then/now

there are little chairs in my house. i am stretched out on the borrowed couch, drinking our coffee from our press. i turned on the bright eyes christmas album. there are little chairs in my house, tiny toys, baby dolls, small pajamas...there is a little girl asleep in my bed. sometimes she is a ghost of my childhood, crying heavy tears about bedtime and pressing her little belly into my back as we migrate across the bed until soon, she's taking up all of the space. i forgot to turn on the christmas lights.

she says there are three things she likes to do when she can't sleep: 1) draw. 2) stare at the christmas lights. 3) stare at the christmas tree. none of which actually help her go back to sleep.

i live for mornings. i live for being the first one awake, for slow sips of coffee and the tummy aches that surely follow. i have piles of projects around me that need to be finished for christmas. there is a little chair behind me, from her table in her room.

last night i wanted to dissipate, i wanted to evaporate into the kitchen air. instead, i stood there like a lonely, hollow tree and complained that there was nobody to call at two in the morning, that there was nobody to sit on my couch and make something with me (something i didn't have to teach them to do). there is no friend who wakes up at 6am with me, no friend to match my bedhead, no friend to flip on dora while we catch up on facebook while our babies watch television. there is no friend i can share the pains of being a partner/mom/student/person with, though there are a lot of pieces, a lot of people who pour themselves into some of the boxes. some of you know what it is like to parent, some of you know what it is like to be a single parent. some of you know what it is like to be swimming in a sea of papers. some of you like the quiet. i went to the mall at 8:30 last night, because i wanted a sparkly shirt for christmas or maybe i just wanted to be out. i didn't find one, and wandering the mall during late holiday hours was eerie because i carried with me all of my exhaustion, right in my arms. i bought grace new underwear, and somebody else's kid puked on the floor.

i came home and talked for a long time about what it is like to be in a relationship while belonging to a small church. when you're somebody's girlfriend, and that somebody is the son of a very involved family, the whole world is watching you breathe. everyone is trailing you like a shadow, everyone is recording your every move, making sure you're doing everything exactly right, exactly pure, exactly holy. you know what that makes you do? it makes you hide. it makes you find dark places where his parents won't find you. it makes you create this veil of responsibility that grows more opaque as the days pass you by and then you find yourselves behind it, curled up in a tiny dorm room bed to sleep, burrowed in a nest of guilt because you're breaking the rules by letting your bodies touch through your pajamas. everyone was watching. we were one without ever having slept together. we were one in a way that i have never been able to replicate. we were one in prayer and our own sort of ragged hope and hunger. we were one before i really knew what it was like to be one with anybody.

he met my daughter years later when my hair was blue and long and i sat outside an ice cream shop with my breasts hanging out, my baby drank herself to sleep. we pushed her in a swing. i wondered if maybe she was actually his, maybe i was the next mary and he was god, maybe she didn't come from sex at all. it was supposed to be us, right? married at twenty-two, with blonde babies and strong walls.

the upside to everyone watching was the inevitable presence of community and mentorship, in it's strange sort of pervasive way. and here is where i rest in memory, wondering how to trace my steps back to this place in which there was always someone there who knew the very deepest parts of you - probably because you prayed together, in a circle, holding hands. when we pray "our father," at the church we've been going to, i am powerless and frozen except for my grace who won't hold my hand anyway. i think if a stranger touched my hand, i'd flood the sanctuary with years of restrained tears. there was always someone to talk to, someone to pull aside into a quiet room to help you remember the proper ways to live. there are pieces of myself in the old church carpet, where we sat on the floor and begged for god to be near. my reflection must still be in the nursery window where i imagined the way our lives would unfold as i held someone else's baby.

and so i keep a list in my head of the problems i have with the church, the gates i've closed and the cracks that keep me from going back: i believe that heaven and hell are conceptual, not actual places: peace versus perpetual unresolve. i believe that sexual orientation is unimportant. i believe in the celebration of people, the body, and the wisdom and knowledge we possess to make choices. i believe in ritual and tradition in that they are spiritual practices. i do not believe in the practice of prayer as an attempt to persuade god to "reveal himself." i do not believe in the need to ask for salvation, or baptism as a means of acknowledging that choice. i do not believe that salvation is a choice, though i do believe that living an intentional, holy life is a conscious practice and therefore that impulsivity and carelessness are harmful ways to live (so, maybe this is where i can begin to define "sin").

here we are, in the morning, many years later. there are kid things in my living room, and an emotional four year old on my shoulder watching frosty melt on tv. i have a partner who at the very least, knows the songs we used to sing at church and the rules young christians are expected to live by. he knows what commitment and companionship mean to him, and he waits patiently for me to figure these things out for myself. he listens intently as i walk through memories, he unravels the panic that clouds my head when i'm suddenly debilitated by the presence of certain things and the absence of others. this year was a year of choice, but it was also a year of critical thought. next year will be a year of generation.