Above a chair in my parents’ bedroom hangs a silver-plated plaque of the Virgin Mary cradling the infant Jesus. Within the folds of her tunic, her baby grasps her chest with his tiny hand, while she looks up lovingly to the heavens. As a child following my mother around the house, I used to crawl up in that chair, my eyes alternating between the mother on the wall and the one in the flesh before me. Both with the soft, supple skin of youth, both bearing the name Maria …
Bio:
Lori Sebastianutti is a writer and teacher from Stoney Creek, Ontario. Her essays have been published in American and Canadian journals, including the Hamilton Review of Books, the Humber Literary Review, the New Quarterly, Nurture, Porcupine Literary, and Serotonin Poetry. She is currently at work on a collection of essays that explore the joys and struggles of integrating faith and culture with lived experience (see lorisebastianutti.com).