A Brilliant Idea

This was the precise moment I realized I was a saint.

On a cold and velvet black December morning, I looked out the kitchen window and gasped. Perfectly framed in the frosty pane shone the Star of Bethlehem! The nuns told us stories about saints who saw holy visions and how, at first, they were called liars or crazy. I’d recently earned both titles after an incident involving my little brother’s face and my fists.

I sat at the breakfast table with my mouth agape and full of oatmeal. The star glowed so brightly, snow in the backyard turned a sacred shade of blue. It was spectacular! But who would believe me?

My mother stood at the kitchen counter spreading peanut butter on six pieces of bread like a one-woman sandwich factory.

“Mom,” I said in a voice I hoped sounded as reverent as one would expect of a soon-to-be canonized saint. “I see something out the kitchen window.”

She topped six pieces of bread with six more before looking up.

“Beautiful,” she said, and slid the sandwiches into individual plastic bags.

“Do you see what I see?” I asked like a shepherd boy with a tin ear.

“A star, a star, dancing in the night, with a tail as big as a kite!” My mother belted out the song in response. She had a beautiful church choir alto. She considered sopranos a fussy bunch.

But she saw the star.

Imagine, my mother and I both destined to pose for our own holy card collection! I knew I looked good in blue. Was a halo too much?

One of my little brothers slipper-shuffled into the kitchen. Without a word, he shook corn flakes into a yellow plastic bowl. The cereal that fell on the table, he dry vacuumed into his mouth. He reached for the milk carton. Mom grabbed it first and gestured toward the window with her chin.

“Look at the star,” she said, expertly deflecting attention as she poured.

“Cool,” he said, and set to work inhaling his breakfast.

I knew that kid wasn’t going to heaven without at least a pitstop in purgatory. No way could he bear witness to a miraculous star. Something weird was up.

“Can everyone see it?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Mom, confused by the question.

“Everyone can see The Star of Bethlehem?” I clarified, just to make sure we were talking the same vision.

“Most people call it the North Star now,” she said.

“Like the hockey team?”

“They named the team after the star,” she said.

Those heathens could call the star Jim for all I cared. That wouldn’t change the fact that the thing was shining bright in the sky.

“How can anyone not believe in Christmas?” I asked incredulously. “There’s proof! They can see it with their own eyes! All those dopes have to do is look up!”

Mom stuffed six sandwiches, apples, and chocolate chip cookies into six brown paper lunch bags but forgot to write our names on first. She tried to shape the cursive letters on the lumpy bags without poking holes with the pen. Crossing Ts and dotting Is was a risk she wasn’t willing to take.

“People see the star. But they think it’s just another star,” she said with a shrug.

She sounded matter-of-fact, like, meh, whatever. My silent response was anything but mild. Inside my skull, a fierce Shakespearean-worthy tempest began to rage. My brain stormed. Lightning bright “aha” ideas flashed. Kaboom! The question was not does the star exist? The question was does the star’s existence mean anything? And while I was at it, what did the existence of any and everything —including prepubescent me — even mean?

The Bard nailed it: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” Inside my head. And they had pitchforks!

“Get dressed,” my mother said. “I don’t want you to miss the bus!”

My existential crisis was temporarily averted by a practical woman who packed a mean school lunch.

Bundled in coats, hats and mittens, my siblings and I crunched along the snowy streets to the bus stop as the sky lightened to a dove gray. The star remained bright. Whatever its purpose, or lack of purpose, the star shone on. And I felt certain that the existence of our existence was indeed miraculous.