Middle of the Road

My daughter has been praying. Not to anyone in particular, she says, just praying.

"Are you mad?" she asks.

"Why would I be mad?" I answer maniacally, like some Bronte novel.

"Because you don't believe in God," she says.

Uh-oh, here they come, home to roost.

"God who?" I say. She gives me a look.

"Not in some big head in the sky who helps you pass math, I don't. But don't get me wrong," I say. "I believe in...something."

"Like what?" she says, fluffing her pillows.

"Well, like..."

Ravens. Wolves. Full moons. Dreams. The smell of the dog's head. The woods at dawn.

"So who do you pray to?" I ask, changing the subject.

"Nobody," she says. "It's just praying."

She may be onto something there.

"So what do you pray for?" I ask.

"I'm not telling," she says. "It's private."

Then she tells. She never has been good with secrets. She's praying for a school closing, she says.

"Dream on, kiddo," I say. "It's only windy, no blizzard in sight."

Meanwhile the wind punches around outside our 100-year-old walls like it might be trying to goad us into something.

"I went running today," I say, tucking in her blankets, turning off the light, "and the wind stopped me dead in my tracks. There I was, in the middle of the road, going nowhere."

"That's nice, Mom," she says. "But I'm still praying."

The woods at midnight. Dragonflies. Kalamatas and asiago. Horses. The woods at noon. Pendulum clocks.

On the way to school the next morning (her prayers went unheard), she asks me about Christianity. School is ten minutes away, I give her the Cliff Notes version. I make it as far as Easter.

"Which is just around the bend," I say, rounding the bend. "Easter's the big enchilada for Christians. Do you know about Easter?"

"Only the Easter Bunny," says my daughter. My mother must be rolling over in her grave right about now. "What does that have to do with church?"

So I give her the gory details. Then I say that some people, namely Christians, believe that Jesus, after being crucified, dead and buried, came back to life and checked in with his homies and then rose up into the sky and disappeared.

"God, Mom," she says, rolling her eyes, "who believes all that crap?"

"They do," I say, gesturing toward the swarm of white middle-class middle-schoolers. The white school cop lords over them like Mighty Mouse.

"Mom!!" she whispers, giving me a look. "Put your arm down, somebody might see you!"

The first glass of the evening. Pavarotti's Nessun Dorma. Yeats. My daughter's laugh. My husband's eyes. The woods.

My daughter walks away, pretending that her backpack doesn't weigh fifty pounds, that she belongs as much as anybody, that this will be a day like any other, that prayers can be answered. She walks up the steps and into the building and disappears. I stay for a moment, idling, until Mighty Mouse glances over. Then there's nothing left to do but drive.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoHK6658kn8