When
I was in Catholic elementary school, the nuns gave us holy cards as presents or
rewards. A holy card is smaller than a playing
card. It usually has a picture on one side
of the Holy Family, a saint, or an angel; and is either blank or has a verse or
prayer on the other side. One is
supposed to keep it near to remind the believer to pray or trust in the faith.
By the time I finished the 8th grade, I had acquired a stack of
these. I still own some from those days, and I use them as bookmarks in my
Bible and my books of devotions. In high school and college, I used a holy card
as a bookmark in the textbooks of my most difficult classes.
When
I taught school, my specialty was Remedial Reading, English, and ESL, all
subjects that required the students to read on a daily basis in my classroom. Since I could not hand out holy cards in a
public school, I gave the students bookmarks I bought at school supply stores. If money was tight, I assigned a classroom contest
where the students designed bookmarks. I chose the top best and ran them off,
cut them up, and distributed them. The
designers loved seeing their name printed at the bottom of the bookmarks,
especially if they found me using one of theirs for personal use.
I
also recycled old playing cards and made these “bookmarks” available next to
the library stacks in my classroom. I
used Uno, Old Maid, Go Fish, and the old alphabet and numbers cards from my
children’s pre-school days. The kids got a kick out of this and my supply was often
depleted. When I taught high school, I offered the students old Bicycle Playing
Cards that had grown unusable from HoneyBunch and his family’s avid bridge games.
What
can I say? I love to read and the
bookmark is an important accessory. I am tickled when someone sneaks a pretty
keeper into a birthday card or on Mother’s Day.
Some in my collection are elegant beauties from foreign places; others
are miniature works of art, but I do not want for bookmarks. I love using old tickets from Broadway plays
or concerts I’ve enjoyed. I have also used parking lot receipts, old airplane
tickets, and, I confess, I have availed myself of colorful cardboard paint
swatches one gets in the paint department.
The
bookmark, like the holy card, is a marker in space and time. A respite where we take a moment to breathe,
get on with aspects of life that need attention, and come back to a warm
welcome.
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