Saint Kelly?

Miss Kelly was baptized this weekend. Neither her first name nor her middle name ("Lake") are saints' names, but apparently that doesn't matter now. (Didn't matter when I was born, either, as there's no "Saint Gael.")

According to this really thorough saint index, there may be no Saint Kelly, but there are a lot of other saints I never heard of. Is your name on there?

I went to Catholic school, and for one assignment, we all had to research and write about our patron saint. Since there was no Saint Gael, the teacher just told me to pick a saint whose name started with G. I picked Saint Giles. My middle name, Lee, isn't on here either, but there is a very interesting Saint Lea. And since my middle name derived from the nickname of my mom's good friend, Rosalie, I guess I can claim the cave-dwelling, flesh-mortifying St. Rosalia.

The final salute, the last goodbye

I mentioned briefly that I was maid of honor in my best friend Lisa's wonderful wedding in Washington, D.C. last month.

Her wedding was held in St. Matthew's Cathedral, and from where I sat in the front pew, I could see the giant marble oval marking the spot where President John F. Kennedy's casket rested in 1963 when his funeral Mass was held there.

What I didn't realize, however, was that the steps up to the Cathedral, where a bunch of us in the wedding party shivered in D.C.'s January cold waiting to begin the rehearsal, was the same set of steps where John-John gave his father his famous salute. (Since he was only three at the time, I've always suspected that John-John was really just blocking the sun from his little eyes, but the resulting photo is magical.)