The Lifecycle of a Catholic Woman – by PATTI JURINSKI

The Lifecycle of a Catholic Woman

At age nine, Helene chose confession face-to-face with the priest. The musty box frightened her, choked with years and years of other people’s sins.

As a teenager, she appreciated the box’s endless capacity to swallow her ever-increasing transgressions.

As a young woman, she scowled at it, hands on her hips, with self-righteous indignation.

By middle age, the box tiptoed into her thoughts again, and she crossed the street.

At age eighty, she chose confession face-to-face with the priest, unable to bend her knees anymore. As they wheeled her by, the box whispered welcome home.

***

Patti Jurinski lives in Florida with her husband and two sons, but will always be a New Englander at heart. Since leaving the corporate world four years ago, she has augmented car line boredom with reading and writing, the latter taking on a life of its own. Although writing a historical fiction novel is her main entrée, flash fiction stories are the yummy nibbles she can’t quite say no to.  She is thrilled (and slightly terrified) at the prospect someone may read her work.