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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 53%u201cThat%u2019s sure. Not till after graduation. Just think, mom, I won%u2019t have to eat any of your cooking. In fact, I refuse to, until I graduate from high school.%u201dThey both laughed. Absurd time jokes were part of our kidding. We saw each other on occasions that were far apart. I was seventeen and winter would turn to summer before I would see them again. My birthday was in June. I had become a stranger to them, maybe even a mystery to them that they had to take on faith.%u201cBrownie can%u2019t sit up and beg anymore,%u201d Dad said.%u201cThat dog,%u201d Annie Laurie said, %u201ccan beg with her eyes.%u201d%u201cThose great big beautiful eyes,%u201d I said.%u201cShe%u2019s a good old dog,%u201d Dad said.Annie Laurie%u2019s eyes glistened. Charlie-Pop sniffed and choked. Tears ran down my face. Poor dog. Poor them. Poor me.%u201cI always really miss you,%u201d I said. I wanted to reassure them their loss of my adolescence, all of us bowing our will to the will of God, would gain them the honor of being the parents of a priest. Leaving my life with them plunged me on my every return to Misery into aching homesickness. Still, we laughed over the pie and coffee. I felt sorry for them, storing me up, so obviously, for the rest of the winter and the whole of spring. My father ran his hand through my hair and down my neck to my shoulder and his touch was the sweet, strong touch of a father.During the last four years, I had come home seven times, and still, despite the grandeur of their becoming parents of a young priest, they could hardly understand the days and nights of my new life. Their heads and their hearts had listened to sermons on detachment from worldly associations, but actually letting go of my hand after one last kiss at the train station was a great sacrifice. They believed me without reservation that I knew I had a vocation to the priesthood.Their reward would be great as mine, each in our own way, having given up, on faith alone, father or mother or son for His sake. Oh, I wanted to reach out, to touch them, to take them away with me. Instead, I ate pie in silence. I loved them. I wanted never to leave them and their warmth, but Jesus was telling me to follow Him, and that it would not be easy. He had left His home to die on a cross. I had only to leave my home to go to a place where the priests promised to make me into an alter Christus, another Christ.No one, outside the seminary and in the world, could understand such joy taken in such pain. I had to return from my visit to the world to climb