Ashes, Ashes

A week prior to Lent, Monkey1 raised an outcry against receiving ashes. Last year at preschool the parish priest had spoken to the children and distributed ashes. Monkey1 was extremely upset over this at the time, and the prospect of this happening all over again was worth trying to be sick and stay home. Finally though she asked me to sit in the back of church, and without a murmur she marched down the sidewalk to the school entrance that day. Or was that the day she walked next to a friend, leaving me way behind, and Monkey2 frantically shouting and blowing kisses to her sister's back?

Monkey2 however had other ideas than going to school. So I simply took her to Ash Wednesday Mass with me, and unwisely happened to sit right in front of a row of fifth grade girls who gushed over Monkey2 with the looped blonde braids. She cuted up for them too, except whenever we stood up, she firmly stuck both hands over her forehead to ward off any ashes.

Monkey1 received her ashes without protest, clutching on to her sixth grade buddy's arm to dear life, and he seemed encouraging and congratulatory when it was all over. Monkey2 hid behind me, hands over her forehead.

After Mass I turned Monkey2 over to the school office, and the secretary marched her off to class. When I returned two hours later, Monkey2 proudly told me at pick-up that the priest had come to the preschool and given everyone ashes, even her! I could not see a smudge on her forehead (whereas some of the other children had evident ash remaining), which she explained with "mine turned white."