Lucy in the Sky
Annmarie Antenucci
Word Count 538
When I visited the Church of Santa Trinitá on a vacation to Florence, Italy, I looked forward to admiring the central altarpiece of the Virgin Mary with her newborn son by Domenico Ghirlandio. Ghirlandio was a 15th Century painter who had a marvelous eye for detail and liberally deployed gold leaf in his work, making his paintings feel full of light.
The display of holy cards at the front of the church included one for Ghirlandio, and, to my surprise, another for St. Lucy, the patron saint of the blind, my mother’s favorite. I bought both.
I don’t know exactly when my mother’s devotion to St. Lucy began but I believe it started in 1960, when she was 37 and a drunk driver t-boned the front passenger side of our car, giving my mother a whiplash neck injury. After treatment by a (terrible) chiropractor, she lost her eyesight for a couple of days.
Or it might have been a couple of years later, when my 9-year-old sister got hit in the eye with an icy snowball. The eye doctor in the hospital worried she’d lose her sight, and warned us to keep her immobile. “Don’t even go to the bathroom,” he said.
“Don’t worry, doctor,” my mother said. “I’ll pray to St. Lucy, and everything will be OK.” In her bedroom, my mother kept a small statue of a 10 inch high St. Lucy draped in robes with a halo behind her head, carrying a plate piled high with eyeballs.
To the doctor’s chagrin, everything was ok.
I made my way down the aisle in Santa Trinitá as quietly as I could and found a seat. It was early in the day, and I was alone in the church.
As I thought about my mother and her love of Saint Lucy, a cloud of mist suddenly cascaded down from the ceiling, billowing all around me. It floated around at eye level, never touching the ground, swirling, curling, waving, and lapping, like a whirling ribbon. Nearly translucent, with just a touch of yellow, it was getting fancy, performing all kinds of tricks. There was no wind, no odor, just utter silence.
I looked to the left, then the right. Maybe someone extinguished a candle? No, it was too much for just one candle. I sat there dumbfounded. It was calming, yet mysterious. And then, I became afraid.
I jumped up, and the mist immediately evaporated. Holding the card of St. Lucy, I fled the church and crossed the bridge of Santa Trinitá, trying to calm myself though I wasn’t sure there was any plausible explanation to describe what had just happened.
When I got home, I didn’t tell many people about the mist, except for one friend.
“That’s a sign for you to go back to where you’re most comfortable,” she said, “back to your roots.”
She meant Catholicism. I wasn’t sure about that. But I did start looking for a new church. Eventually, the one I found did happen to be Catholic. I chose it because the priest is kind, they play live music every week, and most importantly, everyone is warm and friendly. I guess the mist pushed me back to where I’m most comfortable, after all.
Annmarie work has appeared in The Sun magazine's Readers Write column, the Staten Island Advance, Primo magazine, and the Italian Tribune, among others. She lives in Staten Island, New York City, with her rescue dog, Martina.