You Can Still Go to Heaven

So said Brother William to me about 20 years ago...



I was notoriously excellent at achieving the highest grades possible during my high school academic career. Especially at my Catholic high school in Southern California. Not the Evangelical one just a year before, and not the public high school my senior year. I was okay at both those locations, but I hated both equally and therefore, did not "apply myself" to the standards of anyone who was paying attention.



Not too many adults were paying attention...except for Brother Edward and Brother William and Fr. Barney and Mnsgr. O'Gorman (Fr. Charlie to my family) and all the nuns who taught me music and art and morality and sacraments and Earth science, etc...

They were my teachers at my Catholic high school, and while my grades excelled there, I sucked at math. Royally. In fact, until I had to budget a grocery bill for the Velez family which formed in 1995, I was convinced that I could not even add. Now I can add the price of every item, including the occasional tax, down to the penny every week. I am that talented at being cheap with sausage and bread. If Brother William were alive today, God rest his Latin soul, he would probably sob with shocked pride.



But, in my junior year, in my Geometry class (should have been Algebra II, but I took Algebra I twice and never got beyond a D), Brother William from Amsterdam was filling in for Brother Edward (also of Amsterdam) until his sudden vacation back to Holland was over. For two weeks, I had Brother William - the ever smiling monk - frowning and actually wiping sweat off his forehead each time I scooted in my Catholic school girl uniform to his desk with a confused look on my face.



"Brother, I don't understand this," I would say about adding 2 and 2 or multiplying 1 and 3. "This doesn't make any sense."



He would stand up at the edge of his desk, bend over with both hands behind his back and search my paper for answers. Then he would look up at me,



"Teeefahnee, you are a special girl."



Then he would smile at me knowingly, as though I should understand why the subject suddenly changed.



"In all my life I have never known anyone as confused as you with simple math."



And then I realized he was talking about "special", not exceptional.



It went on like this for a while. Finally, a midterm test came and Brother William (who was often the brunt of stinky European jokes and would find a fresh bottle of deodorant on his old wooden desk with a red bow around it) would invite all "special children" to join him for a late afternoon study session.



He would call Fr. Barney to bless us, and then we would work for two long hours underneath the stern missionary face of the Fr. Serra painting. Everyone obtained "ahah!" moments except for me. I would leave with a fake smile on my face, but without any understanding still of adding 2 and 2 or multiplying 3 and 1. I could not fool Br. William (of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mercy).



In fact, the day of the midterm test came at some point in autumnless Southern California, and I remember wearing a red sweater and my lucky ill-fitting brown leather shoes my mother had bought me at some Dutch (truly Dutch, not the PA version) from some store in Solvang.

I was the last to complete my work, and I was so engrossed in my mathematical equations that I failed to notice everyone was waiting for me to finish so that Brother William would let them leave for the day. It was as though I had been involved in one of Brother Edward's Church History courses like any other young nerdy liturgical addict might be. I had studied to the point of forsaking all TV and hang outs at the A&W across from the Fox movie theatre in Ventura. I prayed more Hail Mary's and Glory Be's and Our Father's than I had ever allowed to accumulate outside of Mass and Stations of the Cross.

But I failed none the less. Turning in my test long after even the other "special children" had done so. But I had the utmost confidence in myself.

"We shall see," Brother William said as he took my test from me.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!" I yelled inwardly while everyone else planned their drunken Catholic high school bashes for the weekend. God would not let me down, as I was the star of all the religion classes. Every nun and oblate loved me above all others.

But I failed.

Did I mention that I failed?

Worse than I had every failed, even with Brother William's undivided sweating and aide.

When the day came, a week later, to hand out the tests in the order they had been received, Brother William had the widest smile on his ever-smiling face that I had ever seen.

He carefully placed my paper on the cira 1940's dented wooded school desk as though it were my life thesis on the Shroud of Turin.

"No matter what, Teeefahneee, you can still go to heaven, and you are truly a special girl."

F

The only F I ever obtained in high school. Yay me!

But Brother William's words echo inside my head today as I fight with my credit score to make it raise above the place it lived just after I left Hannemahn with a $60,000.00 a day hospital bill for several weeks of Guillian-Barre treatments in ICU. I should have an excellent score by now. But it has budged very little. And I cannot figure out why. Perhaps, I will always be "special", but at least, if I accept all graces given me and go to confession this weekend, I can still go to heaven.

Yay God!

To Him, I am worth more than my mathematical failures or my credit score. And in this present family crisis, I had to admit that this last parting line of Brother William's to his "most special" student of all, is the one that comes to me at night when I am most conflicted with stress. Even more than he was a consultant to NASA, and a few other highly important mathy locations, he was a Catholic brother and he put the eternity of my soul above my incredibly low math score. He knew of my potential in other areas and in the fervency of my crazy amount of Hail Mary's. He must have seen me at the chapel during the morning break and in the library every lunch (nerdy me). High school is not fun for the liturgically obsessed, but it is memorable and we Catholic obessed tend to remember the life-enriching parts.

Cause we were not fun enough to create any other sort of memories...

*I tried to find a picture of Brother William with his genius hair and eteral blue faded sweater, but no luck so far. I will keep hunting.