29 June 2024, Solemnity of Ss. Peter and Paul
I’ve been thinking of this sabbatical year in phases. After my decompression weeks with Bob and Ellen in Hillsborough, there was Phase I in Asia, India sandwiched in between Singapore and Malaysia. Then there was the fantastic month retreat in Los Altos at the Jesuit retreat house, Phase II. Then Phase III, an intense period of work and travel May through mid-June––Tucson, Washington, recording in Portland, and the three retreats in Minnesota. I’m now in Phase IV––visiting family and friends.
I met my older sister who flew in Minneapolis Monday June 17, and we whisked our way through the night to Spooner, Wisconsin, where my brother-in-law owns and has beautifully renovated a couple of cabins on the shore of Lake Trego, a property that has been in his family for some 60 years now and where he spent his summers growing up with his cousins from Racine. My younger sister had flown in from Arizona in time for Father’s Day with her 12 year-old son Aeson and our Mom (a welcome last minute addition to the plan), and everyone waited to greet us as we arrived a little after 11 PM. And then we had three full days together, doing what families do: we were out on the motorboat on the lake a few times, Aeson was fishing a lot with his Dad and Auntie PJ, Mom and I went to Mass twice in town, we all went out for pizza one night and breakfast at the local EconoMart one morning (Aeson, who loves the place, convinced us by stating that it would be “under $10!”), movies on NetFlix. I sat in the corner and played the guitar a lot while other things were going on and got in a couple of nice runs. My birthday was Wednesday, and they treated me like a king all day, special breakfast and little gifts, carrot cake, etc. I don’t remember the last time or ever spending my birthday with my family. It was great fun and just long enough. Everyone but Steve left together on Friday.
We first stopped in Edina, outside of Minneapolis, to see Mom’s brother and sister-in-law for breakfast at the Original Pancake House and a quick visit. They have been going through a lot of trauma due to illness in their family lately so it was good to catch up with them. Even though they are not blood relatives of PJ and I, we did spend some significant time with them when we were in high school but have not had much contact with any of them in the last 40 years or so.
And then began my Amtrak Rail Pass adventure. I used some of my air miles to book a night in a hotel right across the street from the train station in Saint Paul. That felt like a real luxury. As much as I love my family, it was nice to have an afternoon, evening and morning to myself, with a gym and free breakfast! The first leg of my journey was from Minneapolis-Saint Paul to Chicago. Saturday night I was the guest of. Rory Cooney and Teresa Donahoo, my old friends through music as far back as 1981 in Arizona. Rory is a very successful composer of liturgical music and has now been at St. Anne’s Parish in Barrington, IL, for over 25 years. When I told him that I was coming to the Chicago area and that I wanted to see him and Teresa, he invited me to preach and preside at Mass there that Sunday. And so, I did. Both Rory and I find it very moving, to celebrate Eucharist together in that way, with him doing music and me preaching. It rings all kind of bells, emotions, and memories. And the people were very appreciative.
Then, my oldest friend in the world at this point, Fr. Tony Taschetta, picked me up from Barrington and whisked me off to Wheaton IL where he lives. Tony was my spiritual director in high school and has remained a friend ever since 1973. He is now retired and living in the house he grew up in, in Wheaton. He also has legally adopted one man, who has a wife and three children of his own now; and informally adopted the wife of another one of our high school classmates, and their kids as well. So, unusually for a priest, he is luxuriating in his grandfather years. He has also semi-adopted two young priests of the diocese, one of whom he brought up from Mexico several years ago. He and I basically had one big activity for each day. Monday we had lunch with those two priests at the house of the one, named Scott, who had actually made retreat at New Camaldoli, where we had met some years back. They laid out quite a spread and we spent a good many hours there with them. Tuesday we met two schoolmates of mine from high school, at a nursing home in Naperville, IL, one of whom is a priest of the Diocese of Joliet and the other one pretty much retired and in very frail in health. The occasion was to visit with our former rector, 91 year-old Fr. Dan Stempora, who had a stroke recently and is now in that nursing home. I seldom engage in nostalgia, really. But when we were all together, we did what people do who haven’t seen each other much in 40 years or so––we talked about the past, particularly our high school years. It was fun and kind of funny at the same time. Oddly enough, they didn’t ask me much about what has been going on with me these years. Not sure they would have understood it much anyway.
On Wednesday, Tony loaned me his car and I did indulge in quite a bit of nostalgia. I plotted it out carefully and did my research on the map, since the whole area has changed so much. I first went to Plainfield, IL, where we lived after dad got remarried from 1972 to 1976. That’s where we lived when Dina was born. And then I went by Plainfield High School, where I only spent one horrible year, 1972-73, but my older sister spent three full years. It took me quite a while to admit the fact that I got bullied pretty bad that year. I guess I was afraid of how weak it would make me look. I also stopped at our old parish, which got destroyed by a tornado some years ago. (It was an ugly church anyway! But thanks be to God, no one got hurt.) All this while I was texting my mom and my sisters and sending them photos.
Then I drove from Plainfield down into Romeoville, where we had lived from 1960 to 1972. That’s where I lived all throughout grade school. So many things happen in those years, the 1960s––President Kennedy’s assassination, the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in 1968, the moon landing, baseball games every summer morning after my paper route. And of course, that's where my mother died in 1970, an event that changed the whole trajectory of my life, and that of everyone around me too. In the old days you had to drive through miles and miles of cornfields to get from Plainfield to Romeoville. Now they are separated only by about a mile. I didn’t recognize anything of the outskirts of Romeoville, but it was very touching as soon as I turned on to 135th Ave and then turned left on Belmont and saw the old Westview Junior High––everything just looked like it did in 1967. I drove past our little tiny house on Glen Ave., up and around the neighborhood, down past Saint Andrew’s School and Parish where it all got started––where I started playing guitar at Mass at 10 years old, where my current stepmother was Sr. Angelo (and then Sr. Sandra, the first “nun” we saw with a modified habit) who lived in the convent there; and Fr. Frank Hughes lived in the rectory there, who became a very close friend of our family and was also my inspiration for just about everything when I was 10 years old, so much so that they called me “Little Frank.” (I also saw the 7 Eleven where I had my first Slurpee, if that’s of any interest to anyone.)
From there, of course, I went up to the cemetery, just outside of the village, to visit our mother’s grave. In the weeks after she first died, when I was 12 years old, I used to walk up there and slip under the chain link fence to sit at her graveside, when all the flowers were still rotting on top of the grave. (Earlier I had also driven past the spot where Dad and Frank let my sister and I know that “Mommy’s not coming home anymore.”) I was remembering more than grief or sadness, I was just overwhelmed by the whole thing, something like a mixture of awe and fear, or that place where awe and fear are the same thing. As Tony used to say, “I had no categories for that” at that tender age.
One thing was surprising and very moving. Frank left the priesthood and married a woman named Cathy, who we were also very close to in the intervening years, my teenage years. As a matter of fact, I sang with Cathy and Frank a lot. Cathy died of lupus in 1977 and I had forgotten (or never knew) that since Dad re-married and moved to Florida with Mom he had given his plot next to my mother to Frank so that Cathy could be buried there. So I had a long talk with the two of them, wished them well, and asked for their prayers for this next phase of my life. I can hardly believe that I am now 40 years older than either one of them ever achieved.
The highlight of that little trip, then, was going to Saint Charles Borromeo College Preparatory Seminary High school, just down the road from Romeoville, which I attended the last three years of high school. That phase really did set the trajectory for the rest of my life. It ceased being a seminary some 40 years ago, and then it was taken over by the diocese as their Chancery office. Then it was bought from the diocese by Lewis University, which is basically the same property, or else to say we were a little corner on their property. I have to say, in spite of having some hard years in high school, like everyone, I absolutely loved my experience at Saint Charles and have absolutely no regrets of going there. So that was a very tender visit. I am happy to say that Lewis University has done a very good job of adapting the place to their needs. It's their Business School now. They even left the Chapel pretty much intact, though they use it more as a hall now. They just removed the big altar and put in lots of acoustic panels. The pews with their kneelers, the organ, everything’s still there! I was remembering the spot where I was trying to read The Divine Milieu at 15 years old. It’s a great space, and I was very happy to be there again with all kinds of tender memories. I really want to do a concert there someday. The acoustic is amazing.
Then I stopped at Saint Procopius Abbey in Lisle, IL. I had been in their beautiful, austere modern church several times when I was in high school because we sang there for big diocesan events. But I didn't remember much about the place, and I of course had never seen the cloister. I consequently a few years back met Brother Gregory Perron when we served on the board of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue together, and we’ve kept in touch ever since. He gave me a full tour. I did remember the church pretty well, but I was so impressed by the rest of the architecture of the place. It’s just beautiful, austere but warm. Like many monastic communities, that community is really struggling right now. Of course, they’re aging like all of us, and there are very few vocations, but in addition to that they’re very young abbot suddenly resigned recently. That day happened to be the day when he drove off the property. Not surprisingly, Gregory and I had a very good conversation about the future of monasticism, as well as about inter religious dialogue.
That night Tony hosted his adopted son and his family for dinner, as he does most Wednesday nights. It was so interesting to see Tony in grandfather mode! And the next day he and I took the commuter train into Chicago for a day of sightseeing. We didn’t stay long at any one place, but we did walk many miles. It’s a great walking city. Right along the Chicago River to see all the great architecture that lines it, into Millennium Park to see the Gehry Bandshell and “the Bean,” and then through the Art Institute just for a brief moment. And finally uptown a bit for a brief pause at Holy Name Cathedral, and finally to a late lunch at Pizzeria Uno. Those latter two were the two destinations I really had my heart set on, so I was content. Tony knows the city very well and was a great guide. I was recalling how often my natural mother used to bring us into the city when I was a kid. We went many times to the Field Museum of Natural History as well as to the Museum of Science and Industry. We seemed to also have gone pretty regularly to Chinatown to our favorite restaurant there, Chiam. And of course I lived in uptown with the Gospel Brothers 1976-77 and attended De Paul University, a year that had a profound influence on my life.
That whole little spell in Illinois was very moving for me––I could go on and on about it, but shan’t––and I think I am still processing it. Something about, as common as it sounds, re-connecting with my roots, feeling in my guts how all that led to all that I am now, even though all that I am and do now is so very different from all that. No regrets, no bitterness, only gratitude and wonder. (Lots of photos on my Facebook page if anyone is interested.)
And then yesterday I took the train down from Chicago to Saint Louis. I am here to visit my old friend and mentor, Father John Foley, SJ. A year and a half ago he was moved here to this beautiful new retirement home outside of Saint Louis. It’s hard to see him as frail as he is (he has to use a walker all the time now), but he seems to have adjusted to the new place, and we already spent yesterday evening rapt in conversation, first here in the eating hall and then at a nearby Applebees. We’ll have tonight and tomorrow together and then I head off for an overnight on the Amtrak to see my sister and her family in Grand Junction Colorado. After these first two legs of the train trip, I can say without a doubt how much I prefer train travel to airplane travel. For many reasons. The overnights may test that a bit, one to Grand Junction and another from there to San Francisco (Emeryville). I will have to sleep in my coach chair, though it does recline a bit, and John and Mary Pennington gave me a super neck pillow. The food also is going to be a bit of a challenge. I don’t have a lot of extra room in my backpack to carry my own provisions with me, and the selection in the dining car is pretty meager (to say the least), especially for a vegetarian. My guess is there will be a lot of trail mix and coffee. But not a problem!
Bless you all.
P.S. Just after posting this I opened Facebook and ran into this quote: "You've grown into someone who would have protected you as a child. That's the most powerful decision you made."
