Dermie & Me

It was at a wedding that I first became aware of Dermie. And a wedding would be the last place we would ever see each other.

The first nuptials were a quiet affair in 1960, with only six people present – the bride and groom; the matron of honor and best man; Dermie; and me, the almost six-year old child of the couple stating vows before God and all present.

My parents’ wedding day nine years earlier in Cuba was captured in a sepia-toned portrait taken in one of La Habana’s most popular portrait studios, Foto Yo. My mother – a dark-haired beauty in a white satin gown that she had sown herself and that would later be worn by three of her five sisters – and my father – distinguished-looking in a dark suit, his hair combed back, his moustache neatly trimmed – stand side by side, gazing into their future.

The future they could never gaze far enough into caused them to leave Cuba only a few years later. By the time I was old enough to begin school in the fall of 1960, they had lived in los Estados Unidos long enough to have concluded that there was no greater horror than the public schools of New York City and went to enroll me in the local parish school instead. There, they were confronted with the mother of all horrors – the news that the Almighty not only frowned upon their civil marriage but dismissed its validity altogether. Consequently, their illegitimate-in-the-eyes-of-God child wouldn’t be able attend school as long as they remained in their unmarried-in-the-eyes-of-God state.

Enter Dermie.

No one would have thought of calling him that then. He was Father McDermott – ordained to the priesthood just a year earlier, tall, young, good-looking, able to carry off a cassock as few men can, with Clark Kent-like horn-rimmed glasses and the ability to speak just enough laughable broken high school Spanish to be considered an asset to a parish with changing demographics. He married my parents – again – in the process making me legitimate enough to attend parochial school for the next 12 years.

 And that’s all that was really wanted.

Although a plaster statue of La Caridad del Cobre, the patron saint of the island, and a brass crucifijo that my mother had taken to the hospital with her when she gave birth – both brought over from Cuba – occupied a makeshift altar on which candles were occasionally lit in our apartment, my family was culturally Catholic at best, not practicing adherents of the faith.

El padrecito saw a field ripe unto harvest.

He began making pastoral visits, trekking up five flights of stairs to our top-floor walk-up on Ninth Avenue and 35th Street. “¡Benigno!” he would call up to my father as he started his ascent, “¿hay cristianos allí arriba?” and continue the climb as my father called down, “No, padre, sólo judíos.” He would lead us in the rosary – just him and the three of us at first, but later on, he started bringing a few other parishioners. Sometimes, he would bring a statue of Mary – encased in dark wood and glass and with a little slot at the base for offerings – turning our living room into a shrine for the Latino faithful of Hell’s Kitchen.

Over the years, he heard my confessions and gave me penance (not yet the post-Vatican II Sacrament of Reconciliation), placed the host on my tongue at my First Communion and was present at my Confirmation. He blessed my throat on the feast of Saint Blaise and imposed ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday, and acquiesced to my requests to bless countless items both sacred and profane.

And as I watched him consecrate the Eucharist on Sundays and First Fridays and Holy Days of Obligation, I knew that where he was at that kairos moment was where the Holy One wanted me to be, too.

Father McDermott was transferred to a parish on the Lower East Side the same summer we moved uptown to Washington Heights but we remained in touch. He and my father spoke regularly over the phone. When one of my Cuban tías died, he was the one who said the memorial Mass. One day, as we sat in front of the TV watching the six o’clock news, a report came on about a priest who had created a scandal in his parish with the announcement that he had fallen in love. On the screen was Father McDermott.

We heard that he left the priesthood not long after that. My father became disillusioned and from time to time would talk about el ex-Padre McDermott. I saw him once, in a bookstore in Greenwich Village, during my undergraduate days at NYU.

The second nuptials were a big affair.

In the mid-1990s, I was serving in my third pastorate when a church member asked me to co-officiate at her wedding, which would take place in a Catholic church. Her husband-to-be was a former priest and a colleague of his was to be the other officiant. On the day of the wedding, as we waited for the bride and her party to arrive, groom and priest spoke about all their seminary friends who had come to celebrate the occasion. Feeling left out of their male-dominated ecclesiastical shoptalk, I interrupted to ask the groom where they all had been in seminary together.

“St. Joseph’s. Dunwoodie.”

“When were you ordained?”

“In 1959.”

“Our parish priest when I was a kid went to Dunwoodie and was ordained in 1959.”

“Really? What was his name?”

“Dermot McDermott.”

“DERMIE? You’re kidding me. DERMIE! He’s sitting right out there.”

With that, he pointed out a big, bespectacled gray-haired man, sitting in the pews with his petite wife – decades older, but unambiguously my priest. During the ceremony, I thought I saw the same spark of recognition in him.

We spent time talking at the reception. He remembered climbing up the five flights of stairs. He inquired after my parents, especially my father. He spoke of the work he had done as a community organizer since leaving the priesthood and about a trip he had made to Cuba in the 1970s. He now spoke español effortlessly. I talked about family – my young kids, my aging parents, my new husband – and my work and the long circuitous path that had led there.

It had all started with a wedding.

Mustard seeds were sown on those childhood Sunday mornings when I would follow along in my missal and Father Dermie, facing the altar with his back to the worshipers, would speak the Latin words of consecration over the bread and the wine, holding the elements aloft then genuflecting reverently as the altar boys rang the bells in perfect tempo to his every move. When we stood on the holy ground within the stone walls of the 19th century inner city church – kingdom of heaven in the midst of Hell's Kitchen, smells and bells, ritual and symbol stirring the senses of the congregation – I could almost hear the Spirit whisper my name as She tugged gently on my soul.

Dermie died of cancer the following year. With weddings as bookends to the ordinary time in between, the story had come full circle.