Madonna di Compagna
Verbania, Italy

I was just wandering, not there for church. But the bell was pretty insistent. So I went in and joined a dozen people for 5:30 Mass.

Two voices had already begun the service, perhaps an echo? But then I saw at the altar two priests-at a Monday service.

The language-Italian-was foreign to me, so there was no dogma to dispute in my mind, just the beautiful cadence of the two men's voices.

Very businesslike were the priests and these people with their half-hour ritual. It clipped along without hesitation.

Late in the Mass, I saw that the second priest-silver-maned like the first-was in a wheelchair behind the altar. He didn't recite all of the litany; he'd come in and fade out, perhaps according to how his memory and energy level were functioning. But he was committed to offering his daily Mass as all priests vow to do.

Bodies bent toward each other, their voices murmured in synchrony; dusty shafts of light illuminated their heads and the altar.

Sitting in the last row, I saw before me the people in their worn church clothes. My eyes eased to a little ledge beneath the top of the pew. And there was a euro penny glowing precisely in front of me.

It wasn't until I got back to the dorm room that I realized it was my mother's birthday.

I went back again the next day; the light was too hard at noon for pictures. The summer leaves of the trees whispered. A man watched his daughter on her pink bicycle. A boy, perhaps 12, walked alongside his grandmother, holding her elbow, deeply engaged in communication.