The boy is one step closer to salvation, as last week he completed the sacrament of Reconciliation.
To all you practicing and recovering Catholics out there alike, you will recall your First Reconciliation as the day you crouched in a booth and whispered all your sins from birth to present to a priest—who I now picture to be either horrified or hysterically laughing—behind a screen. In the end, he’d deliver the antidote to your mortal sins—usually a dose of three Hail Marys and one Our Father. And when you stepped out of that booth, the scorched deposits of your blackened soul renewed, you’d hold your breath for fear that the next time you inhaled, you’d contaminate yourself all over again.
You might think that a boy like Tyler, who at the age of three plunked our cat in the toilet just to see if she’d fit, would be in that booth long enough to examine all six volumes of “Roots” from beginning to end. But Tyler is a boy of little to no words. With the exception of close members of the family and a handful of kid magicians from his class who are able to coax him out of his shell, he speaks to no one. For obvious reasons, this could throw a major wrench in the gears of the Blessed Sacrament.
Father Santiago was willing to accommodate him. To help Tyler communicate his transgressions, he provided him with a picture book, where he could point to a scenario of a child taunting a sibling, disobeying a parent, or other such acts of ungodliness. Suddenly, the dreaded booth didn’t seem so dreadful.
That night, Tyler and I flipped through the book together. There was no picture we could find of a boy placing a cat in a toilet. I stifled a smirk. What Father Santiago didn’t realize was that to cleanse eight years of mischief from my boy’s soul, that book needed more pictures than the Smithsonian. Hopefully, it was enough to give Jesus the gist of it.
When the day finally arrived, Tyler reluctantly tucked in his shirt, sighed as I centered his belt buckle, and scoffed at his stiff, leather shoes.
“I don’t want to talk to the priest,” he sulked.
“You have to,” directed Eva, who was buckled up next to him in her Sunday best. “If you talk to a priest, Santa will bring you more presents.”
“Eva, that is not why we go to confession,” I scolded. “We go because we need to learn to admit when we are wrong. We need to reflect on our mistakes so that we can become better people. And if we’re better people, the world will be a better place.”
Eva sat for a moment in quiet reflection.
“I want to be a better person,” she said decidedly. “Because when I die, I want to go to heaven. Because I’m pretty sure all the American Girl dolls will be there. And My Little Pony. And maybe even Barbie’s Dream House!”
His sister may have missed the point, but I don’t think Tyler did. When he came out of that confession booth, his smile beamed with a mix of pride and relief. And although I may be imagining it, he almost looked purer.
And with that, the burdens of my boy’s soul have been absolved, all is forgiven, the metaphorical slate of his moral history wiped clean.
If only we could get Bessie the Cat to agree.