Picking my nose in church horrified mother. We walked home from church that Sunday and my mother did not say one word to me. I was the lowest of the low. I knew at that moment, as a six-year old, that I would go to hell, that there was nothing I could do to alter my inexorable course to damnation.  It would henceforth be my role to be an abomination to the Lord. No matter how devout I appeared on the outside, no matter home many Hail Mary's I said, I had done the ultimate dishonor to the Lord and all the saints' statues in St. Jude's Church -- I had picked my nose while the priest was delivering his sermon. From that day forward, I knew I was on the hopeless cases for which the people prayed to St. Jude.
         It made no difference to my mother that no one had seen me do it. She had. God had. And that was that.
         On the way home, we stopped at the drugstore where she bought my brother a Chinese checker game. I got nothing. From this, I divined that my brother was worthy to be an altar boy, but I could never profane a sanctuary with my foul presence. He could snuff candles with the long-handled stick. If I were particularly favored, one day, if I had a dime, I could light a votive candle in the back of the church for some unworthy intention, like a petition to pass a test or to get a date for the dance.
         At an early age, I missed the piety to qualify for the convent, although it was common knowledge that the convent was a good way to guarantee holiness and avoid the pitfalls of the world. This knowledge did not prevent me from raising my hand during vocation week to choose marriage as my chosen state.
         I horrified my mother again at age thirteen when I lied, telling her there was no school, that it was a free day to stay home to study for examinations. Posing as the good girl, I chose to study religion. I was spread across my bed, reviewing my religion textbook when the phone rang. The nun asked my mother why I wasn't in school today. Soon I was on my bike, pedaling to school for the retreat I had hoped to avoid that day. Sitting in church, listening to a priest speak on emergent adolescent sexuality was not my idea of the path to knowledge. Frankly, the priests and nuns bored me in those days, so did church, a boredom that first manifested itself when I picked my nose in church at age six. My path lay before me.
         Mother mellowed out -- probably as I would do, but not until way after she died, for at age nineteen I was marching on Washington. She calmly said nothing -- if it could be said that anyone calmly kept quiet. She smiled as if there was a certain satisfaction about her knowledge that I was doing what I wanted to do and there was nothing she could do about it -- I was over age eighteen -- out of her hands and what I did or didn't do was clearly my own responsibility.
         But when I brought Jake back with me from Washington, she did appear a little bit rattled. I could tell by the slight twitch around the left side of her mouth and her sidelong glance at his woven South American shoulder bag. Jake was the image of the mountain man -- the Davy Crockett, minus the coonskin cap, I revered in my girlhood days. Instead, he wore an Indian beaded band around his forehead and his long black hair was tied in back with the rubberband he had borrowed from me. His army issue jacket with Che Guevara stenciled on the back did nothing to endear him to my mother, nor the sandals conspicuous for the black toe hairs that they revealed. I had to hand it to mother. She comported herself in the manner to which I had become accustomed; namely, drawing in her breath, buckling in her chin and being the perfect hostess for the three days we stayed with her. Even when we sat cross-legged, muttering mantras by the glow of the lava lamp on my bedroom floor, my mother said nothing. Only in the mornings, I saw a big red "X" marked on the calendar for one day closer to our departure for Champaign.
         If patience is the chief attribute of a saint, my mother qualified; in fact, she was over-qualified for Paradise.
         When Jake and I bopped down to breakfast and Jake announced, "Thanks for the hospitality, Mrs. Enright. We have to head back to Champaign today. Wish we could stay longer, but my mother always said that guests stink after the third day." I knew what my mother was thinking: "You stunk on the first day," but I didn't say anything. Just noted the pleasure in her eyes as she served up generous portions of blueberry pancakes for breakfast.
         That wasn't the last time I horrified mother. After a while, I think she ceased being horrified with me. I think it maybe was after Clyde the drummer, or was it after Calvin the stockcar race driver? When I brought James, the mortgage home loan broker, home with me from San Francisco, where I had gone looking for a bright future after graduation with a degree in Political Science; mother smirked and thought I had finally met someone who could shape me up.
         She said, "Kathy, don't screw this one up.  Try not to horrify him. He'll give you a good home, if you play your cards right."
         Pop had died before I knew him. Mother had to support two kids alone, so security was a big issue with her. She didn't realize the reason James was interested in me at all was because I was different. I didn't give a shit about money in the bank. He found that refreshing for some odd reason. At least he knew I wasn't a golddigger like the rest of his girlfriends. But more than that, I wasn't boring. Imagine, he hadn't been on a motorcycle before he met me and done the coast? He hadn't even slept on the beach. Little me from the cornfields of the Midwest had to teach him how to have fun. Take the starch out of his shirt.
          I couldn't convince James to bike from the coast to the Midwest, stopping at parks to camp on the way. He said he was not going home with me unless we booked a flight on an airline. We could rough it when we got there if we wanted to in my backyard. I was smart enough to know when to relent. There's only so far you could push a man to change. Besides, James was paying for my ticket.
         Mother put us up in my old bedroom. I could see she was trying to act natural about it -- part of her use of psychology -- like her trying to talk hep. It was the tightening around the jaws that gave her away. Immediately, she started to butter up James, telling him what a talented child I had been, that is, until college, when I went berserk with the rest of them, but that was peer pressure and she could forgive me, especially now that I had settled down into a good job. Good job, my eye, licking stamps in a political action office!
         "Kathy really is a good cook when she wants to be. She makes a mean goulash. And her oatmeal cookies are out of this world."
         "Mother, I haven't made oatmeal cookies since the sixth grade."
         "That's something you never forget." She turned to James. "Being a bachelor you must eat out a lot."
         "Not really. I do a lot of Chinese cooking. I like that. I've made oriental meals for Kathy. She's taught me a few things, too."
         "Well, that's nice. Kathy, I'm sure, can show anyone how to have a good time."
         "Oh, mother. So I was a little wild. Ya only live once. If I had been born in California, I would have been a hell's angel. Lucky for you I'm just a Midwestern hippie girl who smoked a little pot once in a while."
         "Once in a while? You were growing it in your room!"  She turned to James for sympathy. "I bet you didn't smoke pot, James?"
         "I'm afraid we all tried it at one time or another."
         "You seem to have your act together."
         "My father had the job waiting for me at the bank when I graduated. Took me five years but I did. All I had to do was graduate. My father is very conservative -- a California Ronald Reagan man. My dabbling in the activist movement, I'm afraid, was only youthful rebellion against parental authority.  Basically, I believe in fiscal responsibility and individual effort to effect social change."
         That's when mother and James got into a long discussion of the State of the Union and I began to yawn. I left them discussing welfare reform to take a long walk. It turned out to be a longer walk that I expected, because I ran into some old school friends at the shopping mall and we ducked into Burger King. They were all ears about my California experiences. Trudy had gotten herself pregnant by her college boyfriend and was married to him. She was toting the plump two-year old on her hip. Maggie was in her first year of teaching fourth grade at the local elementary school. Trudy invited us all back to the new three bedroom ranch with attached garage she and her husband had just bought. One thing led to another, talking about old times, looking at old school pictures, that I didn't get back home until late in the evening. I found a note on the dining room table: "James and I got tired of waiting for you. He insisted upon going to the Chicago Symphony tonight. I know it's a bore for you, so we went."
         I opened the refrigerator, got out a can of pop, poured some chips in a bowl and selected a horror movie to watch. I dozed off before the movie was over, awoke later and went to bed. I didn't even hear James crawl in beside me early in the morning. When I awoke and sat up in bed, he was till konked out. I threw a bathrobe around me. As the water rushed over me in the shower, the thought occurred to me that a landmark had been reached in our relationship. This was the first night I had shared a bed with James that we had not made love. I chuckled, thinking it was the effects of being back in the childhood home. Some of the sobriety of the place was bound to rub off on the two of us. Was the feeling that mother is watching me beginning to bother me? I doubted it. I still felt the same way about her. She could watch all she pleased. I did damn well want I pleased. Always had and always would. I dried myself off with one of mother's lush, sweet-smelling towels, dressed and went downstairs, to none else, but mother's world-famous blueberry pancakes.
         "Where's James?  Still sleeping in from the late night out?"
         "You got it," I plopped down in a chair. "How was the concert?" I asked, not really caring to hear about it as I hungrily attacked the first pancake.
         "Oh, Kathy, you have a gem there! He is such a refined gentleman . . . so knowledgeable . . . so good-looking . . . so fun to be with!"
         I put the second half of my pancake down. I was getting indigestion. "yeah, you think he's so wonderful?"
         "Yes, Kathy. He was so interested in everything. Wanted me to explain all the sites downtown. Asked questions about everything. Everything excited him . . . State Street, Michigan Avenue, Buckingham Fountain."
         "I'm glad you had a good time. In San Francisco we did The Doors concert. He seemed to like that too."
         "He's a man of varied tastes."
         "Apparently."
         I gulped down some orange juice and excused myself. "I'll go see if I can get him out of the sack, then we're going to cruise over to Trudy's."
         I measured from that morning my increasing boredom with James. He obviously didn't like my school chums. He stayed up talking to my mother every night about of all things -- politics. I got bored and went to smoke a joint in my bedroom before I fell asleep. I began to count the days until we could split for California. As soon as I got back, I would inch my way out of this relationship but quick. Anyone who could get along that well with my mother was not for me. What did I ever see in the guy in the first place? Maybe it was my holy crusade to get some life into that guy. To show him how to have some fun. Not be so straight-laced. I supposed it was one of those causes I joined to save this or that. How could anyone be so boring when there was so much excitement in the world, there were so many fights to be fought, peace to be won, the hungry to feed and the bastards to be kicked out of Washington. Where was his head wasting time talking to my mother -- who wasn't going to change -- ever, ever?
         Two nights before we were to leave, I blew up. I was feeling horny and took a running leap at James while he was sleeping. He swung at me. I hit back with a pillow. Then all hell broke loose. "What's wrong with you?" I shouted. "We haven't had any for a week. You may not need any, but I do. I demand my rights. It's all right when you want to, but when I do, that's a different story."
         "Kathy, I don't feel like it. Just leave me alone."
         "That's strange. You felt like it morning, noon and night in California. Change in climate affect you? Not enough sun?  Lack of vitamin C? Maybe you should check yourself into an impotency clinic."
         "No, it's not that."
         "What is it then?"
         "Nothing. I'll get over it."
         "I hope so, or I'll just get over you." I rolled over his body to my side of the bed and turned my back to him. I didn't hear another word out of him. In fact, we hardly spoke a word or two more to each other for the next two days. when I awoke the morning of our intended departure, he was not in bed beside me. I sat up in bed. The house felt uncannily quiet. I got out of bed. I opened the bureau drawer. All James' things were gone. I opened the closet door. His clothes were gone and his suitcase had disappeared from the floor. I ran to the bathroom. His shaving kit was gone from the counter.
         "Well, I'll be," I thought. "He must have everything packed and ready to blow this joint downstairs," I sought to reassure my racing mind. I went downstairs, peeked into the kitchen where I expected to see mother and James over a sumptuous breakfast. It was empty, neat as a pin, not a cup or saucer out, no coffee perking. I went into the living room and looked out the picture window. A large Winnebago camper was pulling away from the curb and heading up the elm-lined street to the west. I turned away and returned to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee and think this thing through. I didn't have to think long. I found the explanation taped to the refrigerator door with the airline tickets to San Francisco.
         I've recuperated from the initial shock. I'm back in San Francisco living with a psychic healer and astrologer who operates an occult bookstore on the Embarcadero. James and mother are occupying the house on Elm Street in suburban Chicago. James got a good job at the Harris Bank downtown after mother and he returned from their jaunt in the Winnebago camper he had bought for the purpose. They drove into the sunset, toured all the states west of the Mississippi, married at the Chapel of the Bells in Las Vegas and then returned via Montana and the Dakotas to Illinois. To say the least, at first I was horrified by mother's behavior, then grateful she had taken James off my hands. He was such a bore!