Issue 10
Pure
Marcia Mascolini
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The Polish Prayer Book
When my aunt died, I was left to dispose of the ordinary things of
her life, things that had a lingering preciousness because her hands had
touched them.
Disposing of her prayer book was the hardest. I could not throw it
in the garbage with old hairbrushes, used soap, and empty pill bottles because
it had been blessed. I could not give it away because it was in Polish.
Tradition dictated that it be burned in a purifying fire. I didn't
have an open furnace or a fireplace. Using a charcoal grill seemed
sacrilegious.
The answer to my problem came in an old Sunday bulletin from my
aunt's church. It took personal ads. I placed one: "Polish prayer
book, leather-bound, with gilt-edged pages, needs new home."
An elderly white-haired man whose Polish prayer book had been lost
in a devastating flood contacted me. He missed reading the service in his native
tongue, he said, and offered to pay me for the prayer book. We agreed that his
using it was payment enough.
~Marcia Mascolini
After years of teaching writing, Marcia Mascolini retired to concentrate on her own writing. Recent publications include stories in Cenotaph Pocket Edition, Crime 55, Treehouse Scriptum, Green Tricycle, Newtopia, and the Coffee Press Journal. Email.
© 2002 by Marcia Mascolini. All Rights Reserved.
© Copyright 2002 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.
This page updated December 23, 2002.