{"id":22742,"date":"2024-05-13T13:57:12","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T17:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/?p=22742"},"modified":"2024-05-13T13:57:12","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T17:57:12","slug":"to-be-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"To Be Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"a
image via Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was the best kind of Sunday: cool, bright, sunny. We were going to church at the 5:30 Mass that evening, so I slept in until noon. I woke up to Adrienne presenting me with a wooden plaque from Dollar Tree and an origami card she made in school, signed in her best cursive. The school has been able to teach her cursive, something I never could.<\/p>\n

I praised her for the gift and told her it was my very favorite shade of pink, while inside the grief stabbed me again. I will never be what I was supposed to be, what I desperately needed to be. I will never be a devout Catholic multipara homeschooling her cheerful brood of little ones. If I ever do manage to make a real peace with the Catholic Church, I still won\u2019t fit in with the Steubenville Catholic set. I\u2019ll never be a saint who did just what God wanted. I don\u2019t fit into any category of hagiography<\/a>; my story is a different kind. I have to be somebody else.<\/p>\n

I went out to check on the backyard, where things were coming along.\u00a0 I\u2019d tried to transplant the volunteer sunflowers to the edges of the garden as a living fence, and they\u2019d drooped, and I thought they were dead, but now all but two were thriving. The mixed sunflower seeds I scattered around them hadn\u2019t sprung up yet. I\u2019m going to have a great wall of sunflowers on the north side of the garden, at least eight different breeds if I\u2019m lucky. The watermelons hadn\u2019t quite come up yet, but the peas were taller than their trellis and starting to blossom. The onions were plumping. The herbs were happy. The strawberry blossoms had nearly all been replaced with hard green berries. Of course I bought too many tomato seedlings despite promising myself I wouldn\u2019t: four bland Romas which yield an enormous amount of fruit, for making sauce. Four sublimely flavorful heirloom Mister Stripeys, which develop more slowly and yield much less, for eating raw. One red beefsteak, to see what will happen. I still want a purple Cherokee if I can find the space. Everything was going the way that it should.<\/p>\n

For a moment, I wasn\u2019t myself. I was the magician woman in the great flowered hat from Hans Christian Andersen\u2019s The Snow Queen,\u00a0<\/em>growing the perfect earthly paradise to make Gerda forget her past.<\/p>\n

No, I wasn\u2019t. I was that horrible fanfic character I made up when I was a lonely teenager: a beautiful elf who was torn from her mother\u2019s womb and kidnapped to be raised by an evil human sorceress before running away and hiding in the Misty Mountains where Elrond found me and welcomed me into his family. The backyard is Rivendell. The alley is the River Bruinen. No evil can befall me here.<\/p>\n

No, it wasn\u2019t, it was the grounds of Experiment House and I was Jill Pole, the only woman in the Chronicles of Narnia with whom I\u2019ve ever felt any kinship. Eustace and I were going to open the gate any moment and find that it had turned into a portal to Aslan\u2019s country. But I would never, ever, ever let Aslan return me home; I would escape from Aslan,\u00a0 stay in Narnia and have adventures forever.<\/p>\n

I was Estella Havisham, walking on the old casks in the garden at Satis House, and young Pip was enamored of me.<\/p>\n

I was Alice visiting Wonderland, and the cards were painting the roses red.<\/p>\n

I was Athena\u2013 Athena Parthenos, the gray-eyed goddess of wisdom and just war, and the reason nobody loved me was because I was beyond all of that, a perpetual virgin.<\/p>\n

Just then a harsh, electronic whirring noise sounded from the east side of the yard\u2013 my old stalking neighbor\u2019s house. I don\u2019t need to remind my readers how fond she was of her electronic gardening tools. All of my masks fell down\u2013 I was nobody from any fantasy. I was myself: a fat middle-aged autistic woman with PTSD, trapped in Steubenville.<\/p>\n

I told myself that it couldn\u2019t possibly be her, back from the dead. She went into hospice care fifteen months ago. I must be hearing gardening equipment from the yard on the other side of her.\u00a0 But I wasn\u2019t. The noise was certainly coming from between our houses. Somewhere in my mind, I knew there was nothing preternatural going on, but a moment ago I\u2019d been in Rivendell. For all I knew, the being on the side of my house could be a barrow-wight.<\/p>\n

The ghost buzzed down the messy weeds on the side of the porch, so I saw the spray of pulverized plant matter before I saw who was holding the weed whacker.<\/p>\n

It was Jimmy, of course. We\u2019re paying him twenty dollars whenever we can scrape it together if he\u2019ll come mow our lawn whenever he finishes his. He doesn\u2019t ask when to come, he just comes and does chores when he has a moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you!\u201d I said to Jimmy.<\/p>\n

\u201cHappy mother\u2019s day!\u201d he said to me, and my fear melted.<\/p>\n

Later that day, we went to Mass. Adrienne sat in the congregation with her father, but I am still not that bold. I\u2019m still afraid of God. I sat in the back of the cry room, scrolling on my phone, shivering. I wished the Cry Room was on the side of the church with the statue of Saint Joseph instead of the Virgin Mary in her silk flower May crown, because I am afraid of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary is perfect. She would have no patience whatsoever for someone like me.<\/p>\n

The young pastor is a pleasant one. He preached a good homily on the Ascension of the Lord and not a sappy one on Mothers\u2019 Day. I will never trust a priest again, but I like him.<\/p>\n

I stared at the icon of Saint Maximillian Kolbe, and wondered if his painful death in Auschwitz was a purgation of his sin of antisemitism.<\/p>\n

I pretended to be Annemarie Johansen, the brave little girl from Number The Stars<\/em>, riding on the train with Ellen Rosen to hide at her uncle\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

No, I was the Pevinse children riding the train to the Professor\u2019s mansion, where the portal to Narnia was.<\/p>\n

I was a nun, and the window in front of the cry room was the grille of my cloister.<\/p>\n

I was back at Rivendell, and no evil could befall me.<\/p>\n

At the end of the Mass, the priest said \u201cI have a gift for all mothers today. If you\u2019re a biological mother or a spiritual mother or a godmother, I have something for you when you come out of church.\u201d I was expecting a prayer card or a plastic Rosary.<\/p>\n

In fact, he was passing out roses\u2013 not cheap silk roses from the dollar store but long-stemmed red roses from the florist, with all the thorns cut off.<\/p>\n

\u201cHappy Mothers\u2019 Day,\u201d he said as he handed one to me.<\/p>\n

I was a character in The Snow Queen again, but this time I wasn\u2019t the magician. I was Gerda, finding the rose and remembering my quest to find poor Kaye.<\/p>\n

No, I wasn\u2019t, I was myself, and it didn\u2019t hurt very much.<\/p>\n

The best people are the people who make you want to be yourself.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Mary Pezzulo is the author of\u00a0Meditations on the Way of the Cross,\u00a0<\/a>The Sorrows an<\/a>d Joys of Mary<\/a>, and\u00a0Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to \u201cThe Little Portion\u201d on\u00a0paypal<\/a>\u00a0or Mary Pezzulo on\u00a0venmo<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 It was the best kind of Sunday: cool, bright, sunny. We were going to church at the 5:30 Mass that evening, so I slept in until noon. I woke up to Adrienne presenting me with a wooden plaque from Dollar Tree and an origami card she made in school, signed in her best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2694,"featured_media":22748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11726,2597,12468,198,272,4467],"class_list":["post-22742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gardens","tag-grief","tag-imagination","tag-mothers-day","tag-roses","tag-sunday"],"yoast_head":"\nTo Be Yourself<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    It was the best kind of Sunday: cool, bright, sunny. We were going to church at the 5:30 Mass that evening, so I slept in until noon. I woke\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"To Be Yourself\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"    It was the best kind of Sunday: cool, bright, sunny. We were going to church at the 5:30 Mass that evening, so I slept in until noon. I woke\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steel Magnificat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-05-13T17:57:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/664\/2024\/05\/rose-3061486_640.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"426\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mary Pezzulo\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mary Pezzulo\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/\",\"name\":\"To Be Yourself\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-05-13T17:57:12+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-05-13T17:57:12+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#\/schema\/person\/eefd606fd6f98b01cd46b38fcead458b\"},\"description\":\"    It was the best kind of Sunday: cool, bright, sunny. We were going to church at the 5:30 Mass that evening, so I slept in until noon. I woke\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"To Be Yourself\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/\",\"name\":\"Steel Magnificat\",\"description\":\"Everything is grace\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#\/schema\/person\/eefd606fd6f98b01cd46b38fcead458b\",\"name\":\"Mary Pezzulo\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b65a50a237f24be80481c3e40cdc1c15?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b65a50a237f24be80481c3e40cdc1c15?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Mary Pezzulo\"},\"description\":\"Mary Pezzulo received her BA in English at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. She came to Steubenville to earn a Master's degree in philosophy and Catholic bioethics from Franciscan University and had finished most of her course work before she suffered a chronic illness that derailed her university career. Since then, she's been learning from the school of hard knocks. Her essays on politics, faith, religious trauma, and life in Northern Appalachia, have been published in the Catholic Herald, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Convivium Journal, and the Feinschwarz theology blog. She has delivered lectures on the Uncanny in the field of aesthetics at the Power of Beauty Conference at Franciscan University, and the Terra Incognita Literary Gathering. Mary is the author of Stumbling into Grace: How We meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy, published by Ave Maria Press, which was awarded second place in Catholic Social Teaching from the Catholic Media Awards. She has also written Meditations on the Way of the Cross and The Sorrows and Joys of Mary for Apocryphile Press.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/author\/mpezzulo\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"To Be Yourself","description":"    It was the best kind of Sunday: cool, bright, sunny. We were going to church at the 5:30 Mass that evening, so I slept in until noon. I woke","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"To Be Yourself","og_description":"    It was the best kind of Sunday: cool, bright, sunny. We were going to church at the 5:30 Mass that evening, so I slept in until noon. I woke","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/","og_site_name":"Steel Magnificat","article_published_time":"2024-05-13T17:57:12+00:00","og_image":[{"width":640,"height":426,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/664\/2024\/05\/rose-3061486_640.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Mary Pezzulo","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Mary Pezzulo","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/","name":"To Be Yourself","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#website"},"datePublished":"2024-05-13T17:57:12+00:00","dateModified":"2024-05-13T17:57:12+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#\/schema\/person\/eefd606fd6f98b01cd46b38fcead458b"},"description":"    It was the best kind of Sunday: cool, bright, sunny. We were going to church at the 5:30 Mass that evening, so I slept in until noon. I woke","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/to-be-yourself\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"To Be Yourself"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/","name":"Steel Magnificat","description":"Everything is grace","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#\/schema\/person\/eefd606fd6f98b01cd46b38fcead458b","name":"Mary Pezzulo","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b65a50a237f24be80481c3e40cdc1c15?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b65a50a237f24be80481c3e40cdc1c15?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"Mary Pezzulo"},"description":"Mary Pezzulo received her BA in English at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. She came to Steubenville to earn a Master's degree in philosophy and Catholic bioethics from Franciscan University and had finished most of her course work before she suffered a chronic illness that derailed her university career. Since then, she's been learning from the school of hard knocks. Her essays on politics, faith, religious trauma, and life in Northern Appalachia, have been published in the Catholic Herald, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Convivium Journal, and the Feinschwarz theology blog. She has delivered lectures on the Uncanny in the field of aesthetics at the Power of Beauty Conference at Franciscan University, and the Terra Incognita Literary Gathering. Mary is the author of Stumbling into Grace: How We meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy, published by Ave Maria Press, which was awarded second place in Catholic Social Teaching from the Catholic Media Awards. She has also written Meditations on the Way of the Cross and The Sorrows and Joys of Mary for Apocryphile Press.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/author\/mpezzulo\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2694"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}