Vertago

Manon

        I like to call her Mia. Miriam is the Hebrew.
  It means, "The star of the sea." In wiccan it is the Goddess of Earth.
  Being raised Roman Catholic, I had many Saints and Apostles
  to pray to. I liked Mary. The mother of Jesus. I'm a mommas' boy.
  Dad preferred Saint Patrick. Saint Patrick's Day was a time to run
  out the tricolor flag of Ireland in celebration of the rising of the Irish Republic.
  We would all have Jameson. And play Irish rebel songs.
  It wasn't until I entered College that I figured out Saint Patrick was British.
  The Irish had been pagan, before his visit to the emerald isle.
  Dad knew this, but said it was St. Patrick's Roman education that brought him to
  Christianity. The strange implication was that being from England was bad,
  but being captured and enslaved by the Romans was an improvement.
        Dad was an English teacher. He taught English literature.
  How could he dislike the English? Well, he loved the poets and novels,
  but he thought English history was genocidal toward the Irish.
  He was second generation and lived at the time of the treaty with Britain, which
  establish Southern Ireland a free state and the proclamation of The Republic of Ireland
  in 1949. So, Patrick was Italian.
        Mom, had statues of The Virgin Mary. The secret was she called them Manon.
  The goddess of Earth. Gia is the Greek name. This was a very private competition,
  between my parents. The Virgin Mary is often depicted standing on the globe of the
  world just like Manon or Gia. Now, I started to become skeptical of religion around
  the time dad told me Santa was dead. Saint Nicholas was a Russian Saint, who
  lived around 300AD. He was known for his philanthropy and died 352. I just sat
  down and cried. I was 9. His bones are in relics in Rome.+ Saint Nicholas is depicted
  wearing his red winter coat and holding his Bishop's staff. Yes, he had a white beard.
  The Coca-Cola company beefed him up. Saint Nicholas was stalky. He liked to chop
  his own wood; a typical Russian activity of those times.
        Any who, that's when I started to question the supernatural. My momma told
  me that it was good to be skeptical and I should never practice Witch Craft unless
  I believed in Manon, The Virgin Mary. That gave me a complex. "She loves you."
  mom said. Dad believed in "Spiritual Combat." The battle between God and the
  Devil within you. That made me paranoid. What if the Devil is telling me what to do?
  Is God going to strike me dead? Do I have any control over my thoughts?
  Puberty was hell. I wanted to enjoy sex, but it was forbidden by the Vatican outside
  of marriage. Jeeze! I started talking to my mom's Hummel of the Virgin Mary.
  It was a slender white statue. I'd hold it close to my concave chest. My sister
  Maura tried to break it, but mom got a hold of it. Maura was high on some drug.
  It was the 70's.