When Rachael was wee, her favorite Sunday was Palm Sunday, because she loved listening to the readings – which are pretty intense, and also pretty long. I am always moved by them too, but this year I was little worried, as I appreciate them much more when I haven’t worked the evening before. I was scheduled to work on Saturday evening, and had put my name on the list of those willing to not work if fewer nurses than scheduled were needed. I was first on the list, and we had two more scheduled than are ever needed, so I was confident that I would not have to work. Utterly confident. Therefore, I got up early and swung into action. I cleaned the house, blocked my new sweater, did laundry, paid bills, and more. When I called to see who was getting the day off, I was stunned that my name was not on the list. I simply could not believe it. Oh well! I got to work, and looked at the list of applicants for the day off, and my name was not even on it. I had put it there weeks before, and some monster had removed it. I checked to see if I had requested the wrong day, but no. However, I felt good, and my patients were all nice, so I went with the flow, as they say. Then at nine-thirty, the nurse on-call got called in. To work for two hours! She had had to leave a friend’s birthday party and was pretty grumpy about it. Worse yet, she was called because all the nurses there were maxed out, and we were getting yet another patient. One patient! And the patient never came! At least not before it was time to go. I said prayers of thanks that my earlier prayers were not answered. I would have been really grumpy if I had been called from my cozy bed and book at that time. And all for nothing.
The Palm Sunday service was wonderful as usual – in fact even a little more wonderful, as we got these lovely palm fronds, donated by the Volunteer Park gardeners. Here are some pictures (taken by my friend Maria) of the Children’s Choir an the noon mass. And a picture of our procession last year. You can see, the special palm leaves really spruce things up quite a bit.
I had a nice nap between Masses, so I even enjoyed listening to the readings a second time. There were different readers, and somehow, this puts a slightly different slant on things, so it is not really like listening to the same thing twice.