driftfleet | six ○ text

Who: Caesar Zeppeli & open
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: None
When: 2/27

Where I come from - or in my family, anyway, and families like mine. You give your child a special name at their baptism, the name of a saint that's meant to protect and guide them in life. It's just sort of a thing that's done, I never questioned it when I was young other than to wonder why my father chose what he did for me.

Mine is Anthonio, after Anthony of Padua. You're supposed to pray for him to find lost things, any kind of lost things, even ones that aren't tangible - lost faith, for example. It's funny but I don't think I ever actually have. Prayed to him. I always wanted to find all the things I lost by myself, which doesn't actually work that well all of the time.

The patron saint of today is Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows. He died on February 27. That's the thing, saint name days are named after the day a saint died on. So Gabriel died on the same day as me. I've been wondering if that's important - if I should recognize it in some kind of permanent way. Or if I should just try not to think about it, except that doesn't work very well either.

The other thing is that I remember having very strong opinions about some of the saints when I was younger. Catherine of Siena defied her parents and cut off all of her hair so she wouldn't be encouraged to marry. I used to think she should have done what they asked of her. Now I think if I ever had a daughter, I'd want Catherine to watch over her.