As Long As One Can Suffer, One

It Meant That She Belonged Some Place. She Was A Brooklyn Girl With A Brooklyn Name And A Brooklyn Accent. She Didn't Want To Change Into A Bit Of This And A Bit Of That.

And Always, There Was The Magic Of Learning Things.

It Was The Last Time She’d See The River From That Window. The Last Time Of Anything Has The Poignancy Of Death Itself. This That I See Now, She Thought, To See No More This Way. Oh, The Last Time How Clearly You See Everything; As Though A Magnifying Light Had Been Turned On It. And You Grieve Because You Hadn’t Held It Tighter When You Had It Every Day.

It's A Beautiful Religion And I Wish I Understood It More. No, I Don't Want To Understand It All. It's Beautiful Because It's Always A Mystery. Sometimes I Say I Don't Believe In God And Jesus And Mary. I'm A Bad Catholic Because I Miss Mass Once In A While And I Grumble When, At Confession, I Get A Heavy Penance For Something I Couldn't Help Doing. But Good Or Bad, I Am A Catholic And I'll Never Be Anything Else. Of Course, I Didn't Ask To Be Born Catholic, No More Than I Asked To Be Born American. But I'm Glad It Turned Out That I'm Both These Things.

She Was Made Up Of More, Too. She Was The Books She Read In The Library. She Was The Flower In The Brown Bowl. Part Of Her Life Was Made From The Tree Growing Rankly In The Yard. She Was The Bitter Quarrels She Had With Her Brother Whom She Loved Dearly. She Was Katie's Secret, Despairing Weeping. She Was The Shame Of Her Father Stumbling Home Drunk. She Was All Of These Things And Of Something More...it Was What God Or Whatever Is His Equivalent Puts Into Each Soul That Is Given Life - The One Different Thing Such As That Which Makes No Two Fingerprints On The Face Of The Earth Alike.