According to the catalogue, the bright pink blush was not to be found on the maiden's face but on another part of her anatomy. (What can I say? It was a French variety.)
I know nothing about music--so I fitted the lyric to a Garth Brooks melody which I liked at the time. When Garth disappeared I forgot all about him, and about my song, and also about the rose which did not flourish in my garden.
I thought I'd send a copy to our friend.
I have made a diligent (almost desperate) search through my computer's memory--generally so much more reliable than my own.
No luck.
My present computer is my fifth. My celebration of maidenly self consciousness must have been written on my second or third, and stored on a 3.5" disk, long since discarded.
Oh woe! I'm more of a sketcher than a writer. I finish so few things I'm bound to regret the loss of something with both ends, even if the middle hung from an awkward false rhyme ("blush/tush".)
The search hasn't been entirely unproductive. I came across a file called, "Salvaged from a 5.25 inch disk"--a genuine archaeological wonder. It contained the first page of a forgotten story. As usual, it doesn't have an ending, and (as usual) I don't have anything in mind--so you are free to extend it in any direction you like. The lesson is: if you have written anything that ought to be preserved, don't rely on digital media, especially not "The cloud". Clouds are even more unreliable than papryus.
Here it is:
"When Eddy..."
When Eddy “The Monk” Agajanian was
fired from, or quit, Seminary just a month before his ordination, Father Paul
explained that they were sorry to lose him, for he had great gifts, which
the Church badly needed—especially now.
That the Church needed more gifted people was certainly a
fact. Father Paul, who had great gifts himself, was a wonderful
example. Where once he had been an admired professor of homiletics,
he was now being run ragged as Principal of both the grammar school and the
high school, President of the Seminary, and interim Abbott of the monastery
whose five aging monks occupied a corner of one of the unused
dormitories.
The only thing that made it possible was the fact that St.
Barnabas Academy, which formerly hummed with the disputation of the
learned, the shouts of grammar school boys, the anxieties of adolescents,
and the studious inquiries of the Seminarians, was now sadly reduced.
Even before all the troubles, the number of students had fallen off
sharply. For years there had not been enough nuns to drill the younger
boys in the catechism, too few priests to teach the high school boys, and the
lack of learned professors at the seminary was mitigated only by the dearth of
seminarians, of whom few indeed possessed notable gifts.
So, although Father Paul could have stretched a point and
forgiven Eddy the girl (as he had previously forgiven him the other girl) the
abortion was a serious issue, and it was no help that Eddy mentioned (not by
way of excuse, but simply as a fact) that the child had not been his, for he
had made faithful use of a reliable brand of condoms. Father Paul was
still shaking his head when Eddy, who could not bear to be the cause of such
misery, decided to end it.
“The truth is, Father, that I have never believed in the
Transubstantiation of the Host.”
The old man staggered under this blow, but the pain was a
cleansing dose. After a moment he pulled himself together and said, “Well then,
that’s it.”
And that had been it.
As he packed his gear, his room mate asked him what he
intended to do.
“Soup, I think. I am going to sell soup to the rich
for $6 a bowl and give soup to the poor. I have some great recipes from
my grandmother."
It
was not much of a plan, hardly on the scale of his gifts, but at least it had
finite parameters, and with reasonable effort, might succeed. Few
young men can say as much.
