed, danced, and made himself human. Still, my sisters and I were intimidated by him. We would whisper in bewilderment and awe as if he were always a magician performing on a stage. How did he hover from place to place? We swore his feet never extended beyond his robes to touch the ground. What kind of shoes does a priest wear?
           
Recess was held every day around noon on the blacktop between the school and the church. Screaming, running wildly in the sun, it was thirty minutes of childish freedom before afternoon classes. Once I came about a foot from shattering the image of the fishermen while playing kickball. I got lucky. The entire grade school watched the rubber pellet, anticipating the sound of glass splitting.

The ball plunged and crashed through one of the clear windows of the undercroft just below my favorite stained glass. As if the fishermen cast out their net to guide the ball away from the boat. All I could do was watch. Waiting, standing like a ghost, I could see through my own hands
as I covered my face, praying for the ball to change its trajectory. As if the ball had a choice in the matter. I never played kickball again.