By: Cole Grennan
My mother stopped loving me two days after her fifty-fifth
birthday. Like any other Tuesday, she got home late. The dark sky stood
on a precipice. Clouds covered the Sturgeon moon and all her friendly
stars. Sweaty and tired from the Zumba class she taught, my mother put
together a meal that we should have eaten in stilted, awkward silence. It
was routine. An ordinary moment.
With the lights dimmed, the patterns of the floorboards faded to
shadow, I waited at the microwave. What stilted silence would I have
preferred, broken by accusation. Broken by fear. The words she threw
like blades pinned me to the cabinets before dissolving into pretty black
smoke while I laughed. ‘Why are you lying?’ She asked. ‘Why are you
living a lie?’
Lies are safe. Like a child hiding under blankets from the boogeyman, no one can hurt me if they cannot see me. I see those shadowed hands dancing along the edges, but still, I am safe. To be known is to be
judged, and what a cruel jury are the righteous. But oh, God, tenderly, tenderly. At the beginning of September, a few weeks after this forced confession, we were back in the kitchen. It was brightly lit, the sun a rare guest before the gray of Autumn would arrive in absolute. Eating almonds
salted with my tears, I answered my mother’s question, ‘what do you
want from me?’
What do I want.
I want to wrap myself in lies, to shove myself into a box in which I never could fit, spilling out from the edges as I bury my face in tearsoaked cardboard. I want to run until my feet break against unknown
asphalt, where friends wear the faces of strangers, and I can make myself anew. I want to scream at the injustice until God steps down from His mighty throne, his craftsman hands weathered and shaking as he holds my face and apologizes.
I want a mother who loves me.
She cries, sweet tears that I don’t allow myself to see. The swirling floorboards stand stark beneath my boots. I finish my almonds. What an ordinary moment.
A Right Jerusalem Blade.
To be purified by fire is the call of the righteous. ‘I will refine them like silver,’ God says, ‘and test them like gold.’ What riches are these, to have been cast and molded as their creator saw fit? Molten silver, shaped
and sharpened, predestined to fit into the hole in my chest.
I wonder what it would be like to be loved unconditionally. ‘I love you despite your flaws,’ she says, as if she’s doing me a favor. As if I should be thanking her. ‘I love you despite the ways you’ve failed me.’
And what a failure I am. A sinner, a dyke, a blasphemous stain on a family tree of heathens.
When she looks at me, I see the reflection of brimstone in her eyes. Burning blue and pure, those lakes of fire have never looked more welcoming. With Hellfire licking at my heels, I find I can’t believe in the
God I love. I can’t believe in my mother either.
Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of
its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back—to be sucked
back—into it?
The truth of my existence hurts. Saying it felt like being ripped from the safety of a… well. A mother’s arms. Weeks removed, hours, I walk along cracked asphalt to the home of my God and find I cannot breathe. On trembling feet and aching knees, I climb the hill to meet my fate. What love is this, to be called ‘beloved.’ What love is this, to be turned away.
The eyes follow me, as I walk down the well-lit hall of our church. A friend smiles, teeth sharp in the fluorescence, and talks of sacrifice. A story heard, a man who fell prey to the sin of the flesh, then baulked.
‘Take heart,’ they whisper, ‘you, too, could be among the righteous.’
Oh, to be outside my hollow of lies. To see the heart I excised in order to stay hidden, to not be given away by its traitorous beating. I can’t do it again. My full being stands tall in the sun, and I find I can no
longer hold a scalpel. Even for my loving God. Even for my mother.
They say, “The coward dies many times; so does the beloved. Didn’t the eagle find a fresh liver to tear in Prometheus every time it dined?
The church breathes like a liminal space. With its ice-white light and forest-green carpet, it’s waiting. You can feel it in the air, the dust mites that land heavy on your tongue. It’s always waiting, breath bated in
frozen air.
Breathe in.
I stand like a deer on the cracked asphalt, staring down my blinding predator.
Breathe out.
How else am I to face it?
Breathe in.
I could turn, run back into the safety of the brush and pretend I never looked into its bright, glaring eyes,
but I am forever changed.
Breathe out.
I know the fear of deafening growls and blinding silence and I know that fear will follow
me.
Breathe in.
How should I rid myself of it, other than to swallow it whole.
Breathe out.
Would it not give chase?
Breathe in.
Am I not tied to this place of miraculous hurt?
Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God.’ Sometimes it is hard to say so much.
But if our faith is true, He didn’t. He crucified
Him.
And, now I know why we created religion. Not for a need to understand life or death, but because we each need a mother. Even mothers. The point of Christianity is that we have a mother who will forgive us,
and yet, He wouldn’t forgive Himself, His own Son, who are, of course, exactly the same. So how, I ask in fervent prayer, are we meant to forgive ourselves?
How are we meant to forgive our mothers?