"Sleep pretty darling, do not cry, and I will sing a lullabye." John Lennon and Paul McCartney

In Loving Memory of Marjorie Woodall, who left us on December 24, 2009

Recently the Bishop of Limerick resigned amid scandal. I had the urge to express my disgust about the situation by writing a bawdy verse of five anapestic lines with the rhyme scheme aabba. I was only able to compose such a piece because in my mind I could hear Mrs. Woodall reading it. I hoped she had not seen this story on the news, because it would certainly have riled her up. I had not gotten all of the “a” lines down, but I knew the b lines were going to be “He knew bloody damn well they would all rot in Hell.” I had decided that if I finished this masterpiece, I would send it to her. She is the only person who would get it. We have a lot in common, Mrs. Woodall and I. Uppity indignation is only one of the traits we share.

She had a dry sense of humor that went over most people’s heads. She had a quick wit, a clever way with puns, and a gift for honoring people with irreverent nicknames that sounded hilarious in her Irish accent. She said things like “ad-VERT-iz- ment “and “Al-loo-Min-ium foil.”

She had been in the military, in service to the Queen as an air traffic controller. She had left her home in Ireland and was stationed in England. I had never known a woman who had been that independent and had such an important career. I was impressed, and I found her life as a young woman intriguing and mysterious. She had fallen madly in love with a handsome American, and left her home to start a family with him here. It was all very romantic.

Of course, as a woman, she could not get a job as an air traffic controller in the states. She had been good enough for the Queen, but by virtue of her sex, was not good enough for Bluegrass Field. In those days, women could not hold such jobs. When she told me this, I was shocked at the injustice. It was 1981, and we were sitting on her back porch, watching the news, and President Reagan had just fired all the air traffic controllers who went on strike. I never considered that this woman, who raised six sons and a daughter, may have wanted a career.

Mrs. Woodall liked Billy Joel, and was shocked when Kentucky radio stations banned the playing of Only The Good Die Young. Did they not understand the premis of that song? It was actually a compliment to Catholic girls everywhere. I remember riding in the car with her and hearing Billy Joel sing You May Be Right. She loved the line: “Remember how I found you there Alone in your electric chair I told you dirty jokes until you smiled.”

She liked Billy Joel, but she loved her lads from Liverpool, her homeboys. Over our last cup of tea she expressed great disappointment in Paul McCartney, for forgetting his age and foolishly remarrying that young amputee. We could all see where that relationship was going! It wasn’t hard to disappoint Mrs. Woodall. Her expectations were high, and we have all let her down at one time or another, even Paul McCartney, but she loved us, and that love never stopped.

Mrs. Woodall had a little blue parakeet. Nothing tickled her more than when John Lennon would sing Crippled Inside and her little bird would dance. “Watch this! You have to see this! He only does this for his favorite song!” she would exclaim. When that bird danced, her eyes would twinkle and her smile was as big as the moon.

There were many times when I felt a little crippled inside. At those times I would head down that Woodall driveway and into the comfort of the back porch on Stoner Avenue. Mrs. Woodall would make me a cup of tea, and we would talk and laugh, and a very special brand of love would flow through her. I never had to actually tell her what was wrong. I always felt she just knew. With her I found peace and understanding.

I was not the only young women to seek refuge at her kitchen table on Stoner Avenue. Many teenage girls went there when they had nowhere else to go. We went there before dates, and during those hours between school and band practice and football games.

I remember an afternoon when it was cold and raining. I had strep-throat, and a fever of 102. I was absent from school, but my mother had driven me in for band practice, as was required. It was the night before a band competition, and Mr. Eberlein said I had to march the football game that night, so of course instead of going home, I went to Mrs. Woodall’s. She put me to bed upstairs. It was where I went when I needed a place to sleep. It was where we all went. When times were dark for us, when we were confused, when we were in trouble, we went to that kind Irish woman on Stoner Avenue who asked no questions, and opened her door and her heart.

Years passed, and I left my hometown, but every time I returned I went to see her. When I married, I struggled with infertility. Mrs. Woodall knew how desperately I longed for a child. One year on the first Saturday in May, not long after I had married, I was hospitalized. As soon as Mrs. Woodall found out, she called Father and put me on the prayer list. Father then went to the choir picnic, told my mother he was praying for me, and asked about my condition. My mother had no idea I was even in the hospital. Mrs. Woodall was efficient. She got the word first and she got the word out, and although it is painful to admit this, sometimes I was closer to her than I was to my own mother. This was one of those times.

Mrs. Woodall called me later that day in the hospital. I answered the phone in a Demerol haze, and through the fog I heard that charming accent. She said, “Don’t be down. Nothing can keep a Kentucky woman down on Derby Day!” She knew I was afraid, terrified actually, and certain that I would never have a baby. “Now, Desiree, I don’t think there is any reason to believe that”, she told me. She was the mother of seven children, the most fertile woman I had ever met. She knew what she was talking about. My case was not hopeless and that was that. Then she told me all about the horses running that year. She was home to me.

When I did eventually conceive, I was very ill. Mrs. Woodall gave me a medal to wear. It was a medal that her uncle had brought back from Italy for her own mother, who also struggled with infertility. It was the medal that her own mother had worn when carrying her. I wore that medal every day, and I carried my firstborn to term. I will always suspect that Mrs. Woodall prayed my child into existence.

After I became a mother, our relationship changed. She was no longer my friend’s mother, she was actually my friend. She shared things with me on a different level. She told me some of her regrets and shared some of her sorrows. She told me that often she could not sleep at night, because the angels needed her to pray for someone. The angels wanted her to pray. I know there were times when she prayed for me, because I could feel it.

When I decided to become a midwife, Mrs. Woodall encouraged me. When I began attending births, she would tell me her birth stories. She gave birth to her first son in England, in the method of Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, stopping in the middle of second stage to finish her cup of tea and enjoy a chocolate biscuit - just after Norman’s head first saw the light of the world, but before his shoulders had done the same. She stopped in the middle of giving birth to eat a chocolate biscuit. It is no wonder this woman was my hero.

I loved talking birth with Mrs. Woodall. We spent hours on the phone long distance. Long before I decided to study midwifery, she taught me an acupressure point to use for pain relief that I use with all my mothers in labor. It was something the nuns taught her when she was a school girl in Ireland. I remember when she showed this to me, and I thought, “Wow, this woman knows a little something about everything!” Not only did she know a little something about everything, she had an opinion about everything, and I mean an OPINION.

She never expressed an opinion without being certain that you understood why she held that opinion. If you had any sort of a differing opinion, perhaps because there were some unfortunate gaps in your education, she filled them. If the subject was politics, she put it in historical perspective. If it was Canon law, she knew in exactly which century the church first made a decision about whatever the point in question might be, what effect that decision had on the populace, when that decision was changed, what sociological event precipitated the change, which pope made the change, what that pope had for breakfast, and whether he had dined alone or with company.

There was never a Catechism teacher like Mrs. Woodall. I remember one class when we were all rudely chattering away, unfocused, and not especially inspired by scripture to be there. She had asked us about that day’s homily, and none of us had paid enough attention to Father’s sermon to answer her question. She asked about the readings for the day, and again there was no answer, but there was some talk about an upcoming sporting event, which we found much more exciting than an eccuminical discussion. This went on for a few minutes, and she lit a cigarette.

Did I mention we were in Catechism class? Well, we were. We were in Catechism class, and she was smoking a cigarette. She took a long draw from her cigarette and did that thing she used to do with her eyes – you know the thing - the thing where you weren’t sure if she was full-out rolling her eyes at you in disgust, or just half-rolling them as she looked toward heaven. It was that thing she did with her eyes when you knew in her mind she was muttering something under her breath. You were never quite sure if she was praying for you or saying something Godawfulbad.

After completion of the eye exercise, she exhaled a stream of smoke that really should have been shooting out of her ears, and in a rather harsh tone of voice she exclaimed, “Mary Magdalene was nothing but a damned dirty whore!”

Well that certainly got our attention. It shocked the daylights out of us. It wasn’t just what she said that was shocking, it was the way she said it. That accent of hers made every statement extreme. She could have said, “Mary had a little lamb”, and it would have sounded profound, if not a little scary. Once she got our attention, there was some discussion.

The discussion must have gotten lively, because after a few minutes we heard Sister Loretta coming down the hall to assess the situation. It was the first and last time I saw Mrs. Woodall move quickly. She quickly snuffed her cigarette out in a plant, opened the window, and frantically began fanning with the church bulletin. In popped Sister Loretta, and Mrs. Woodall just smiled and said, “Good morning, Sister Loretta,” and in unison we all repeated, “Good morning, Sister Lorretta.” In that moment, Mrs. Woodall became not only my Catechism teacher, she became my hero.

Who made me?

God made me.

Why did God make me?

God made me to love and serve Him.

There are times when I wonder about this God and why he made me. There are times when I am guilty of at least some of those seven deadly sins Mrs. Woodall had us memorize, times when I am in doubt, times when I ponder the things I am no longer sure I can believe. But there is one thing I will always believe. When I wake up and I just cannot sleep, it is the angels keeping me awake because someone is in need of prayer. I pray for those in need, the way she taught me to, and only then can I sleep. Sleep well, Mrs. Woodall. I have no doubt that you are in the arms of the angels now. Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.