The Traditional Gargoyles

After such a cutting assessment by such young children, it appears it was ‘game over’ for the priest that particular day, as he suddenly completed his delivery and moved on to the next phase of the ritual of the mass. Around the church, everyone took the opportunity to settle themselves and shift their focus away from our gathered clan. Everyone? Except the ‘Church widows’. Their steely glares would pierce through any person in their line of sight, as they sent their stern reprimanding looks in our direction’. I’m sure anyone who has ever been part of any church group (Mainly the ‘older’ kind – well, the catholic church, the protestant churches, the Anglicans… you get the idea), will know of whom I am talking about. It was how I seemed to remember them. The narrow-minded, bitter, scowling gargoyles of the era. I always thought of them as the ‘non-nun’ nuns. Entrenched in the church and the only moments their faces would produce a smile was if the priest cast a glance in their direction.

They were usually the exceptionally thin, hawk-nosed, senior women who gathered near the entrances, both pre, and post service, to surround the priest and monopolise his attentions. Shielding him from any other parishioners trying to get in a word, or ask a question. The older women with little left in their lives. Strangely, they all usually seemed to be widows. Women who had, step by devious step, taken control of the various power platforms in the church organisations, the tea and biscuit committee, the flower committee, the alter committee, the books committee and the pinnacle, apart from the welcoming committee, the ‘fete’ committee. They had usually insinuated themselves into power at a staging position, around the time of the appointment of any new priest to the parish. While one group, who had aligned themselves with the departing priest would sense the end of their control, and often despite their efforts were simply culled from the meetings (a bloodless but vicious coupe d’etat). There was it seemed major strategic and political dramas constantly occurring throughout the parish, communities and probably, given the examples I saw then, throughout the globe between rival mobs of church widows.

Their disapproving looks would fly towards us from their various tactical positions they controlled throughout the pews. Cutting through anything before them with more effect than a high-powered laser. We knew they would be looking at us whenever we did something inappropriate in the church, no matter how minor. While they may have been able to scare my younger brother into tears with those fearsome glares, more than once, I observed my brave sisters give them the traditional (and very disrespectful) ‘silent raspberry’ (with the screwed up face and waggling of heads). They of course would visibly repulse from such behaviour and shake their heads in sorrow that such activities should occur in ‘their church’. But watch out if mother saw you challenging one of these women. And be prepared to duck if you were within reach!

(Continued tomorrow)