Stained Glass

   For some reason, I've never cared for stained glass.  I know it's considered beautiful by many, an art form in itself, and indeed I know adults who have spent considerable time, effort and money learning how to create it.  Probably my first association with stained glass was in church.  Our Lady of Good Counsel had a wealth of stained glass, in the side windows and above the altar.  The windows were for ventilation.  The men who served as ushers would open and close the windows using a long pole with a hook on the end which somehow fit into the selected window panel.   In those years of living with imperfection, several of the glass insets had been broken, and replaced with clear glass.  That disturbed me in some way; I'm not sure why, maybe because it made it seem as if the original installation was not that important.  But more unsettling was the large stained glass panel looking down on us from the center of the church right behind the altar, impossible to ignore.  The detailed composition featured monstrous-looking images, similar in my child's mind to gargoyles.  If I had ever asked what the scene represented, perhaps the answer would have made me feel better about it, but of course I never raised the question.
     Some of the old houses in the village, as well as other places, had stained glass at their entrances, usually in the front door, or set in the wall next to the door.  I remember going with my parents to a judge's house for some reason, and waiting on the porch and looking at the stained glass in the door; it seemed old and carried with it a sense of foreboding.
    I was diagnosed with the flu once in my life, at the end of a full year of rigorous programs of treatment.  On the night before Christmas Eve,  I felt really tired and weak and when I looked into the bathroom mirror, I saw not my reflection,  but a sickening and dizzying array of stained glass, in mostly blue. tones.  While that may sound like a beautiful sight, it was in reality horrific and terrifying, and totally obliterated everything else.
    I'm left with the thought that maybe the word "stained" doesn't belong in a positive description of anything.