Chris Russ

here's a weird life detail i can't tell anyone. i was partially raised by this italian woman that lived two houses away from me. my parents were working so much that i was basically with her all the time. i was being raised religion-less, essentially. however, she being elderly and italian, was super catholic. i can remember everything about her house: paintings of saints, small virgin mary statues, and her TV was always on, alternating between a nun and a eucharistic procession - although at the time i had no idea what either of these things were. i moved around age ten. she wrote me a letter when i was a teenager, but i never wrote back, which i regret. it was very heartfelt and was mostly about missing seeing me become a man. i didn't think much of this relationship, until later i became an extremely religion oriented person, and just thought it was funny that i had these memories buried in the back of my mind. suddenly i was once again surrounded by catholic stuff. it was only later that i realized that she was one of the only wholesome influences in my childhood. the whole point of this is that - baby cyclops (girl) looks just like her. it actually freaks me out a little. obviously i was not actually related to her, but i see her face in the baby's face. i think about her almost every day now because of this. there's no one i can explain this to because no one else in my present life knew her, so, its just a bizarre cosmic detail that only i am privy to. oddly, before she was born, i considered giving her the same name, but thought it was too italian. i guess i didn't have to.