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I woke up to the smell of lilacs.<\/p>\n
It was so hot yesterday that we had to put the noisy window air conditioners in downstairs, but we didn\u2019t bother with the upstairs. We just opened the windows. By evening, it was cool. I left the big picture window facing the street wide open, and slept in the breeze. It felt like sleeping in a treehouse.<\/p>\n
I am still not used to sleeping through the night. For seven years, the stalking neighbor<\/a> would get up at four in the morning to pace between our houses and rant. It was terrifying to have the windows open in my room at night. I\u2019d have nightmares that she was rappelling up the side of the house to attack me. Now, she\u2019s gone. The house is silent. I slept deeply and didn\u2019t even remember dreaming.<\/p>\n When I woke up, the sun was bright. LaBelle was quiet. Shadows of our doomed trees<\/a> danced against the wall of the neighbor\u2019s house. The breeze was still blowing, wafting in the perfume from our neglected lilac bush.<\/p>\n I curled up in the quilt like a worm, worrying.<\/p>\n I said the prayer I\u2019ve been saying every morning lately. \u201cGod the Father of Mercies, I forgive you for creating me. Please don\u2019t hurt me. God the Son, Redeemer of the World, I forgive you for keeping me alive all these years. I\u2019m sorry I offended you so much. I\u2019m sorry I can\u2019t do what I\u2019m supposed to do. Please don\u2019t hurt me. God the Holy Spirit, I\u2019m so afraid of you I don\u2019t know what to say. Don\u2019t hurt me. If there are any saints or angels listening, please don\u2019t hurt me.\u201d <\/em>And then I went downstairs.<\/p>\n Adrienne was in her room, sleeping in. She\u2019s become that odd creature known as an adolescent. We stay up far too late at night watching her favorite Twitch streamer review video games together, and then she goes to bed and sleeps until noon. I keep telling her that real brick-and-mortar middle schools aren\u2019t like homeschooling, and she\u2019ll have to turn her sleep-wake cycle around.<\/p>\n Michael was on the sofa where he\u2019d fallen asleep reading again.<\/p>\n Lady McFluff, the portly guinea pig, was wide awake, famished. I brought her her usual dish of salad greens, which she devoured as I gulped my coffee. I couldn\u2019t stand to eat any solid food.<\/p>\n The wiring harness for Serendipity<\/a> came in a few days ago. It\u2019s still in the hall in the box, where I trip on it. Jimmy is putting tires on his own new-used car, and then he\u2019ll get to ours on the next sunny day. Maybe today, maybe this weekend. In the meanwhile we have the borrowed car, whose brakes sound like a freight train. Every time I come to a stop sign, it feels like the wheels will pop right off. I only use it for errands around town. When I get Serendipity back, I\u2019ll go for a nice long drive someplace beautiful and take a hike, but right now I get my exercise by walking in the neighborhood. That\u2019s where I went next, out for my mid-morning walk.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t even describe what cognitive dissonance I feel every time I pass the neighbor\u2019s yard and see the bright dandelions. She didn\u2019t tolerate dandelions. She mowed her lawn twice a week, stimming back and forth for several hours, cursing and muttering the whole time. Now she\u2019s gone. The yard only gets mowed when Jimmy does it for her, every few weeks. Nature has a chance to assert itself. There are cheerful yellow blossoms in her scrubby grass. She lost, and the dandelions won.<\/p>\n Sometimes I can walk past her house without cringing. This morning, I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The blossoming trees are past their peak, giving way to leaves, but the spring flowers are still alive and well. Bees are everywhere. The clover is high and about to blossom.\u00a0 Everything is alive.<\/p>\n Every time I saw a flower, I\u2019d smile. Every time there was a bee browsing over a flower, I\u2019d greet her. Every time I saw a patch of tall clover growing close to the curb, I\u2019d pick it for a brunch bouquet for the guinea pig.<\/p>\n Every time I saw a tacky lawn statue of Saint Francis or Our Lady of Grace, I\u2019d cringe. Don\u2019t hurt me. I\u2019m sorry I offended you. I\u2019m sorry I can\u2019t do what you want. Don\u2019t hurt me.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Those statues are legion in the neighborhood.\u00a0The wealthier end of LaBelle was where the Sword of the Spirit cult<\/a> used to be headquartered, apparently; the ones who weren\u2019t even allowed to show love to their wives and children according to the cult handbook. The most strait-laced Catholics still live there. They are constantly scrabbling to keep the poor out of \u201ctheir\u201d part of Steubenville. It\u2019s another reason I\u2019d love to move away.<\/p>\n I wondered, for the thousandth or the ten-thousandth time, what I would have become if it hadn\u2019t been for the Charismatic Renewal. What if I\u2019d learned to call God by another name? Or even the same name, with different associations? What if my family had ended up rubbing shoulders with laid back liberal Catholics? What if instead of Saint Joseph Cathedral, I\u2019d been baptized in the Episcopal church across the street or at the Methodist church near Holly\u2019s house? What if we\u2019d not been taught any religion at all?<\/p>\n Would I still have this firm belief that there must be a God, not because of what my abusers told me but because of what I\u2019ve experienced in my own meditations and my love of nature and my interactions with other people? Would I still have the notion that whatever else I\u2019m wrong about, God wants us to be kind to one another?<\/p>\n Would I somehow have gotten this religious trauma another way? Would I still cringe from mass produced plaster statues and beg God not to hurt me?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think I would\u2019ve had another panic attack at Mass on Divine Mercy Sunday and felt sick for hours afterward.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think I would be terrified that I\u2019m going to hell because it\u2019s been a whole year since I was able to force myself into a confessional.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think I would have moved to Steubenville and lost everything trying to be a good Catholic in a Catholic cult. I would\u2019ve ruined my life differently.<\/p>\n I came home, and took Lady Mcfluff out to the yard. She grazed on more clover while I weeded. I ripped out crabgrass and threw it on the compost heap; then I dug dandelions and wild plantain out of the planters. I\u2019ll have tomatoes, sunflowers and a Three Sister patch in the community garden again this year, but I want to grow something here in the yard as well. I want to learn to like being in my yard again.<\/p>\n The lilac bush is gigantic, big as a tree. The whole yard smelled like Heaven.<\/p>\n The strawberry patch I planted in 2020 is still alive. Strawberries make an excellent ground cover. They send out runners to fill any space, and they come back year after year. You could have a lawn of strawberries, if you wanted to. My strawberries are blossoming, ready to bear fruit. Two years of being unable to spend time in my yard, and they got luxuriant without me.<\/p>\n I also found a patch of red kale at the end of the compost heap. In 2020 I grew a kale plant so big it was practically a tree. It somehow lasted the whole winter without dying off, but I finally yanked it out and threw it in the compost in 2021, when our neighbor kept running out into the yard to harass us every time the door opened. It took root in the compost and kept growing, a tough and fibrous brassica that just wouldn\u2019t die. I thought the terrible cold in December had finally put a stop to it, but here it was again, one living shoot in a pile of dead things.<\/p>\n The thing about life, is that it goes on. It goes on whether you want it to or not, whether it has meaning or not, whether you\u2019re going to hell or not. Spring comes. Dandelions open. Strawberries send out runners. Lilacs give off perfume.<\/p>\n The door slammed and I jumped a mile, but it was only Adrienne.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess you\u2019re going to want me to help with the garden this year?\u201d she said cheerfully.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess so.\u201d<\/p>\n I am not all right, but it\u2019s better than it was.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Mary Pezzulo is the author of\u00a0Meditations on the Way of the Cross,\u00a0<\/a><\/em>The Sorrows an<\/a><\/em>d Joys of Mary<\/a><\/em>, and\u00a0Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n