I’ll cover a couple of things in my blog from this past week. First and foremost, is Matilda, our dog joining us in class today. She’s been rather lonely and out of sorts since Clarabell passed away at the end of January. So when I moved from the dining room table to the couch as the battery on my lap top got low, Tilda didn’t realise I was in class and decided she needed to join. I don’t have the heart to push her away, mea culpa.

As Jon mentioned, I’ve been delinquent in getting my blog out this past week. I’ve run amok, so to speak. Compiling thoughts in any cohesive manner has been difficult for me. But the discussion of our class today has helped me a little.

But I am going to do things backwards and discuss a song to which I’ve always turned when I feel ill at ease, and then relate it back to Bless Me Ultima. The song is “Day is Done” by Peter, Paul and Mary, a folk/ hippy group from the 60s (before my time by the way…). The song starts with the lines “Tell me why you’re crying, my son, I know you’re frightened, like everyone”, which rather reflects how I feel lately over this whole Covid-19 hoopla, social distancing and isolation. Someone, with more wisdom than the child, is asking what’s the matter. Perhaps the asker has the answer or can help ease the ill-at-ease feelings.

Back to Bless Me Ultima now, this is almost, for me at least, like the relationship Antonio has with Ultima. Ultima seems to have all the answers. Or if she doesn’t, she has the ability to make Antonio feel more secure, as a child, with the troubling things he sees going on around him. Perhaps Ultima doesn’t say anything, but she seems to know how to make him feel better or more assured. Which is what religion does, I suppose. I’ve been a recovering-Catholic since my mid 20s, after having converted to Catholicism at the age of 14 (yes, odd I know…in fact, I am the only Catholic in my family and very nearly became a priest). But it is what we believe that provides us with reassurance, regardless of whatever that is. As children, this reassurance often came from adults, or a grandparent, like Ultima does for Antonio and his family.

My grandpa died 6 December 1986. I can still hear his voice, smell his smell of DuMaurier cigarettes and Mentos mints. I remember this day as if it happened yesterday. It was 6 minutes after 8:00 in the morning, and the phone rang. I had a habit of asking who it was when I didn’t answer the phone. I never got an answer, but I knew what happened. I knew it was Grandpa. I sat with my Mum in the living room for the morning, staring off in to space, in absolute shock. Mum wasn’t able to provide me with comfort because she too was just a child looking for comfort. And now that I have no grandparents left, there is a feeling of being on my own, to find my own way that often overwhelms me.

I think this is what Ultima means when she tells Antonio that he cannot go on if Ultima is with him all the time. How can he develop and mature into adulthood, finding his own way, if Ultima is always there for him to rely on? Sooner or later we need to all put our big boy/ girl pants on, and be brave, and face the big scary world.

On that note, I end my odd blog this week. Slightly off topic, I admit, but perhaps we can all be brave in the newness of the current conditions in which we find ourselves…and find comfort in knowing that at least twice a week we are among each other on Google Hangouts for a bit of a break from the real world.

Please, be safe and be healthy.