CHAPTER II - Raphaella and Me I was born in Pittsburg, California, the back side of the bay, the California where cities bleed together, amalgamate; where low flat malls serve as land markers and cars are modified to bounce up and down. We moved twice when I was growing up, to San Francisco and back again. I remember the hills of San Francisco because I used to walk them on my way to grammar school, a little private school with red doors and blue window shutters. My mother said it used to be Lutheran, a Lutheran church, but now it was just a school. She said that even if they still taught Lutheran doctrine there it was okay. Her mother, after all, was an Episcopalian, and so were we, and well, Lutherans and Episcopalians are pretty much the same thing anyway, and anyone who tells you differently is probably just unsure that God even exists. She’d say nobody needs to go to church to love God and nobody was ever saved from talking to the gossips in the pews of Christ the Savior Concord. She said it like that too, flat, forcefully. My mother runs the English department at De La Rue, the high school I attended. I remember seeing her stand outside the B building, under the rain runners, herding kids in and out of their classes, saying things like, “I love you, Tom Ellis, but you’re still late for math class,” or, “Who wants to fail today, I’ve got to fail somebody, who’s it gonna be?”
3Souls: Chapters II & III
3Souls: Chapters II & III
3Souls: Chapters II & III
CHAPTER II - Raphaella and Me I was born in Pittsburg, California, the back side of the bay, the California where cities bleed together, amalgamate; where low flat malls serve as land markers and cars are modified to bounce up and down. We moved twice when I was growing up, to San Francisco and back again. I remember the hills of San Francisco because I used to walk them on my way to grammar school, a little private school with red doors and blue window shutters. My mother said it used to be Lutheran, a Lutheran church, but now it was just a school. She said that even if they still taught Lutheran doctrine there it was okay. Her mother, after all, was an Episcopalian, and so were we, and well, Lutherans and Episcopalians are pretty much the same thing anyway, and anyone who tells you differently is probably just unsure that God even exists. She’d say nobody needs to go to church to love God and nobody was ever saved from talking to the gossips in the pews of Christ the Savior Concord. She said it like that too, flat, forcefully. My mother runs the English department at De La Rue, the high school I attended. I remember seeing her stand outside the B building, under the rain runners, herding kids in and out of their classes, saying things like, “I love you, Tom Ellis, but you’re still late for math class,” or, “Who wants to fail today, I’ve got to fail somebody, who’s it gonna be?”