There are times, in my current incarnation of my life, where I feel nibbles at my heels of past influence, echos, as I live in the house I grew up in, taking on a role as advocate and caretaker for my elder father. We have had a series of relationship-states over the years that ran the gamut . He was a good father growing up, supportive in that somewhat distant but full of love and pride way that strong Sicilian men have. Later, a decade passed with very little contact and I nursed my hurt and wouldn’t be the one to reach out, which was also his stance, once my mother died. A renewed relationship then followed when I moved back to Boston, to rent the family home myself rather than he sell it…and back again, as he moved back and I, out again as we hit another strained point in our relationship. His health began to slide and I eventually moved back in. I would say outwardly that I did so solely to be there like a good daughter, but that is such a lie. In truth I had had my heart flattened as an 18 year relationship ended, and being the independent person that I am, I have trouble admitting out loud that I needed somewhere to slink and recover a sense of security that I had lost long ago. That is something I feel echoes of here.
The house and this situation has other echoes – my mother, notably. And with her, the merest whispers of my Catholic history. It comes up at odd times – looking for an umbrella in a closet knocks a random religious prayer card into view. A box of old jewelry yields a beautiful blue crystal rosary. I hear “Ave Maria” as my dad watches Italian TV which starts a conversation about what a beautiful voice my mother had, in choir especially. I loved singing in choir with her.
Among these bittersweet saints lurks reminders of me, the sinner. By that I mean that I feel literal haunts sometimes, guilts I should feel nevermore, in relation to who I am. I liked girls as far back as I can remember, and I remember knowing how I had to keep that a secret because that was not ok, especially at a Catholic school. I remember being a very sexually aware teenager who made her OWN decision to wait to have sex until I was 17, and being guilted and cried for and oh, the prayers … when it was discovered that I was no longer virginal, at 17. I remember how this subtle but ever present judgement bothered me, and I find it now to be like dust in my eyes, bothersome, but something I try to brush off as of no importance.
Hello Holy Ghost, sit down, let’s have some tea. Let’s also acknowledge how my first Goddess was the Virgin Mary, shall we? I have a great story of being sent out of CCD class when I insisted that Mary was a demi-goddess and I would only pray to her from now on. Let’s recognize that, though erroneous, I LOVED the person who Mary Magdalene was portrayed as – independent, unconcerned with your moral judgement, yet bound to the Christ. Or how I loved mythology and saw in Jesus echos of Osirus, of Mithras, of Orpheus? Thanks to the Mass, I love ritual, appreciating the idea of blood sacrifice (and let’s perhaps acknowledge cannibalism, even if only symbolically).
Catholicism merged with the other knowledge I acquired in my hungry head, and shaped who I am in ways that is hard to discount. I have to hold on to this knowledge by contain it when I see the scarier shadows of fear come over my dad as mortality looms. I do not like having to occasionally try to voice my opinion that there is no hell to worry about, because if I explain further, my implication is that there is no heaven, a thought which I am afraid may hurt my father and bring despair. This alternates with my dad sometimes saying he has a hard time believing in god, or anything, until it swings back again. It comes up in random moments when something in my lifestyle he doesn’t like comes up (like not being interested in marriage, my comfort with sexuality, my very unladylike habit of staying out overnight, or the non-direct way gender topics come up when I see my dad struggle to accept that the person that I love is “male” by birth…but…not), and even then half the time it’s my mother he mentions as someone I should do honor by, not god. It is part of our push and pull, and I suspect it will always be there, even long after he is gone.
Marie Alessandro - Gods in the Cogs 