Not a prayer to St. Anthony: advice from the cleaning lady was just what one woman needed to turn her life around.

Ida was the cleaning lady at the medical center. I was the new admission that morning--all 88 pounds of me--trying to crawl out of an alcohol-fueled breakdown. I got tons of visitors as soon as I arrived. My impending crash was obvious to everyone but me, apparently, and the medical center was affiliated with the university that employed me. Friends and 12-Step calls alike competed for my attention with doctors, bosses, and my husband. I had lots of food and extra desserts to encourage me to eat and build up my strength. I had my diary to chronicle my journey back from hell as faithfully as it had chronicled my descent. I had my ever-present cigarettes and lighter.

The only thing I didn't have was my wedding as the crises piled up from my out-of-control drinking and my weight crashed down from my too-well-controlled lack of eating, the ring that my husband had put on my finger just six months earlier had slid off. I remembered putting it on in the morning but not taking it off that night. I assumed I took the ring off to wash dishes. I checked the kitchen and my clothes, tore the bedroom apart, then the bathroom, the kitchen again--even the cat's litter box. Nothing.

With my husband on a business trip, it was the loneliest night of my life as I sat next to the kitty litter box crying my eyes out over the loss of my wedding band. When I finished crying, I were outside and sifted through two weeks of trash while the cold rain pelted me. It was no use.

I went back inside, dried myself off, and tried to get rip-roaring drunk on apple jack. I hated apple jack, which is probably why it was the only thing left in the house to drink. I failed even to get drunk, a first, so I kept at it for five more days--until I ended up in the medical center where I met Ida, the cleaning lady.

"The sick ones don't like to talk," she told me that first morning. "Me, I enjoy talking to people. It makes the work more interesting," She also liked neatness in a patient. "You're neat, and you're not so sick you can't talk," she said.

As she cleaned the toilet, emptied the trash, and dealt with my overflowing ashtray, she asked why I was admitted.

"I needed rest," I said. "And I got very upset about losing my wedding band. I'm trying to calm down"

"You need to talk to St. Anthony," Ida said. "He finds things when you ask"

Oh, bow cute, I thought, and carefully wrote our conversation into my diary after she left--feeling very artistic for doing so.

The next day, Ida came back and said," So did you find your ring?"

"No, Ida. It's still lost."

"Did you ask St. Anthony?"

Oh dear, was she serious about this Anthony stuff?. "No," I admitted. She looked disappointed, so I explained as nicely as I could. "I don't know him, Ida. I can't start out by asking someone I don't know for favors."

Ida stopped wet mopping the bathroom floor to consider the issue. "I see your point," she said slowly. Then she brightened up. "Tell him I sent you. St. Anthony knows me very well. Just tell him that Ida sent you. And if I'm not on shift, leave a note at Housekeeping to tell me how it turns out. Just a little note--'Ida, St. Anthony helped." That's so I can tell him thanks for you."

Oh, how cute. Ida left, and the place got quiet, just me, my cigarettes, and my diary. Do I or don't I? I couldn't. I just couldn't. It was hokey, it was sentimental, and it was hypocritical. I didn't believe in that stuff.

But Ida did, and Ida was giving me advice on the only thing that mattered to me at the moment. I bad doctors giving me advice on weight gain and 12-Steppers giving advice on AA meetings. I wanted none of it. I just wanted my ring back.

I didn't know how to pray and had never heard of praying to a saint and didn't know if Anthony was the one in the personal ads of the newspapers or if that was the Jude guy. I was desperate. But I wasn't going to be a hypocrite. I hated hypocrites.

"I'll write a poem," I decided. Technically it wasn't a prayer, so technically I wouldn't be a hypocrite. It would still cover the bases, and it would keep me in Ida's good graces.

   NOT A PRAYER TO ST. ANTHONY
   ida sent me to talk to you.
   She knows you pretty well, she says.
   It's about my wedding ring.
   Can you help me find it?
   It got lost with my sanity last week.
   I'm beginning to get that back.
   The ring would be nice, too ...

The skies did not open over the medical center. The heavens did not come down, and I heard no heavenly hosts singing. I closed my diary and went to bed.

The next day I was released, and my husband came to collect me and start life together anew.

While I stretched out on the living room couch, he decided to jump-start the new life by removing the six weeks' worth of empty beer bottles taking up half of our two-car garage. Ten minutes later, he walked inside with shaking hands--and my wedding ring.

"It fell out of an empty six-pack container," he said. "I was grabbing them four at a time and throwing them into the trunk of the car. I must have tipped one just right because the ring landed at my feet"

Unaccustomed as I was to small miracles, prayers, saints, or dumb luck, I knew it was going to be a different world for me from now on. I don't know if St. Anthony was impressed with my poetry. All I knew was that Ida believed and lent me both her belief and her favorite saint.

I went to the phone and dialed the medical center. "Housekeeping? I need to leave a message fur Ida. It's important ..."

I didn't know how to pray or say thank you to God either, but I had the feeling that Ida wouldn't mind pitching in to help me out again.

By CAROL BONOMO, a lobbyist, speechwriter, and Benedictine oblate in California. This essay was excerpted from Humble Pie, [c] 2003 by Carol Bonomo. Reprinted by permission of Morehouse Publishing, [phone].