Midnight is where the day begins

Day 2:
The temperature has risen into the 40’s overnight and I can hear the eaves dripping with melting snow. The luggage delivery elves from United Airlines rouse me from bed just before mom sets off to read at the early mass. She wants me to get up and get ready for the later service, knowing I’d rather go up to Sheldon than St. Mary’s any day. Just after she her car clears the end of the driveway I look out through the kitchen window and notice that just enough snow has melted to reveal the beaten up pound cake in the middle of the yard. Shit.

Donning the bright red house coat from the closet (which was a gift to mom in 1993), and some boots, I go punching through the snow. Collecting the sloppy pastry, I carry it toward the tree line at the edge of the property. The land dips a bit as the lawn halts it’s march greet the woods and so can’t be seen from the back window. I give the cake another toss into the thick collection of trees.

She’s driving me a little nuts already with the minute details regarding exactly how to walk out the driveway to tape a sign onto the penny saver box bearing our house number so that when Santa delivers my luggage he can find the right place. You’d think I’d never seen ice before, had never walked up that driveway, or that I had no experience with these things called ‘feet’. I want to snap her head clean off, but I don’t.

Church saves my sanity a bit. I never chant along with the prayers or songs as its never been quite my bag to call myself a sinner or to proclaim belief in “one holy catholic apostolic church”. I stay silent and meditate to myself. Slowly I feel it deflating lik a balloon that’s been poked. I’ve been trying to manage too much, insisting that I know what’s right rather than simply accepting. Accepting that I’m lucky I got into town with just 3 hours of flight delay and one day of delayed luggage. Accepting that there’s nothing I can do to make this situation different or “better”.

As I relax into the mass the words come to me: “to see how something is put together, look at how it falls apart.” How I’m watching mom’s mind fall apart tells me much about the expectation and structure that has held it together for decades. As each repetition of directions or whining in the kitchen starts to irritate me I follow the strand back as far as I can to some comprehension of the fear what’s held her world in place and the force-structuring her thoughts had at the hands of pre-Vatican II Catholicism. When she insists that there are people knocking on the back door and starts running around frantic, I show her the driveway containing only her car. She’s expecting people coming over and every little thud or bump that meets her dim hearing maps itself to that expectation. I realize that she’s not getting to me like she did even a few hours ago. But, I’ve never been so happy to see my siblings show up!

Day 3:
I wake up to the sound of mom exclaiming at the presence of deer in the back yard. They have their dark winter fur on, which surprises her.

“Usually they walk up through but this time they were just standing around over by the trees, straight back from the house. I wonder why?”

Yeah, gee, I wonder.

We recover from the prep for the holiday. Feast on a few pieces of candy. It’s amazing how quickly this place, this pace of life filters into the cracks of my consciousness. It’s funny how fast lessons can go unlearned, again. I whinge about tolerating my family and the conservative siblings without any thought of how many times mom’s “mhm” over my liberal talking points might be her own form of tolerance. We know we both mean well and slowly give in to the compulsive helpfulness. We each try to fix but still hold on – as if our identities depend upon those parts of ourself which the other sees as broken.

But there is a last time for everything. I stop holding back from those talking points that might cause upset. I refuse to pretend that I practice anything like Catholicism on my own, although I do respect it. I don’t pretend to be sexually inexperienced even though I don’t need to go into the details with her. I’m done playing reindeer games.