A Confession in Ordinary Time

A childhood confession, an aging mother, and the quiet places mercy hides.

I can’t stop thinking about the shoplifting ring I was running at Catholic School. I was the constant test of Sister Gabriela’s patience—mischievous, popular, impossible to contain. A few of the things I stole: Bonnie Bell lip gloss, Coppertone tanning oil, Life Saver storybooks, Love’s Babysoft fragrance, false fingernails, mood rings, and tiny stuffed animals that could fit in my purse.

Before school, I packed my lunch box with the day’s inventory and sold items on the playground like a miniature entrepreneur with a moral glitch. Girls in checkered uniforms and knee socks crowded around, change purses jingling with quarters—everyone wanted something from my stash. Then, all of this came to an end on the day I got caught at our neighborhood Tom Thumb grocery store.

A pink and green tube of mascara ended it all. I only needed one more thing. I saw the clerk after it was too late. My heart thumped so loud I was sure she could hear it—caught. Still, I turned on the charm, thinking I could talk my way out of it. She said a bottle of pink nail polish was missing from aisle two. Did I know where it was? Busted. She asked to see my bag.

TJ, my partner in crime, had bolted. I was alone—my guilt, a bottle of satin slipper polish buried in my purse, and a six-foot-tall beauty counter clerk.

The clerk led me into a back office with a silver metal desk and white linoleum floors. The manager asked for my name. I crossed my arms. “No comment.” He asked for my mother’s number. I stared at the seam in the floor. I was a hardened nine-year-old criminal who wouldn’t budge.

Two hours later, I cracked.

My mother appeared in the doorway, in her polyester pantsuit and 1970s frames, disappointment radiating off her. I could tell by her mouth—downturned and tight—that I was doomed. Then I heard the manager tell her there’d been a string of shoplifting reported in the strip mall area.

Shit.

What I didn’t know was that my sister, Terri, had already saved me. I had a big black garbage bag in my closet full of loot. When TJ bolted, she ran to my house and told my sister what had happened. My sister dragged that black bag down to the dumpster at the corner store and ditched it. Thanks to her, there was no evidence. No proof of my entrepreneurial career.

My mother believed it was my first offense, and maybe she wanted to. I did have to return to the store with my mom and apologize, which I still vividly remember. Terri didn’t just save me from my mother—she saved me from the kind of shame you don’t come back from easily.

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Where Mercy Begins

Decades later, I sit beside my mother in the church pew. She’s 101 now. I bring her to Saturday evening mass to avoid the Sunday crowds, and because we both prefer the quiet. Our roles have reversed. I help her find the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time on page 74 and hand her the missal, the way she once did for me when I was six.

Her mind remains clear, her spirit strong. She still cooks her own breakfast and moves with surprising speed, her walker gliding ahead of her like an extension of will. She has always been moving toward something. Where, I’m not sure anyone knows.

I follow along, the words half-familiar, half-foreign now. The Church still stirs something in me—the incense, the hush before the hymn, the way faith can make a room feel like home. Belief feels less certain, but the reverence remains.

I sit beside her, taking nothing, keeping only this: an ordinary evening, the slow turning of years, the quiet that holds us both. For now, it’s enough.

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Have you experienced that subtle shift when the child becomes the caregiver? What has it taught you?