Scene 4: My Secret Hero’s Journey

My mother was a devout Catholic true-believer with the purest loving heart of anyone I have ever known. During her sixth pregnancy she had a miscarriage with complications and the doctor warned her it would be dangerous to have any more. Then she bore my sister. Then she bore me.

And her loving heart pumped thirty pints of blood out onto my delivery room floor as fast as they could pour it into her. Then it stopped. Four minutes later they brought her back. She named me after her favorite uncle, a Catholic priest that she believed could heal the sick with his hands. Then she prayed that she had borne the church a priest.

I was never going to be a priest.

I was baptized. I went to Catholic schools. I was an altar boy. I won the Knights of Columbus Citizenship Award. I was approaching eighth-grade confirmation the day my mother came to me and asked me how old I was when I decided not to believe in God because she wondered at the wisdom of such a young child. I was still too young to understand how much my natural atheism must have wounded her. Her faith was incomprehensible to me, but God was not the only one listening when my mother prayed for peace.

World peace?

I was already on a journey outward through story space and I figured that maybe somewhere outside I might stumble across The Peace Story. I solve problems for fun, I love building models, and I totally agreed with her about world peace. I owed my mother for my life but I could never be what she had prayed I would become.

Thus it came to pass that at the age of fourteen I answered the call. I confirmed myself in the role of secret hero and set out on my secret Hero’s Journey in search of The Peace Story, for my mother.