Flashback: Good Friday

When I was a wee lad, Good Friday was a memorable day. It's funny - I don't think of myself as having grown up in a particularly religious household and I always considered our transfer to catholic grammar school from the local public school as having been due to social reasons (my parents' friends' kids all went), but when I look back on my impressions from Good Friday it can read somewhat like a passage from Stephen King's "Carrie" or something.

I think school was closed from Holy Thursday (no idea what that is - the last supper?) & Good Friday. For a couple of years back then my mom used to remind us that "Jesus was on the cross from 12 noon till 3" dying slowly for some reason that somehow benefited/involved me. We were not allowed to watch television, or listen to the radio (man this makes me sound ooold) or do anything else that...required electricity, I think. We were supposed to just sit quietly and reflect on..crucifixion, I guess? I clearly remember that one of the books on their living room bookshelf was an old, dry hardcover - "The Day Christ Died" - which I would flip through in search of the color-plates that illustrated moments from the whole (Passion) story.

Regardless, I recall those afternoons as quiet, somber, and somewhat...heavy. More often then not though, my brother, sister, and I would grow restless from this forced "time-out" and wear my mom down to the point that she'd allow us to "go outside" if we simply couldn't bear to sit quietly for that long.

And sometimes (this must have been very early because I don't remember my brother - must have still been attending public school) my mother would bring my sister and I up to church on Good Friday. It was open (unlocked) but nothing was going on really, mostly just old women sitting in pews mumbling the rosary to themselves while they shuffled through the beads. I'm pretty sure the (electric) lights were not lit in the church. At the front of the central aisle there would be a crucifix in a stand, low on the ground. You had to walk up to it, kneel in front of it, "pray" silently for a couple minutes, then kiss the hands and feet of Jesus on the cross before standing up and walking back to your seat. On this I remember 2 things: first, it seemed to tie in with the "kiss my boo-boo" course of medical treatment that children often receive and second, that it was kind of weird and gross that all these (old) strangers were putting their mouths where I also had to.

So there was no talk of dirty pillows or hell or anything, but it was pretty religious a day there for a while.

from the Museo del Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires

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