Sunday School

Say this three times, fast: Ore boat.

Repeat.

That's how many we saw up at The Cabin last weekend, from the deck of The Beachhouse. Six ore boats plowing westward along The Lake's horizon, majestic in the April sun, perhaps a mile out. My husband and I watched them crossing, one by one, over a three-day period. Maybe we'd sighted a dozen of these freighters, all told, over the previous twenty years. Ignorant about such things, we assumed a temporary shift in the shipping lanes and settled back to enjoy the unexpected diversion.

Meanwhile, in another part of the world, our daughter was experiencing an unexpected diversion of her own: Church. On Easter Sunday, no less.

When I heard about it, I recalled what she'd said as a Second Grader the day she came home asking why her classmates went to Church and we didn't and who was this Jesus dude, anyway. Being a conscientious and respectful mom just then (as opposed to panic-stricken and desperate), I leaned down and looked her in the eye and explained that Jesus was a peaceful wiseguy who lived a long time ago, who'd loved animals and children and had a lot of good ideas, and who would've been a Hippie in another lifetime. Then I said many people believed he was the Son of God, to which my daughter replied, not missing a beat, "Yeah, right."

From the mouths of babes.

When I asked my daughter about Church on Easter Sunday, she had one word for it: boring. She'd been visiting The Aunties (each as pagan as the next guy, if that guy happens to be me or my husband), who'd decided she needed a new cultural experience. I can dig it. Afterward, the whole crew went out for an All-You-Can-Eat Easter Brunch, another new cultural experience. My daughter came home craving green vegetables and asking another round of church-y questions.

Why does the audience constantly sing out of those heavy books?
(It's called a Congregation, the books are Hymnals, it's Tradition.)

Why does that guy up in front blab on and on?
(That's the Pastor, the blabbing is the Sermon, it's Tradition.)

Do all those people really believe all that crap?
(Those people are Christians, that crap is Christianity, it's their Tradition.)

What a cop-out, Mom. And I don't mean failure to discourage use of the vernacular. But I couldn't think how else to deal with the subject, on such short notice.



First of all, I have no problem with the idea of diverse cultural experiences, but our family needs its sleep on Sunday. End of discussion. Second, the hypocrisy of organized religion appears not to be lost on our pragmatic, left-brained, mind-like-a-steel-trap Capricorn daughter (i.e., her Second Grade observation re that Jesus dude). Once, driving UpTheShore, I pointed out that we could see The Lighthouse through the trees, at which point she strenuously objected, saying we couldn't see through the trees, we could only see between them, she might as well have added end of discussion. She was five at the time.

I myself was raised Lutheran. I distinctly remember lying in bed at night, rabid with religious angst. I was supposed to have Faith, I tried to have Faith, I pinched my arms and bit the inside of my mouth in search of Faith. But something was missing. Everyone else seemed possessed of some assuredness I absolutely lacked. I'd swing my rotten-egg-scented, glow-in-the-dark cross through the air above my bed, spelling out my name, thinking the combination of the two factors -- The Cross and My Name -- would somehow coalesce into a miracle, the miracle of Faith. Fuggeddaboutid!

I had to settle for what I could get.

What I got was Luther League and music. The best thing about Luther League was the hayrides. If you were lucky, a cute boy might push you off the wagon (not that wagon, I was only thirteen, for godsakes). If you didn't sustain a concussion or break something, you could pick yourself up and run back and the cute boy would help you on again and commence brushing hay from various parts of your person. The best thing about music was that our particular church boasted an award-winning choir director, a congregation large enough to maintain a continuous stable of quasi-decent voices worthy of an award-winning choir director, and a leviathan pipe organ that loomed majestically up behind the choir loft like...well, like an oar boat.*

But back to the question at hand. What's a pagan parent to do?

One option is to go Unitarian, which has been described by some as "Church for atheists with children." Okay, but there's still the Sunday morning thing. Another option is to declare ourselves Non-Church-Goers-Not-Affiliated-With-Any-Structured-Belief-System and leave it at that. Only, as a member of this blasphemous minority in The Good Ol' USofA, our daughter will spend her life surrounded by legions of Happy Believers scandalized by her lack of religiosity. Americans pride themselves on their open-mindedness, but just mention one word -- Vegetarian -- at almost any social gathering, and watch the eyes start to roll.

We've opted for Door Number Three. A homegrown mix of compassion, morality and pantheism, spiked with Golden Rule. You can take it anywhere. Doesn't keep you awake at night. Let's you sleep in, perchance to dream. Covers the spiritual gamut: Empathy. Awe. Fury. Euphoria. It's healthy. Organic. Child-friendly. Good for you. And for other living things. And the best part, you can improvise. Music. Vegetables. Miracles. Ore Boats. With Door Number Three, it all somehow fits together.

Say this three times, fast: Between the trees.




(*Sounded like one, too.)

Now This

These other things now.
What I mean, just to find
rabbit tracks in the snow
when I walk for the mail.
Or hear the flat cough
of a raven. The times

pileateds pass and
in the fall, raptors.
And once, I'll remember,
a howl split the night
as I stood in the yard
cradling firewood.

What I mean, compared
to those far city rooms,
cafes and bars and
afterhours places, we
haunted for years, smoked
Kools, changed the world.

Now this, for me, a dog
smells of woodsmoke
and deer to the lick if
I'm patient. What I mean,
we changed, not so much
the world as our lives.

(1991)

Ketchup

I backed my car into the garage door last week. I was on my way to view pussywillows. Three days ago the Juncos returned. Yesterday I heard a Winter Wren in the midst of a blizzard. Thirteen inches, 40-mph winds, in April. Easter eggs and dog shit will be easier to spot against all this white.

The road I run is festooned with pussywillows for a scant few weeks in early Spring. Each year it occurs to me I should start a cottage industry selling small bunches of the things, which retail for $6.99 at the local florist. This could keep me in the style to which I'm accustomed, for at least a month. I picture a small ribbon-entwined kiosk on the walk in front of my house, the sun smiling down, Juncos and Wrens warbling in the background...all this surrounded by three-foot snowdrifts. (Note to self: Run heater cord from house out to kiosk.)

The style to which I'm accustomed is this: unemployment. Confession time. I'm a deadbeat, a non-contributor, a wastrel. I'm a receptacle for the dismissal and disgust of my employed friends. Not that I have any, employed or otherwise. I've been chronically-unemployed for several years. I can't believe I just wrote that. But it's true. I've worked out in the world in dribs and drabs. Mostly, I've worked at home.

Oh-Oh. The Stay-At-Home controversy.

I'd rather argue Politics or Religion any day. I never pictured myself in this place. I've been a working fool for most of my adult life. Now it's come to this. The thing is, I'm not Stay-At-Home by choice, but by accident. The accident of parenthood. Which is a story in itself. And not one I'm inclined to go into just now.

One day I woke up and found myself unemployed, and stayed that way. This was a few years ago, when my daughter was younger. Now that she's older...and no, she's not twenty-seven!...I wake up and get her to school and come back home and find myself unemployed. I might be working my ass off (man, I wish that were true), but I don't have much to show for it by way of the American definition of success, other than an above average kid (thank you, Garrison), an orderly house, good leg muscles and a dog who doesn't spend all day in a cage. That last part pretty much describes what it's like to work for the U.S. Postal Service, one of my former employers.

It's not that I wish to remain unemployed. It's that the longer I go without a JOB (as in "A place to work" as opposed to "That poor schmuck in the bible with all the trials"), the more comfortable, the more familiar joblessness becomes. A person can get used to just about anything. With the exception of Muzak and George W. Bush.

I believe there are many women, maybe even some men, who can relate to this feeling of lassitude in the face of events beyond one's control. This feeling of...circumstantial ennui. Hey, I like that. Circumstantial Ennui. I envision T-shirts airbrushed with these words, for sale alongside the pussywillows. Somehow they go together. In my previous life, in The Old Neighborhood down in The City, I used to see a car with a vanity license plate that read ENNUI. The guy I was going out with at the time thought it was Chinese; later that same day, I broke up with him.

I blame CE for my garage door mishap. If I'd been paying attention to the minutiae of the present moment instead of wallowing in circuitous indecisiveness, I'd have remembered: 1. Close door of vehicle, 2. Insert ignition key, 3. Engage garage door opener, 4. Pull gearshift into Reverse, 5. Apply pressure to gas pedal. Preoccupied as I was, I neglected to perform Step 3. A minor offense, a slight blip on the Road of Life, but still. It gave me pause. In spite of all that's going on in my life...all that's not going on...I've somehow managed to infiltrate my consciousness with random thoughts of pussywillows. Garage doors and W-4s be damned. Is this a good thing?

Awhile back, I was having trouble coming up with a title for one of these posts. This was unusual, as titles usually knock me upside the head with their obviousness. I happened to mention my dilemma to my daughter, who didn't miss a beat.

"Ketchup," she said, "call it Ketchup."

"Why Ketchup?" I said, and she said,

"Because, you know, that's what it is. It's hard to explain." Then she said, "When are you gonna let me read your blog?"

"When tomatoes fly!" is what I was thinking. What I said was, "Speaking of cyberspace, what say we play a couple games of Pizza Party Pickup before dinner."

Which we did. Which my daughter, of course, won.