A letter to Katherine

 To Katherineeeeee,

I liked to watch the movie Mixed Nuts on repeat from the time I had a personal copy of my own. I am not sure, but it seems to me we went and saw it on Christmas Day after our dog was hit by a car. How ironic it is on this day, September 15, 2025. I already looked it up, we are around 15 weeks until Christmas. That year was 1995. That's an even anniversary for me. My kids and I all recite lines from the movie. Perhaps this is where I failed as a parent.

I didn't know until later who wrote the film, Nora Ephron. Many of us know her work, i was more than familar with it by then, and I was a fan mostly, but found some of her romantic comedies a little sickening, like the gushing over the blond in A Tale of Two Cities. You remember? She was so sweet and pretty and so devoted to her frail father?

Well, Katherine, that reminds me. I am interested in writers and writing, but more importantly, am interested in saints. I like them sweet and self effecting, like the Katherine/Catherine in Mixed Nuts. How can we not feel so sorry for her when she says she lives with her mother? A woman so sweet and modest, surely has no hope for a normal life!

Katherine, I see what you saw when you read and wrote about St Therese the little flower. I see how it is hurtful to expect that God sends suffering on such great, good souls. Certainly she had been, done, something ... imperfect!?

At the same time, I see her conversion as I realized it to be for myself. That moment when it is stark clear that behaving in a manner which is in tune with perfection does not hinder, in fact, it liberates the soul from the human instinct to clash with other souls, even your own. We all must, daily, take up our cross. And some even do!?

I am also intrigued, maybe you have been too, by those of us who have the ready disposition to forget themselves and live quietly and without causing any hardship on anyone else. I have seen Volver, the sister have I aspired to be. But some of us do not come to the place of meekness and humility so easily!

You know I was plagued by, in the story of this saint, who, I am certain is every bit the dedicated soul of God which there ever was!? Her father and his illness before death. I am always surprised by human foibles, and the tragedy of the story was her youthful enthusiasm, her heartache over her own losses which had her leave home at such a young age and the lonliness that her father must have felt when he lost all but one of his nine children and his wife in his last days! 

So you wrote a biography about her. I do not get much from her in the Wiki article I read. I understand her little way, the just canonized Carlo Acutis seemed to follow a little way. Perhaps you don't know, but three saints in Sweden once begged for Christ to send them something of his suffering on the cross. They wanted info. And it was by request that St Rita had her head pierced, a story so incredible I dare not share, I will leave it to curiosity. Point being, we here have seen saints with boldness that borders, too the lesser soul, presumption. 

As for me, I would like to have had the ability to enlighten souls. What a pity this particular miracle is as the Genie in Aladdin making people fall in love. It cannot be done. I am glad that I have impossible dreams, some of the more ready available are, well, terrifying!