Where You Are, There is God

It hurts to go to Mass alone on Mothers’ Day. 

I’ve healed so much the past several years, but sometimes the old hurts still sting. I am happy hundreds of days out of three hundred sixty-five, every year for the past two or three years, but sometimes the old grief chokes me. Sometimes I catch myself being happy, and it feels unfamiliar, which reminds me of the feelings underneath. The other night I had that dream I thought I’d never have again: the one where I’m holding a beautiful new baby. I can see and feel and smell the baby with perfect clarity. I talk to her and she gurgles, gazing at me with those enormous gray-blue eyes that newborns have, the way Adrienne used to do. I try to get her to latch onto my breast, and it feels like a baby latching on feels. And then it’s over. I wake up, and there’s only me. I wondered if anybody else in the church had ever had that dream. Is it the kind of dream most people have? Or is it another eccentricity of mine?

That was the thought I carried into church on Mothers’ Day.

It is a very nice church I’ve found. There are all kinds of fun, chaotic, happy families there, and I love them. I love to watch them trooping into church together like a gaggle of ducks. I love it when the mothers take their newborn babies out to the foyer to nurse in quiet, and I get to admire the baby for a minute. I love to see a father in a suit and a necktie take his little son in a suit and a necktie out to use the bathroom or to pace around outside during the homily. I like to watch when a toddler carefully steps around the foyer’s tiles, keeping his balance, and then bends over to see the world upside down between his own legs. These are beautiful, life-giving things. Just that day, though, it hurt to see any families.

I like the music at this church. It’s reverently and expertly performed. Often I sing along and try to remember the alto harmonies I sang in the choir growing up. But today I just listened, all the more upset that the music was beautiful and I couldn’t manage to sing. Dómine Deus, Rex cæléstis, Deus Pater omnípotens. Dómine Fili Unigénite, Iesu Christe, Dómine Deus, Agnus Dei, Fílius Patris. Lord God,  Heavenly King, O God almighty Father. Lord Jesus Christ, only begotten Son, Lord God, lamb of God, Son of the Father.

God is so great, so vast, so impossibly generous, that God begets God eternally. It’s impossible to say in human words what God is, but one of the things God is, is a begetting of a Child.

God Godself is a kind of family. 

I wonder what it would be like to be loved and welcomed by a family.

My mother was embarrassed by me, and let me know it. I was too fat, too ugly, too socially awkward to be lovable. She explained to me that it was hard to have a good time with someone who sucked the life out of her. She said she wished I would stop writing long emails home to tell her how I was doing, and just get quickly to the point. She hoped going to Franciscan University of Steubenville could do something to improve me, because she gave up on me. I tried to talk to other family members about how this felt, and they told me that I was an entitled spoiled brat. So I stopped writing, I stayed in Steubenville instead of ever going home, and I haven’t spoken to her in a decade and a half. I thought I would find a new family here, but I haven’t.

It’s been such a cold, hard, lonely journey, realizing that the Catholic Church is not a mother. She’s the Body of Christ, and Christ is real. For good or for ill I’m a member of that Body. The sacraments are efficacious. The saints are glorious. But it’s lonely here.

I should have been paying attention to the Mass, but I didn’t. I sat there on a bench in the foyer, fantasizing about the person I wanted to be: a beautiful housewife, younger than I really am and about three sizes thinner, in a flowered Laura Ashley dress. My hair, which was thick the way it was before PCOS made it fall out, was tied modestly back in a snood. There were seven children surrounding me, the little girls in pinafores and the boys in neckties. The baby in a sling on my chest was the baby from my dream, gazing up at me with those gray-blue eyes. I was whispering to the children that they’d better keep quiet and be good, so we could go and see Grandma for Mothers’ Day brunch afterwards and eat doughnuts. Grandma was excited to welcome us. Everyone was excited to have a happy holiday spending time with us. Just as soon as we finished with Mass, and shook hands with the priest and left politely.

The priest, in my fantasy, shook my hand warmly and said “Thank you for your beautiful witness to life. Happy Mothers’ Day!”

Of course, none of that was real. I shook myself out of my reverie when the cantor started intoning the “Alleluia.” I excused myself to cry outside for a moment. I was sure to stay as far as I could away from the plaster statue of the Virgin Mary in her awkward silk floral May crown by the door.

Somehow, I found myself ruminating about all the families I’ve tried to help and couldn’t: not only my own, but the Lost Girl and her children, the Artful Dodgers in their condemned house. I tried to get in line for Communion, but I had to turn around and leave when I got to the rail. I couldn’t make myself believe that He wanted me, not after all my failures.

I wish there was another Mary Pezzulo to show you. A good one. One who can say valuable, pleasant things about holidays that are supposed to be pleasant. But there’s only me here, a failure.

I went home and took Adrienne shopping for lunch. She wanted to make omelets for Sunday dinner, because it’s a food we can eat together without hurting my allergies. She’s  much better cook than I am.

When we got back, Jimmy’s boy came to the door to ask to play. He showed me the candy he’d bought at Dollar Tree, the kind that sprays messy red syrup when you bite into it. He reminded me of my promise to bring him some old sheets so he could build a tent in the garden. I reminded him that we’re going shopping at the garden center with Adrienne on Tuesday, and then we’d finally get to plant squash, melons and tomatoes. He wants peppers for chili, and I’ll try to find room.

The cat was in her cat box in the basement, excited to be let out to play in the garden as well. The guinea pig ran circles in her cage, happy to be let out to graze on the weeds in the warm May sun.

The Baker Street Irregulars were playing, noisily, in their yard down the street. They always wave and yell “Hi, Miss Mary!” when they see me.

There was the onion bed to weed, and more seeds to plant, and lesson plans to be made for my after school art classes. So much to accomplish, and May is already a third of the way over.

One of the things God is, is a family. But that is not all God is. Those without family can still find Him.

One of the ways you can meet God, is by being a part of a family and a community that looks the way it ought. But that’s not the only way. The place to meet God is in your own life, whatever life that is: your own strange, mysterious, chaotic, broken life. Whatever life you have: that’s where God is. That is where salvation is. There you find your home.

I wasn’t exactly happy just then, but it didn’t hurt as much.