Calamity Jane

Things happen to my mother. She says it's because she's too impulsive. She acts first and regrets it later. A friend once called her 'Calamity Jane' and the nickname stuck. Some stories in our family have passed into legend. Like the time she overheard a workman downstairs asking my father if he could use - something - she didn't know what. My father said yes of course, it's upstairs. She somehow jumped to the conclusion that the man had asked to use the telephone, which she had been using in the bedroom. She rushed onto the landing and told him that she could take it downstairs to the hall so he could use it there. He looked at her blankly for a moment and then went silently into the bathroom to use the toilet. My mother retreated to her bedroom and refused to emerge for the rest of the day.

But my favourite Calamity Jane story has to be the poor-box incident.

My mother is a devout Catholic. She was always strict in her observance of the Church's Holy Days. Throughout our childhood my brother, sister and I were called upon to accompany my parents to weekly Mass, join in the Family Rosary daily and generally observe the practice of our Faith in all particulars. This I did with a very poor grace although I had learned early on that resistance was futile.

On this occasion, it must have been a Holy Day, and we set out together through the rain, me a sulky fourteen year old dragging my heels and my mother, clutching my arm and holding her umbrella up over us both. As the rain dripped down the back of my neck I thought enviously of my older sister, absolved from this expedition due to a heavy head cold. My brother somehow miraculously managed to be absent on many of these occasions.

My mother had an annoying habit of leaning towards her companion as she walked, which made you veer off at an angle and it never failed to irritate me. She wore her plastic rain bonnet with little red dots to protect her carefully 'set' hair and as always, she carried her handbag and a plastic carrier bag.

This carrier bag was the bane of my life on Church days. Inside was a brown paper bag in which my mother kept her prayer book, along with an assortment of loose prayer cards, novenas, memory cards and old Mass missalettes. The prayer book was so worn with use that the leaves were falling out, which is why it had to be carried about in a paper bag. This book with its devotionary papers would be produced, much to my mortification, on arrival at Church. Once settled in our seats, out would come the bag with a great rustling and I would sit, scarlet with embarrassment whilst my mother selected the particular novenas or prayers required for the numerous petitions in which she was engaged at the time. Probably no-one gave us a second thought, but in my heightened state of teenage paranoia I would never have believed it.

When we arrived at the Church there was some difficulty in collapsing the umbrella and a period of struggling and flapping at the door took place before I was finally permitted to sink into a pew. We always sat right at the front of the Church, it seemed to me so that any embarrassing moments could be witnessed by the maximum number of the Faithful.

No further incident occurred to disturb my adolescent poise until my mother afterwards decided to make a donation to the poor-box at the back of the Church. This was a large wooden box which had been constructed so that the top had four sides, each sloping downwards to create a narrow slot in the centre. As the small congregation made their way to the door at the back of the Church, my mother went about the business of finding her purse and selecting some coins for the box - no easy task, burdened as she was with two bags and a dripping umbrella. At last, however, she returned her purse to the handbag and to my relief, turned to leave.

Suddenly she stopped.

"Where did I put my key to the front door?" She asked, more to herself than to me. She opened her handbag again and took out the purse.

"I always put it in my purse," she said, and peered into the purse again. "Well, it's not there now." Frantically, she began to search through the contents of her handbag. "I'll just have to take everything out. Maybe it's in the plastic bag." She held it out to me. "You look in there."

Rigid with embarrassment and dreadfully conscious of the curious glances being cast in our direction, I half-heartedly riffled through the papers in the bag. My mother was removing everything from her handbag and dumping the stuff on a chair beside the poor-box. Panic had set in. She turned to me in agitation.

"Is it in the bag?" She demanded. I shook my head. Two elderly ladies approached to offer comfort and began to search the floor. My mother was becoming seriously distressed.

"Oh God, I've lost it." She bit her lip and tried to think. Then - "It's in the box!" She cried. "I must have dropped it in with the coins."

Suddenly she rushed to the poor-box, and without a pause to consider further, thrust her small hand into the slot. "Mammy!" I was appalled.

A crowd of interested well-wishers gathered to observe. She felt around inside the box and then the inevitable happened. Her hand got stuck. The more she struggled to get it out, the more firmly trapped it became. I didn't think things could get any worse. There we were, the centre of a crowd with my mother's hand wrist deep in the Church's poor-box. I was wrong.

The crowd parted and the Parish Priest approached. He viewed the scene with some surprise. My mother, in obvious distress, explained her predicament. He was very sympathetic and hurried away to get the key to the poor-box. To this day, I can't remember how the poor hand was extricated, but it was. We all waited patiently for Father to return. Our loyal supporters patted my mother's arm in gestures of comfort and solidarity. Father duly made his way back, triumphantly waving the key and we stood back expectantly while he upturned the heavy box and unlocked and opened it. There was a silence as we all realised that there was no front door key in the box. Our helpers and sympathisers melted away, the box was locked again and somehow, we gathered our things together and amidst my mother's confused apologies, we got ourselves out of the Church.

We stood together in silence in the Church porch, listening to the rain drumming on the roof, stunned at the thought of what had just happened.

"I was sure the key was in the box," she started to say, then shook her head in bewilderment. We stepped out of the shelter into the rain, and my mother struggled to open her umbrella. As she raised it over our heads, we heard a small metallic 'clink'. There was a pause as we looked down at the front door key, lying on the wet pavement at our feet.

We looked at each other in astonishment. Then my mother picked up the key, grabbed my arm and we fairly ran from the Church. I think Calamity Jane and I laughed all the way home.