The young couple a few rows in front of me at Mass one Sunday had a hurried, urgent conversation. The husband then tried to get by his wife in the pew, but couldn’t because she had a little girl in her lap, and she could neither move back nor lean forward.
So the man put one hand on his wife’s shoulder and the other on the back of the pew, leapt up, pulling his knees to his chest, and swung through. He scuttled to the end of the row, where he grabbed a little boy I hadn’t noticed.
He had on his face the “My son is going to throw up/pee his pants/screech wildly/throw something/run away/or maybe every damn one” look. He had a quick conversation with the boy and then took him out, apparently headed for the bathroom. The boy seemed unfazed. They returned a couple minutes later.
I have been that father many times, and I would have been that boy had my parents gone to church when I was that age. I recognized the look and the need that created it. Not for many years have I had it myself, but I sometimes miss the life where such emergencies were possible, and in the case of our two boys, probable.
The little girl at Mass
At Mass another Sunday, the little girl in front of me, about 3 years old, in a poofy spangled skirt, stood up between her parents at a random moment and crossed herself, then looked up at her mom for approval. Later, as we were saying the Nicene Creed, she stood up, facing backward, holding up a pad of drawing paper as if it were a book, and said nonsense words, rocking her head back and forth.
Later she handed her dad a scrunchie, and turned around to face the back of the church as he pulled her hair into a ponytail and put on the scrunchie. Her eyes swept the people behind her and she smiled — beamed — with what I think was pride that her dad was fixing her hair.
In the middle of Mass, she put on her mother’s glasses and mugged around a little. I wondered how she could wear them without the glasses bothering her eyes. Then she put them back on at the end of Mass and I realized they were hers. She’s only about 3 and already she has to wear glasses.
What one notices, and doesn’t
I posted these two vignettes on Facebook because I like telling stories, and some people like reading them, and because I think they say something encouraging about our religion. I think they help readers understand other people’s experience a little better, appreciate a little more the lives other Catholics lead and enjoy how beautifully human life in the Church can be.
Most readers like them, but I have also been lectured by some people for not paying attention to the Mass, for noticing the people around me and not focusing my attention on God, and for apparently not understanding what a glorious gift is the Mass, which should leave me in rapt adoration, unable to notice anything but the presence of Christ. I’m only hurting myself.
In theory, I grant, they’re right. But in my case it’s not happening. I was diagnosed as a child with what was then called “hyperactivity” and is now, medical knowledge having grown more subtle, ADHD, or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. I remember being scored in some way and my score was very high. The disorder did not go away as I grew older, and now that I’ve grown older still, it has gotten a little worse.
Paying attention
Try as I might to pay attention at Mass, because it’s the Mass, my attention wanders. Almost any movement will catch my attention, no matter how hard I’m trying to pay attention. I notice what the people around me do, especially when they enact stories, like the two vignettes above. I feel an almost overwhelming impulse to watch and then tell.
The way other people can pay attention for the whole hour astonishes me, though on the other hand, I’m also astonished at how much they miss of the things going on around them. God shows his love for us in the congregation, as well as at the altar. They miss that while I miss other things.As St. Paul says, we’re part of a body, and some of us are attentive and some of us are observant. Or, if that way of putting it privileges the neurodivergent way of seeing the world, you could say that some of us pay attention to the actions we’re supposed to focus on and some of us notice the life of the people God has gathered. We’re all, in our own ways, using our gifts, assisting at Mass.
