The snow had melted, but the early April days remained overcast and dreary. In my brightly lit second-grade classroom Sister Michaeleen worked hard to prepare her large class of children to make their first confession and receive First Communion. There were prayers to remember, devout actions to memorize for a lifetime and a schedule to complete our preparations.

            For the Sunday on which we attended our First Communion, many of my classmates would wear an all-white dress and veil an older sibling had worn a year or two before for their own First Communion. A few classmates were getting a new white dress and veil. Every girl in class was atwitter with excitement. The boys just shrugged when they were told to attend First Communion Mass wearing dark pants, a white shirt and tie. Their mothers would take care of those details.

            “Now girls,” Sister Michaeleen reminded, “Be sure to wear your whitest stockings with your Communion dresses.” I looked down at the baggy, wrinkled tan stocking on my legs, and then across the aisle at Violet, a pretty girl who lived in town. She always wore white stockings.

            I hated how the tan stockings looked. It seemed to me that only girls who lived on farms wore tan ones. Tan or white, these stockings were held up with garter clips just above the knees. I had once told my mother that Sister Michaeleen wanted all the girls in class to wear white stockings every day. There was no fooling Mom with my ‘white’ lie. I was her seventh child.

            When recess bell rang, Sister sent us out into the parking lot playground next to the school with the instruction, “Practice your prayers!” My classmates and I paired off in groups and walked back and forth on the dirty blacktop under a glowering gray sky. Arm in arm we practiced saying our First Confession prayers, “Bless me Father for I have sinned.” Our First Communion would be soon, but I was a little hazy about when exactly.

That afternoon it started to snow shortly before Daddy picked us up from school. Snow and a sharp blast of wind entered the car before I could slam the door shut. Mom had come into town with him to buy a few groceries. She pulled her coat up closer to her neck saying with a shudder, “The forecast says this storm is going to be a blizzard.”

From my snug spot between Mom and Daddy in the front seat of the car, I asked, “But it’s April, aren’t we going to have spring? Sister said, ’April showers bring May flowers’!”

Heavy snow and wind made it hard to see the barn from the house by evening when  the milking chores needed to be done. In the morning, Daddy didn’t drive us kids into school because it had been called off due to the inclement weather. I overheard Mom and Daddy talking about not being able to go into town for something the following day.

The storm wore on and on. Drifts between farm buildings grew to be as tall as the sheds. On Saturday afternoon, the snow stopped, and the wind dropped. Mom thoughtfully commented to me, “Your First Communion Mass is tomorrow. If the Caterpillar comes through before then, we’ll be able to get into town.”

I didn’t know what a Caterpillar was. Mom said it was a huge yellow machine that was big and strong enough to move mountains of heavy snow. We began a vigil watching from the farmhouse windows. Mom was with me when we finally spotted a huge yellow and black machine slowly pushing past our farm on the road. Special side blades piled snow high to the left and right of the road.

The next morning the sun came out and the air turned warm. The shoveled sidewalk along the house was awash with melting snow. The new, clean snow was so white, and the sun was brighter than my lacy, white First Communion dress. When I stepped out of the house, I was blinded. I couldn’t open my eyes.

After weeks of dark, chilly weather, the blizzard had taken away all my hopes for spring.  But then, after the storm, when the sun came out, spring came anyway. All but one child from our class of fifty children managed to attend Mass for our First Communion. It was a miracle.