I was at a family funeral asked to do a reading during the mass. I was told that when I went up to the altar, I had to bow to it before going to the place to read. Well, that didn’t sit very well with me. My feelings about the Catholic Church right now are such that bowing isn’t even close to what I wanted to do. But it all became a moot point when I got up to go do the reading and realized just how big the shoes I’d borrowed from Judy were. With every step I was in danger of walking out of them. So I found myself approaching the altar using these mincing little steps because my toes were curled in my shoes and that made it hard to walk normally. But was the only way I could grip the shoes to keep them on and not leave a trail of black shoes strewn behind me in front of the altar. So the bow never had a chance of being made because I was so focused on not walking out of my shoes.
It’s times like these that I understand the look in my mother’s eye sometimes when she saw me.