An ambiguous gift

  October 16, 2020

An ambiguous gift

NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

October 16, 2020

By Francis X. Sullivan

When I graduated in 1983 from Jesuit College Prep, an all-boys high school in Dallas, Tom Hidding, S.J., a scholastic at the time, gave me a simple clay cup and a bowl that he had made himself. The bowl shattered during a move when I was in college. The same accident broke the handle off the cup, but I still drank beer from it, then wine and, on one odd but happy occasion, warm champagne.

In 2001, my family and I bought a house with a glass-fronted kitchen cabinet and the concurrent obligation to find dishes that were worthy of display. We had no fine china or fancy stemware, but we had Tom’s cup. Sometimes I would take it down and use it, enjoying the sense of solidity, of holding a piece of my own history in my hands.

I lost touch with Tom after graduation, as I lost touch with almost everyone else from school. But although I lived far away, Dallas Jesuit had not lost touch with me. I got the alumni magazine. I got the fundraising calls from classmates and the letters seeking money for everything from the art museum to a grooved practice wall for the tennis team. Every year, I got a birthday letter from the Jesuit alumni director, Pat Koch, S.J.