God and My Dad, Jesus

A blinding white streak from the sun shone down on the hood of the car that day, way back in 1980.  Windows down, gravel crunching under the wheels of our old yellow Fiat, my banged-up, bruised kid legs stretched out dangling barefoot off the seat, not long enough to reach either the floor or the dash.  I promptly removed my socks and shoes after the car door had shut. The church shoes pinched my toes, and I hated them. I also loathed little girl church dresses that restricted, confined, tugged at my neck when I sat down. I organized some papers into my little red purse on my lap with some broken crayons and lip gloss tucked inside. I liked being orderly. I was not in a booster seat or wearing a seat belt. Not because my parents didn’t care about me but because there were no laws about doing such things. We were free.

 

My Mom was in the driver’s seat. Pulling out of the church parking lot in rural America, she asked, “Did you have a good time at Sunday School?”

 

“Oh, yeah, I had fun! We colored, and … see – I made this picture for you.”

 

It was your typical 4-year-old’s scribbles:  a yellow sun, pointy trees, and stick people with scraggly hair. There was also a blue circle with people standing on top of the circle.

 

My nice-smelling momma was a nervous driver with unsteady hands grasped tightly around the wheel. I much preferred my Dad’s lackadaisical approach in which he never seemed to touch the steering wheel at all. His hands kind of glided over it, coming and going and moving from top to bottom, fiddling with the radio with one hand while smoking with the other. He was a more confident driver than Mom, who drove too close to the right side of the road as if at any moment she would take out a mailbox or two.

 

“What’s that blue hairy dot?” She peered down at my drawing.

 

“Earth!” I said, astonished she couldn’t tell what it was from my crafty art skills.

“What did Mrs. Meyers teach about today?” she asked.

“She said that God made the universe in six days and on the 7th, he rested. On the first day he made the sun. Then, on the second day he made the stars and the planets. On the third day he made Adam and Eve.” And so on, I went.

 

 

I looked admiringly down at my handiwork and smiled at myself. Mom told me it was a wonderful picture, and I was great at coloring. She seemed genuinely pleased that I had learned something about God. Her thin, pretty pink proud lips twisted at the corners. I stared out the window and up at the big blue sky, watching green leaves pass, marveling at all of God’s creations – the birds, the clouds, the chipmunks scurrying across the road, barely escaping death. I felt this euphoric sense of a heightened self … a tingly feeling of goodness. Sometimes, I still get that feeling after visiting a Sikh gurdwara, walking through a Buddhist monastery, or circling in prayer at a Hindu temple.  Or, and maybe especially after doing my yoga sequence.  I felt whole and wholesome, lost in good thoughts about the Universe and the world around me and how God had somehow made all this beauty. He even created the sun and the moon!  I wondered what the world was like before he made the sun-? It must have been dark. And lonely. And scary. And then, it struck me as hard as if my mother actually had sideswiped a slew of mailboxes. I turned and looked up at her in earnest.

 

“But, Mom … who made God?”

“Oh, well … He’s always been here,” she said.

“Didn’t God have parents?”

“No, He was lonely. That’s why he created us! So we could rejoice in Him!”

 

Uh. OK. I nodded, smiled, and returned my gaze out the passenger window.  My lips went from a smile to scrunched up and turned to one side in thought: but wait … I didn’t ask to be created. And how can something or somebody appear out of thin air? None of this sat right.

 

“So, did he create himself?”

“Yes, one day, he just appeared. That’s what is so magical about Him. Are you hungry? I’m hungry. What should I make for dinner?”

 

Noticeably absent from this scene was my father. He was most likely at home, nursing a hangover. But sometimes, he made it to church, and it was around this same period that I had my dad confused with Jesus.

 

The Jesus befuddlement began on Easter Sunday when Dad, who had the long hippy hair and beard and same pale blue eyes as all the portraits I had seen of Jesus, drove faux Holy Nails that streamed fake blood through the palms of his hands and carried a cross on his back down the aisle of the church.  He wore a white sheet and a crown of thorns for The Passion. Then he stood up in front of everyone, seemingly in agony – hey, he was not a bad actor – with a trail of blood dripping from his mouth and his eyes while the preacher said words. It was all very dramatic. And dark. It was one of the only times I remember enjoying sitting through church service.

 

When Dad came back to life for the Easter Egg hunt, it made perfect sense because Jesus, too, rose from the dead.

 

My Grandma really did die later that year, and my Mom and my aunts told me she went to Heaven. I didn’t understand why they were so sad seeing as I had always heard good things about Heaven. But next thing I recall was everyone getting ready to go somewhere, fixing their hair, putting on church dresses and church shoes and nylon stockings and jewelry and hairspray. I asked, “Hey, where are we all going?” to my aunts, crowded around a tiny bathroom mirror. They said, “We are going to see Grandma.”

 

“Oh, wonderful,” I said, because I already knew Grandma was in Heaven, so I became very excited about the chance to go to Heaven – finally. I was so excited to go to Heaven that I gladly let my Mom put me in a hideous dress and uncomfortable shoes.

 

The funeral home was no heaven, but I did have a good time playing with my cousins. I was too young to be sad for more than a second, but for weeks after, I recall the sadness of my mother, buried in grief. Grandma, unlike my dad/Jesus, did not come back to us from Heaven that year.

 

In the weeks after my Grandmother died, I remember my Mom sitting on the brown and yellow linoleum squares of our kitchen floor, crying. I wrapped my arms around her neck. “I’m sorry, Mommy. Why are you so sad, Mommy?” She hugged me tight and cried some more.

 

Grief comes in waves; I am now discovering. You never know what that pain will be like until you are faced with it. After 58 years of marriage to my mother, my Dad is no longer with us; he’s off to Heaven with my Grandma. He died, but not on a cross. It was sudden and it was quick and he did not come back this time.

 

I knew I would be sad when my Dad died, but I had no idea just how sad, how shaken, how dismantled – nor for how long. Though we had a loving and caring relationship, I was not exceptionally close to my Father, so I did not know how I would handle it or what emotions would come up, or when they would come up for what reasons. The heaviness of him not being here .. and aging and dying, in general, is so much to comprehend at times. It’s really not easy for any of us to live on the planet knowing that we will all die one day. And not knowing – or agreeing on – what exactly that means.

 

When my Uncle died, my cousin sent me a photo of a quote from an obituary clipping he had been keeping in his pocket …

 

“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing…

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”

~ Kahlil Gibran

I think about that old church and I think about restrictions, like uncomfortable dresses and not living forever. And I like this poem because it is free of fear and full of love – love for life and love for the unknown.