Every week since I was about eight years old, I have walked into church on Sunday with my heart full of dread. I knew full well that at least once a month when we swung open the big wooden doors and stepped our little dress-clad bodies into the building, the nice old ladies that stood in the back to welcome churchgoers would descend upon my two sisters and I like so many vultures. "Oh, you girls just look precious," they'd swoon. "So pretty in your little dresses. How would you like to take up the gifts?" (For anyone not familiar with this term, taking up the gifts basically entails carrying the bread, wine, and money basket to the front of the church before Communion while every single other person in the church watches, and then turning around and walking right back up the center aisle, also while everyone watches.) My sisters would jump with joy at this opportunity to have a special job, but I, as the oldest and most world-weary of the three, would hang my head. I knew that what we had really signed on for was public humiliation to the highest degree. What if I tripped and spilled the wine on everyone? What if I walked too slow and the music was over before we even reached the altar, and everyone just had to stare at us and listen to our footsteps as we made the harrowing journey? What if there was something on the back of my dress? What if all the holier-than-thou front pew sitters judged me for not bowing deep enough at the altar? So many things could go wrong. So invariably, when we were asked to take up the gifts, I would nod my head. From there, operation Get Out Of This commenced.
Sometimes I would fake illness, claiming I didn't feel well enough to walk up to the front. Sometimes I would claim I wasn't dressed as nicely as the other two and didn't want to embarrass my mom (which was true surprisingly often, as I always was more of a tomboy.) Sometimes I would be completely honest and just tell my mom I didn't want to do it. Sometimes it even involved tears. No matter what tactic I chose, the result was always the same: my mother would take up the gifts with my sisters, and I would kneel in the pew by myself and experience the bitter mix of success and failure. Each time I vowed that next time I would man up and just take the gifts already. But it never happened until today.
At eighteen years old, I no longer step into church with my mom and two sisters in a dress every week. This week, it was just me and my youngest sister, both in simple dress clothes. This did not deter the vultures. They descended before I'd even had time to dip my fingers in the holy water and asked if the three of us would be willing to take up the gifts, still picturing us as at most twelve and assuming our mommy and sister would be along shortly. When telling them there were only two of us still didn't deter them, I just agreed. I was finally trapped and saw no way of getting out of this one.
As the mass progressed, I considered faking sick. I considered going to the bathroom at the exact wrong time. I considered offering to take the screaming child two rows up to the cry room. But I didn't do any of these things. When we started the prayer of the faithful and I realized that I was very likely going to have to go through with this, a shot of pure adrenaline ripped through my gut. I was terrified. But I walked to the back of the church on shaky legs with my sister at my side. And suddenly, I was sitting back in the pew. It was over. I had walked up. I had bowed. I had carried the wine and not spilled anything. I had seen all the faces looking at me and I looked right back, inordinately proud that I had accomplished what I had never seen most of them do. As I thought back through those monumental thirty seconds, I couldn't keep the smile from spreading over my face. I had won.
I didn't trip. I didn't die. No one laughed, or even really seemed to care. I took up the gifts today, and lived to tell the tale. And I can only go up from here.
UPDATE: I am ashamed to admit that I stayed out too late partying to post this yesterday when it actually happened. I will have to be more prompt from now on.
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