God drove down the two-lane highway past a small, outside mall where over half the stores appeared empty. We next came upon a restaurant and a tractor mart. After a few minutes the town began to disappear behind us. It had left us faster than it arrived. The sun set long ago and we were driving into darkness. None of us knew exactly where we were going. Mom and I placed our faith in God. He was, after all, in the driver’s seat.
As we left the streetlights of the town the world closed into a quiet tunnel. Outside of the dimly lit cab I could see the road and about ten feet on each side that was illuminated by the truck’s lights. Nobody was talking and the radio was off. The lights showed us tall, brown grass waving in the wind, patches of snow and little more.
I looked at God. He looked nervous. He taught me that it was okay not to know what lay around the next bend as long as you believed in yourself and kept going.
As the truck moved along with all of us waiting for something, a break appeared in the long grass before us. We came upon a road that jutted off the main highway like a small branch might from a tree. The road was not paved like the highway we were already on, and seemed to lead off into a world of nothingness.
God took it.
“Where are you going?” Mom asked. It seemed as if we were moving farther and farther from civilization. She may not have wanted to have her baby at a rest stop but I bet she’d prefer that to a dirt road.
I looked at her eyes expecting to see fear but only saw hope. She had placed her faith in a man I could not at the time understand. Mom rubbed at her belly with her right hand. Mom was not moaning as much as before and her voice had become calm. It was almost as if she had accepted her fate. She was willing the baby to stay put a few minutes longer.
After a long silence God said, “That sign read ‘Christmas Lane’ and that’s supposed to be the road where the midwife lives.”
“Midwife,” Mom repeated with muted surprise. Dad didn’t respond.
We traveled down the dirt road and I looked into the rearview mirror to watch the dust fan out into a red mist behind us. The road was straight with an occasional bump. It seemed as though we were driving straight out into darkness. And then ahead of us on the left, way off in the distance, I could see a faint light.
The light began as a tiny, white glow like the moon breaking through a night covering of thick clouds. As our truck sped closer the light began to grow and soon it broke up into reds, yellows, oranges, blues and greens. Colorful Christmas bulbs hanging everywhere marked our arrival.
The house we approached was made from metal and it was much longer than it was wide. Hard, dry dirt surrounded the home along with patches of tall, yellow grass. The dirt had been built up into rolling mounds and dug down into craters to look more like snowdrifts.
Multi-colored lights sprung up out from everywhere. There were Christmas lights strung underneath the house’s roof and lights covering all three of the outside trees like raindrops after a heavy storm. There were lights along the driveway making it look like some kind of miniature runway. Lights adorned the rails around the house and there were even lights on the rocks. There were lit up plastic elves, angels, wooden reindeers that moved stiffly and cardboard children playing on sleds and building a snowman. Everything was a glow. As we neared the home it was the flashing road sign that really stood out.
The sign pronounced “JESUS IS COMING” in large, three-foot tall, bold, black letters against a solid yellow background.
Well, he was coming sooner than these people thought.
God pulled the truck right up to the front porch and we all jumped out. Mom, despite her condition, was the first to the door and she lifted her hand to knock but then reached back down to hold her stomach. Dad rapped on the door and immediately it opened. Before us, stood a woman who appeared to be older than Mom, but younger than Grandmother. She smiled to reveal few teeth that went out at odd angles. Her hair was long, stringy and tied back with a thick, green, rubber band. The rubber band reminded me of one that might come on the Sunday paper. The woman wore a red dress that had white fringe around the neck and sleeves.
“Merry Christmas, can I help you?” she asked in a friendly manner. Before God could reply she took a good look at mom and opened the screen door wide ushering us all into her living room.
The house was small. A kitchen in the back hooked onto the one main room, which obviously served as the living, dining and delivery room. The main room had scarred paneling hanging on the walls. There were crucifixes, statues of my Great, Great Grandmother, more elves and a nativity scene with a green, glow-in-the-dark Jesus sitting on a bed of straw. There were deer and raccoon heads jutting out of the wall as if the wild outside had been brought inside. Christmas lights hung around their ears and antlers. The lady had an old Zenith television and a record player with Barbara Streisand Christmas songs playing.
“You can sit over there,” the woman directed me to a rocking chair in the corner of the room and I went over and made it my home. I didn’t say a word. There was important adult stuff happening.
God couldn’t be still. He walked around the room picking up things and setting them down in different places. Because the home was mainly decorated with stuffed animals, the real kind not the ones you buy at F.A.O. Swartz, he was picking up Chipmunks, Squirrels and Otters and placing them back down in completely unnatural places. An otter wound up sitting up on an artificial tree branch holding an acorn and a squirrel ended up sawing a fake log in half.
The lady told Mom to be calm and to stop breathing so quickly before she gave everybody in the room a heart attack.
“It’s Lamaze,” Mom said.
“It’s bullshit,” the woman said back. The lady then took some pillows off the sofa and wheeled away a couple pieces. “It’s a sectional,” she explained while preparing the room for the birth of my brother. She placed Mom on the end of the sofa that seemed to stop a little too soon so her bottom hanged off like it was on a cliff. She told Mom to push when she felt the need and Mom began pushing immediately. There was a gush of water and then it wasn’t long before Jesus had popped out and everyone was smiling and singing.
Jesus was brought into the world amidst screams and claps and a little drumming from the midwife’s son who sat in a highchair next to me in the corner. The lady handed my little brother to mom saying, “Here’s your little king.” Then some blood and an ugly plastic bag drained out of mom and I decided there and then that I would never have a baby.
God acted much more comfortable once Jesus was born. He put down the chipmunk that he had been strangling all through the labor. He sang a short little song into Jesus's ear and danced around the room. He ran over to me, still confined to the corner, kissed me on my forehead and called me his little princess Jellybean.
We sat in the living room and the lady told me that my brother would love me very much. She was right. The world was good with Mom, Dad, Jesus and me in it. Mom held Jesus, kissed him and told him that she loved him very much. I could not think of a better way to be welcomed into the world.
God held Mom’s hand and the two glowed as if a halo of light radiated from them. I had never before seen them look closer. Dad looked into mom’s eyes and I saw how much they loved each other. I couldn’t help but think that God was right when he told me that heaven could be found on earth. If only in moments.
A loud crash broke our revelry. There door burst open and three men stumbled in through the door. They were dusty and smelling of something pungent. Their faces were hard and coveed with thick, course hair. One of them still held a beer in his grip. “Well, who have we here?” the apparent leader called out. He wore jean overalls and heavy boots that tracked dirt into the home.
The midwife casually pointed around the room. “That there is Mary. I think they call that one little Mary. This would be God and his son, Jesus. I just delivered him.”
The three men stopped in their tracks. The leader looked at the bloody mess on the floor and the baby in Mom’s arms. “And on Christmas day,” the man at the door smiled to reveal a mouth missing all of its teeth. “I guess that makes us the three wise guys,” he laughed and the two other men joined in with him. Their laughs sound like a symphony of geese.
“I guess that would,” God shrugged his shoulders not feeling too confident in their presence.
The first man walked over to Mom and bent over my little brother. He smiled at the newborn’s pink, naked body. He carried the scent of sweat and beer. “This is for you, little fella,” he said. The man reached up to his right ear and removed a small gold stud. Next, he pinned the earring to the blanket that the midwife had wrapped around my now sleeping, baby brother. “I am sure you will do wonderful things in your life,” the man said, “more than me." The man looked at the smile on my mother's face. "I can already see that you will give more to the world than you take.” He walked away from my brother and into the kitchen where he opened the icebox and grabbed a beer.
The second man walked up and sprinkled some dried leaves that he had pulled from his pocket over Jesus’ head. “My name is Frank and this is a little bouquet for you son,” he said. His voice was dry and rough like the leaves he crumpled. “I have nothing to give you other than a simple blessing from nature to you. I can tell that the world is already a better place because you are in it.” He bowed politely to my mother and walked away. I looked over at Mom and Dad and they both stared on in amazement. The man grabbed a beer as soon as he entered the kitchen and waited for his brother.
The third man walked up and held up his bare hands revealing nothing. “I also have little to give you from this world,” he started then stopped and glanced around the room, “but even the most humble of us have gifts to offer. Words are all I possess.” Next, he bent close to Jesus and whispered “Merv.” I looked at God and he smiled while nodding his head in agreement, never releasing his eyes from the face of Jesus. And that is how Jesus got his middle name. He then walked up to wise guy number two who handed him a Stag beer. The three men popped their cans together and toasted the birth of my brother.
I rocked in my chair, excited by all that had occurred. My baby brother, Jesus, was born into this world. A midwife delivered him in a metal shack in the middle of nowhere. Mom smiled at me, encouraging me to get up from the chair. I walked over to them, not really knowing how to act. I had never had a baby brother before. I looked down at his little, pink body, felt his skin, smoother than velvet, and knew right away that I loved him.
Having Jesus in my life would be good.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
No Room in the End
God slowed the truck to a crawl as we drove down the exit ramp into the small Oklahoma town. We didn’t want to miss anything and unfortunately there wasn’t much to see. There was one main road that made up New Bethel and all the shops and gas stations littered it like garbage on the highway. We passed a Quick Mart and drove up to a Motel 6 but the sign out front flashed “NO VACANCY” in bold letters. God then drove up to Mel’s Motor Lodge but it also flashed a NO VACANCY sign.
“We are in the middle of nowhere on Christmas day and all these motels are filled,” God said. “This is even beyond my powers. How cold this be?” As if to answer his question next to Mel’s we saw a sign that read New Bethel Welcomes the Oklahoma Census Bureau Committee.
God let out a sigh. “It is as it has been written,” he said with disgust. “Next time I’ll pay more attention to the fine print in the O.T.”
The third place we came upon looked completely abandoned. It was called Heaven’s Motor Lodge. The sign out front read “THERE IS ALWAYS A VACANCY IN HEAVEN.”
Mom’s voice broke the silence that had befallen the truck since we had entered New Bethel. We had all hoped that magically a hospital with a brand new berthing center would have appeared and were disappointed by the abundance of gas stations, motels and fast food restaurants that we discovered instead. This disappointment had made us mute.
“Can I ask a stupid question?” mother said.
“Sure,” Dad answered cautiously. He sensed a trap.
“What are you doing driving up to these motels for?” mom asked. “I mean, I was hoping more for a hospital rather than a motel.”
“Well, I figured we might get us a room, check in, you know so we won’t have to do it afterwards, and then we could call 911,” God said.
“So you don’t have to check in afterwards? Maybe you’ll have time to take a long hot shower too, possibly get a sandwich,” Mom said.
“That would be nice. It has been a rather long day and I have been a little hungry ever since we passed that McDonald’s,” God agreed.
Mom’s voice exploded like a firecracker on the Fourth of July, “We don’t have time to check into a hotel.” Mom cried, her voice teetering between surprise and anger. “These towns don’t have an ambul…” Her words were cut short as another contraction came. “Just get me somewhere. Anywhere, but this truck will work.”
God drove into the dark motel named Heaven where weeds worked their way up through cracks in the driveway. A few cars lay scattered throughout the parking lot hinting that life might exist within the dilapidated building. God brought the truck to a stop near the office and jumped out. He ran to the door and tried to open it but the door held firm. It was locked. God rang the bell. He waited and rang it again and then just as he was about to press it a third time, a sleepy man stumbled out of the back. The man had a week’s worth of stubble on his face.
“Can I help you, Sir?” the man said. He rubbed at the back of his neck as he talked.
“My wife is about to have a baby. Can we please have a room?” God asked.
“What?” the man’s eyes tuned into saucers. The sleep seemed to rush out of his eyes in a moment.
“My wife is about to have a baby. We need a doctor,” God said.
“Well, we don’t have any doctors here. See, this is a motel,” the man answered. “I did check in a plumber earlier. I could see if he might be able to help you.”
God thought about the offer. He looked over at us and both Mom and I shook our heads “no”. He looked back at the manager.
“I guess that won’t do. We really need a doctor,” God said.
“Well, let’s see,” the man rubbed his chin. He opened the door and revealed himself to be a scrawny man with an excessive amount of hair on his arms. “Doctor’s tend to hang out at places called hospitals. Also bars, never met a doctor who didn’t like to drink. Hey, that reminds me of a joke. Do you know why doctors drink so much?”
“No…I mean we really are in a rush, could you possibly just…”
“So they have something to do while they’ll smoking,” the man finished. He then laughed and laughed until he started coughing. The coughing lasted longer than the joke and laughter. When the motel manager finally did speak he said, “Problem is, this is a dry county so we can never get a doctor to move in. Of course it also keeps the Catholics out.”
“What about the room?” God interrupted.
“I could give you a room with a view of the field out back.”
“Oh, that sounds perfect,” God said as a wail came from the cab of the truck. “Though I guess we’ll have to settle that later. Do you know of anyone in this town who might be able to deliver a baby?”
“Well, yes, I guess so. We got ourselves a lady down the road who delivers babies all the time. Well at least once or twice a year when someone needs a baby delivered here in town. See most people go to the city. To the hospital,” the man clarified, “where there are doctors who specialize in delivering babies.”
God was beginning to sweat. He hated when people pointed out the obvious. “Yes, I know that. But I guess for now, with no hospital near, this lady will have to do.”
“Now her place isn’t as nice as this,” the man’s arms flew out like the wings of a giant bird as he gestured towards the motel.
God looked around at the growing weeds, chipped paint and broken windows. He took in the overgrown bushes and broken fence posts. Finally he looked over at us sitting in the truck. “I don’t care if she delivers kids in a manger, it’ll do.”
“Now she doesn’t deliver kids; she delivers babies,” the man laughed hard and then went back into a coughing fit. It took two minutes for him to stop coughing.
“Please, just tell me where I can find her.”
The old man gave God directions to the midwife’s home. God thanked the man. God next placed his hands on the man’s chest and told him that the cancer in his lungs had been cured. The man looked at God oddly as God ran back to the truck. Dad jumped into the cab of the truck and headed us all down the road. Mom was breathing faster and groaning more often.
I felt the storm grow closer.
As we entered the darkness of Oklahoma I heard my father’s voice. His voice was warm and confident as he spoke to Mom. “Don’t worry, honey.” God said, “It’s just a little ways down the road. Everything will be fine.”
“We are in the middle of nowhere on Christmas day and all these motels are filled,” God said. “This is even beyond my powers. How cold this be?” As if to answer his question next to Mel’s we saw a sign that read New Bethel Welcomes the Oklahoma Census Bureau Committee.
God let out a sigh. “It is as it has been written,” he said with disgust. “Next time I’ll pay more attention to the fine print in the O.T.”
The third place we came upon looked completely abandoned. It was called Heaven’s Motor Lodge. The sign out front read “THERE IS ALWAYS A VACANCY IN HEAVEN.”
Mom’s voice broke the silence that had befallen the truck since we had entered New Bethel. We had all hoped that magically a hospital with a brand new berthing center would have appeared and were disappointed by the abundance of gas stations, motels and fast food restaurants that we discovered instead. This disappointment had made us mute.
“Can I ask a stupid question?” mother said.
“Sure,” Dad answered cautiously. He sensed a trap.
“What are you doing driving up to these motels for?” mom asked. “I mean, I was hoping more for a hospital rather than a motel.”
“Well, I figured we might get us a room, check in, you know so we won’t have to do it afterwards, and then we could call 911,” God said.
“So you don’t have to check in afterwards? Maybe you’ll have time to take a long hot shower too, possibly get a sandwich,” Mom said.
“That would be nice. It has been a rather long day and I have been a little hungry ever since we passed that McDonald’s,” God agreed.
Mom’s voice exploded like a firecracker on the Fourth of July, “We don’t have time to check into a hotel.” Mom cried, her voice teetering between surprise and anger. “These towns don’t have an ambul…” Her words were cut short as another contraction came. “Just get me somewhere. Anywhere, but this truck will work.”
God drove into the dark motel named Heaven where weeds worked their way up through cracks in the driveway. A few cars lay scattered throughout the parking lot hinting that life might exist within the dilapidated building. God brought the truck to a stop near the office and jumped out. He ran to the door and tried to open it but the door held firm. It was locked. God rang the bell. He waited and rang it again and then just as he was about to press it a third time, a sleepy man stumbled out of the back. The man had a week’s worth of stubble on his face.
“Can I help you, Sir?” the man said. He rubbed at the back of his neck as he talked.
“My wife is about to have a baby. Can we please have a room?” God asked.
“What?” the man’s eyes tuned into saucers. The sleep seemed to rush out of his eyes in a moment.
“My wife is about to have a baby. We need a doctor,” God said.
“Well, we don’t have any doctors here. See, this is a motel,” the man answered. “I did check in a plumber earlier. I could see if he might be able to help you.”
God thought about the offer. He looked over at us and both Mom and I shook our heads “no”. He looked back at the manager.
“I guess that won’t do. We really need a doctor,” God said.
“Well, let’s see,” the man rubbed his chin. He opened the door and revealed himself to be a scrawny man with an excessive amount of hair on his arms. “Doctor’s tend to hang out at places called hospitals. Also bars, never met a doctor who didn’t like to drink. Hey, that reminds me of a joke. Do you know why doctors drink so much?”
“No…I mean we really are in a rush, could you possibly just…”
“So they have something to do while they’ll smoking,” the man finished. He then laughed and laughed until he started coughing. The coughing lasted longer than the joke and laughter. When the motel manager finally did speak he said, “Problem is, this is a dry county so we can never get a doctor to move in. Of course it also keeps the Catholics out.”
“What about the room?” God interrupted.
“I could give you a room with a view of the field out back.”
“Oh, that sounds perfect,” God said as a wail came from the cab of the truck. “Though I guess we’ll have to settle that later. Do you know of anyone in this town who might be able to deliver a baby?”
“Well, yes, I guess so. We got ourselves a lady down the road who delivers babies all the time. Well at least once or twice a year when someone needs a baby delivered here in town. See most people go to the city. To the hospital,” the man clarified, “where there are doctors who specialize in delivering babies.”
God was beginning to sweat. He hated when people pointed out the obvious. “Yes, I know that. But I guess for now, with no hospital near, this lady will have to do.”
“Now her place isn’t as nice as this,” the man’s arms flew out like the wings of a giant bird as he gestured towards the motel.
God looked around at the growing weeds, chipped paint and broken windows. He took in the overgrown bushes and broken fence posts. Finally he looked over at us sitting in the truck. “I don’t care if she delivers kids in a manger, it’ll do.”
“Now she doesn’t deliver kids; she delivers babies,” the man laughed hard and then went back into a coughing fit. It took two minutes for him to stop coughing.
“Please, just tell me where I can find her.”
The old man gave God directions to the midwife’s home. God thanked the man. God next placed his hands on the man’s chest and told him that the cancer in his lungs had been cured. The man looked at God oddly as God ran back to the truck. Dad jumped into the cab of the truck and headed us all down the road. Mom was breathing faster and groaning more often.
I felt the storm grow closer.
As we entered the darkness of Oklahoma I heard my father’s voice. His voice was warm and confident as he spoke to Mom. “Don’t worry, honey.” God said, “It’s just a little ways down the road. Everything will be fine.”
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Spilk
One day, shortly before Jesus was born, God decided that we had to move. He was like that, nomadic. He said that life was simply too short to spend it in Ohio. So we packed up everything that we owned and threw it into the back of a big yellow truck and took off for Texas.
We were supposed to move in October. But it took longer to sell our house then either Mom or God expected and the closing became delayed because the person buying the house was a lawyer. God said that there were no lawyers in Heaven. He personally made sure they all got sent down to Hell just to bug the Devil.
God titled one of his favorite stories “Class-Action in Hell”. In the story all the lawyers in Hell got together and filed a class action lawsuit against the Devil, who from this point forward in this paragraph will be referred to as Defendant even though it takes more letters. The lawyers claimed misrepresentation because Hell was painfully cold rather than painfully hot. The lawyers filed some incredibly long list of damages they felt that they were owed by said Defendant. The Defendant made them file motion after motion as well as wade through stacks of unrelated case files on the absence of law and order in Hell. The judge finally dismissed the suit based on a technicality: the fact that hot and cold were both vague and relative terms and so could not be legally defined. In his brief opinion the Judge, who was also the Defendant, said he didn’t really care what the lawyers thought. The Defendant then responded by dropping the temperature to absolute zero and walking around in his shorts exclaiming, “Boy, is it hot in here. Does anybody have a fan?”
God said that one evening as he settled down to watch an episode of “Dallas” he received a phone call from the Devil complaining about all the lawyers that kept coming his way. God got a good laugh about it and said, “Lucifer, they don’t call it Hell for nothing.”
Given all the delays with closing the sale of our home, we didn’t get moving until the end of December and Mom was the full nine months pregnant. Mom said we might as well stay in Ohio and have the baby and God said that his son couldn’t be born in Ohio. No savior ever came from Ohio. Plus, it was only a sixteen-hour drive to Austin. What could possibly happen in sixteen hours?
Apparently, a lot can happen.
God was behind the wheel; the cruise control set at fifty-five miles per hour. God said that he could never figure out why they changed the speed law. He said people were always in a rush to get somewhere when actually they were already there. No moment was any more valuable than another. God said people wasted half their life trying to get to another place in time. Mom sat in the middle of the bench-like seat with Jesus lying in her belly and I sat up against the door.
I looked out through the large front window of the truck and imagined that I was behind the eyes of a giant beast greedily devouring up the asphalt as the road passed under us. Eyes wide open, I felt the barren plains of Oklahoma shift through my sight. Each mile blended into the next. I was going to my new home; where ever that was. I thought about God, Mom, the baby that I referred to as the big bulge and myself. I looked past the road and into the sky. Had it ever looked so blue before? The sky was unblemished by clouds. It blazed a watercolor blue, swirling blues and whites that seemed to stain the sky more than paint it.
The road was not crowded and only sporadically did cars pass us by as we moved along the toll road. Where were these people coming from? Where were they going to on this Christmas day? They would come into my view and then vanished as they quickly passed us by. All of these people shared one common trait: while they played the staring role in their own lives, in mine they were merely extras. The world was full of people who would live their entire lives without me ever having any contact with them. I thought that was strange.
We sat in the truck for what seemed forever, each minute dripping slowly into the next. I looked out the window of the truck and tried to relax. I let my body go limp. My hands vibrated and I strained to hold them at my side. Texas was all going to be new: the neighbors, the houses…the water dripping onto the floor mat of the truck. The steady stream of thoughts that filled the monotony of driving was suddenly interrupted by a steady stream of water sliding off the seat and falling onto the floor below. It tapped, tapped, tapped onto the rubber mats like a slow drum in a New Orleans funeral. Some of the water began to puddle up on the seat and cross the space that lay between Mom and me.
I looked over at my parents and they kept looking out at the road like Zombies hypnotized by the nothingness that made up the Oklahoma landscape. I looked back at the puddle, it crept closer.
“Did someone just pee their pants?” I asked.
God looked at Mom and then they both turned their eyes to me.
God smiled. “If that was supposed to be a subtle hint considered it registered loud and clear, Jellybean. There is a rest stop up the road about ten miles and we are all over it. The Lord needs to deposit a little wisdom, himself.” God pressed his foot down on the accelerator and the truck came up upon sixty miles per hour. “I think I can hurry us along a little. Think you can keep the cork in another fifteen minutes?”
God and I liked to watch the Weather Channel. He enjoyed the fact that humans devoted so much time to something random and uncontrollable. He said that people spent more time talking about the weather than telling the people in their lives how much they cared for them. I watched the Weather Channel mainly because God liked it, but also because I thought it was funny. I mocked one of our favorite weather casters, Bill Keneely. Bill was always standing in the middle of some terrible storm, sheets of water pounding him from every direction as he struggled to hold onto his rain parka and microphone. Bolts of lighting cracked the sky behind him and I wondered if it was smart standing in water and holding onto a microphone in the center of an electrical storm. Amidst this climatic backdrop, Bill would calmly explain the latest weather developments as if his words were validated by the fact that he stood in the eye of the storm rather than inside, somewhere safe, where any intelligent human being would have been.
Pretending to be Bill I said, “I think the cork containing this storm has already shot across the truck, God, and a tyrantial downpour is upon us. The Governor has declared a state of emergency, the National Guard is on their way and I highly recommend the evacuation of anyone in the immediate vicinity, which would include those in this truck.”
God recognized the Bill Keneely impression and started to chuckle.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mom asked looking somewhat confused. She obviously was not a Weather Channel fan.
“Never mind,” I said and moved over tightly against the door. Unlike Bill Keneely, I preferred to stay dry.
With the water getting close, I got nervous. I started rambling incoherently. I looked over at God and bombarded him with questions about the universe, the new neighborhood, slugs and especially my new first grade teacher. He mistook my nervousness about the puddle for one about the move.
God nodded and smiled. God smiles a lot, it is as if he’s in on a joke that we don’t understand. He assured me I would be happy in our new home and that slugs would do okay.
I did not know exactly why I had to leave my old friends and school. God said that he finally came to his senses and that we had to go. So after my parents took numerous trips, abandoning me to the musky smell of Grandmother Mary’s home, they finally loaded up a large truck with U-Hall on the side and headed south to a city called Austin. I thought it to be a funny name for a city; I had a friend in the first grade with the same name.
God was right about one thing. I worried that I would not be able to make friends in Austin. What if the kids didn’t like baseball or dodge ball? What if they didn’t watch Nickelodeon or play video games? God said that they would, but I figured that you never could know for sure until you met them.
The truck continued to roam down the highway and the puddle on the seat continued to creep towards me. I tried to accept the inevitability that I would soon be sitting in it yet still tried to move as far from the water as possible.
I started to stir and Mom asked me what was wrong. I asked her if she had ever seen the movie The Blob and she asked if I meant the one with Steve McQueen or Kevin Dillon and I said Kevin who? Next I said the one before the world had color and she nodded “yes” while adding who hasn’t seen the movie and I said remember how the Blob just kept slowly oozing down the stick towards the man’s hand after he picked it up from the meteor and she said yes and I said well that’s how I feel about that puddle on the seat and Mom shouted, “Oh my, God, my water’s broke.”
Well it didn’t take me long to figure out that the puddle of water on the seat meant that Jesus was on his way. Mom told God that he had to get us to a hospital and in a very calm voice God mentioned that the next rest services were now just four miles away.
“And you better not say anything about keeping a cork in it,” Mom rubbed her tummy and took some deep breaths. “We don’t need the next rest services, dear,” mom puffed. Her lips curled in a big “O” as she blew out each sentence. “We need a hospital.” Her voice strained to remain calm.
I don’t know exactly how to describe this correctly but I will try. It was about at this time that Mom started to breathe very funny. She took deep gasping sucks in and heaved out even harder gusts. As the minutes in the truck passed she started doing it faster and faster. I looked over at God’s face hoping for reassurance. I found none. From the expression on his face, I gathered that he was just as surprised by this new way of breathing as I was. The sound of air moving in and out of Mom’s body caused the truck to tremble. It was as though Mom had become a storm brewing over the sea and we were a trailer park in Florida.
I gathered my courage. “Are you feeling okay, Mom?” I asked hesitantly.
“Well as best as can be expected, given the fact that I am in the middle of nowhere and the head of Jesus is crowning,” she answered between gale force winds. I suddenly knew what it felt like to be Bill Keneely in the eye of a storm. “Why do you ask, dear?” she said.
“Well, it’s just that you are breathing kind of funny,” I said.
“Having a baby,” she replied, conserving her words.
“It doesn’t look like it feels too good.”
“That’s why you better wait until you are twenty-six and married before you have one,” she breathed out and then greedily drank air back in with a loud whoop.
“I haven’t even thought about getting pregnant,” I said. I was only six and I thought my mother had just gone crazy. She was, however, in labor and Dad said that could do it to you. “How do you get pregnant Mom?” I asked.
“Now’s not the time to talk about it. Let’s just say that I’m not going to fall for any of that Immaculate Conception stuff like your Great, Great Grandma pulled,” she finished.
I looked at God. He looked guilty.
God drove the truck past the rest stop and hoped for the next town to draw near. “Don’t worry, Mary, we’ll get to a hospital soon.”
“I told you we should have waited,” mom replied. “Nine months along and you want to drive across the country. ‘What could possibly happen in sixteen hours’.”
God interrupted. “Well no use crying over spilk,” God said with a smile. He tried to lighten the load in the truck but only managed to make the air heavier.
“Spilk,” my mother’s voice clanged in my ears. “Spilt milk,” mom rubbed her tummy and moaned as another contraction rocked her body. “I can’t believe you just said that. After I give birth to this baby you will have to explain to him how a man can be his father, the supreme creator of the universe and an idiot all in one.”
“I guess that’s the mystery of the trinity,” God laughed. “Now, honey, we both know that’s just the hormones talking,” God smiled. He had become a professional at minimizing earthly complaints.
Mom, however, was not going to let it drop. “’No use crying over spilk’ is all you can say when I should be having this baby in an Ohio hospital and not in a U-Hall truck in the middle of Oklahoma,” Mom cried.
God laughed nervously. “Well, all I’m saying is that while bad things may happen for no good reason at all, we still shouldn’t lament over decisions that have already been made and therefore can not be changed.”
My mother countered. “If we were in Cleveland, I would be in a hospital by now. And that’s not milk on the seat of this truck; its amniotic fluid. You better get me somewhere quick because little Jesus is coming and you're about to see his crown.”
“Where?” God asked. He looked outward and I followed his gaze into nothingness. Brown fields with dry grass and brush spread out in every direction for miles in every direction. The fields rolled beautifully into each other and all that I was left with was the thought that none of this could offer us ay help tonight.
“Anywhere but here, wait…except not some Oklahoma rest stop,” Mom said.
We kept driving west, the three of us trying to ignore the fact that we were soon going to have a fourth passenger. In a way I guess he had been with us since the start.
After we passed the rest stop we came upon the world’s biggest McDonalds stretching across the freeway in an unabashing arch and Mom said don’t even think about it before God’s stomach even had a chance to growl. The sun began to fall and the light in our truck became dim. Ten miles later we came to a sign that said last services for seventy miles and God took the exit into New Bethel.
We were supposed to move in October. But it took longer to sell our house then either Mom or God expected and the closing became delayed because the person buying the house was a lawyer. God said that there were no lawyers in Heaven. He personally made sure they all got sent down to Hell just to bug the Devil.
God titled one of his favorite stories “Class-Action in Hell”. In the story all the lawyers in Hell got together and filed a class action lawsuit against the Devil, who from this point forward in this paragraph will be referred to as Defendant even though it takes more letters. The lawyers claimed misrepresentation because Hell was painfully cold rather than painfully hot. The lawyers filed some incredibly long list of damages they felt that they were owed by said Defendant. The Defendant made them file motion after motion as well as wade through stacks of unrelated case files on the absence of law and order in Hell. The judge finally dismissed the suit based on a technicality: the fact that hot and cold were both vague and relative terms and so could not be legally defined. In his brief opinion the Judge, who was also the Defendant, said he didn’t really care what the lawyers thought. The Defendant then responded by dropping the temperature to absolute zero and walking around in his shorts exclaiming, “Boy, is it hot in here. Does anybody have a fan?”
God said that one evening as he settled down to watch an episode of “Dallas” he received a phone call from the Devil complaining about all the lawyers that kept coming his way. God got a good laugh about it and said, “Lucifer, they don’t call it Hell for nothing.”
Given all the delays with closing the sale of our home, we didn’t get moving until the end of December and Mom was the full nine months pregnant. Mom said we might as well stay in Ohio and have the baby and God said that his son couldn’t be born in Ohio. No savior ever came from Ohio. Plus, it was only a sixteen-hour drive to Austin. What could possibly happen in sixteen hours?
Apparently, a lot can happen.
God was behind the wheel; the cruise control set at fifty-five miles per hour. God said that he could never figure out why they changed the speed law. He said people were always in a rush to get somewhere when actually they were already there. No moment was any more valuable than another. God said people wasted half their life trying to get to another place in time. Mom sat in the middle of the bench-like seat with Jesus lying in her belly and I sat up against the door.
I looked out through the large front window of the truck and imagined that I was behind the eyes of a giant beast greedily devouring up the asphalt as the road passed under us. Eyes wide open, I felt the barren plains of Oklahoma shift through my sight. Each mile blended into the next. I was going to my new home; where ever that was. I thought about God, Mom, the baby that I referred to as the big bulge and myself. I looked past the road and into the sky. Had it ever looked so blue before? The sky was unblemished by clouds. It blazed a watercolor blue, swirling blues and whites that seemed to stain the sky more than paint it.
The road was not crowded and only sporadically did cars pass us by as we moved along the toll road. Where were these people coming from? Where were they going to on this Christmas day? They would come into my view and then vanished as they quickly passed us by. All of these people shared one common trait: while they played the staring role in their own lives, in mine they were merely extras. The world was full of people who would live their entire lives without me ever having any contact with them. I thought that was strange.
We sat in the truck for what seemed forever, each minute dripping slowly into the next. I looked out the window of the truck and tried to relax. I let my body go limp. My hands vibrated and I strained to hold them at my side. Texas was all going to be new: the neighbors, the houses…the water dripping onto the floor mat of the truck. The steady stream of thoughts that filled the monotony of driving was suddenly interrupted by a steady stream of water sliding off the seat and falling onto the floor below. It tapped, tapped, tapped onto the rubber mats like a slow drum in a New Orleans funeral. Some of the water began to puddle up on the seat and cross the space that lay between Mom and me.
I looked over at my parents and they kept looking out at the road like Zombies hypnotized by the nothingness that made up the Oklahoma landscape. I looked back at the puddle, it crept closer.
“Did someone just pee their pants?” I asked.
God looked at Mom and then they both turned their eyes to me.
God smiled. “If that was supposed to be a subtle hint considered it registered loud and clear, Jellybean. There is a rest stop up the road about ten miles and we are all over it. The Lord needs to deposit a little wisdom, himself.” God pressed his foot down on the accelerator and the truck came up upon sixty miles per hour. “I think I can hurry us along a little. Think you can keep the cork in another fifteen minutes?”
God and I liked to watch the Weather Channel. He enjoyed the fact that humans devoted so much time to something random and uncontrollable. He said that people spent more time talking about the weather than telling the people in their lives how much they cared for them. I watched the Weather Channel mainly because God liked it, but also because I thought it was funny. I mocked one of our favorite weather casters, Bill Keneely. Bill was always standing in the middle of some terrible storm, sheets of water pounding him from every direction as he struggled to hold onto his rain parka and microphone. Bolts of lighting cracked the sky behind him and I wondered if it was smart standing in water and holding onto a microphone in the center of an electrical storm. Amidst this climatic backdrop, Bill would calmly explain the latest weather developments as if his words were validated by the fact that he stood in the eye of the storm rather than inside, somewhere safe, where any intelligent human being would have been.
Pretending to be Bill I said, “I think the cork containing this storm has already shot across the truck, God, and a tyrantial downpour is upon us. The Governor has declared a state of emergency, the National Guard is on their way and I highly recommend the evacuation of anyone in the immediate vicinity, which would include those in this truck.”
God recognized the Bill Keneely impression and started to chuckle.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mom asked looking somewhat confused. She obviously was not a Weather Channel fan.
“Never mind,” I said and moved over tightly against the door. Unlike Bill Keneely, I preferred to stay dry.
With the water getting close, I got nervous. I started rambling incoherently. I looked over at God and bombarded him with questions about the universe, the new neighborhood, slugs and especially my new first grade teacher. He mistook my nervousness about the puddle for one about the move.
God nodded and smiled. God smiles a lot, it is as if he’s in on a joke that we don’t understand. He assured me I would be happy in our new home and that slugs would do okay.
I did not know exactly why I had to leave my old friends and school. God said that he finally came to his senses and that we had to go. So after my parents took numerous trips, abandoning me to the musky smell of Grandmother Mary’s home, they finally loaded up a large truck with U-Hall on the side and headed south to a city called Austin. I thought it to be a funny name for a city; I had a friend in the first grade with the same name.
God was right about one thing. I worried that I would not be able to make friends in Austin. What if the kids didn’t like baseball or dodge ball? What if they didn’t watch Nickelodeon or play video games? God said that they would, but I figured that you never could know for sure until you met them.
The truck continued to roam down the highway and the puddle on the seat continued to creep towards me. I tried to accept the inevitability that I would soon be sitting in it yet still tried to move as far from the water as possible.
I started to stir and Mom asked me what was wrong. I asked her if she had ever seen the movie The Blob and she asked if I meant the one with Steve McQueen or Kevin Dillon and I said Kevin who? Next I said the one before the world had color and she nodded “yes” while adding who hasn’t seen the movie and I said remember how the Blob just kept slowly oozing down the stick towards the man’s hand after he picked it up from the meteor and she said yes and I said well that’s how I feel about that puddle on the seat and Mom shouted, “Oh my, God, my water’s broke.”
Well it didn’t take me long to figure out that the puddle of water on the seat meant that Jesus was on his way. Mom told God that he had to get us to a hospital and in a very calm voice God mentioned that the next rest services were now just four miles away.
“And you better not say anything about keeping a cork in it,” Mom rubbed her tummy and took some deep breaths. “We don’t need the next rest services, dear,” mom puffed. Her lips curled in a big “O” as she blew out each sentence. “We need a hospital.” Her voice strained to remain calm.
I don’t know exactly how to describe this correctly but I will try. It was about at this time that Mom started to breathe very funny. She took deep gasping sucks in and heaved out even harder gusts. As the minutes in the truck passed she started doing it faster and faster. I looked over at God’s face hoping for reassurance. I found none. From the expression on his face, I gathered that he was just as surprised by this new way of breathing as I was. The sound of air moving in and out of Mom’s body caused the truck to tremble. It was as though Mom had become a storm brewing over the sea and we were a trailer park in Florida.
I gathered my courage. “Are you feeling okay, Mom?” I asked hesitantly.
“Well as best as can be expected, given the fact that I am in the middle of nowhere and the head of Jesus is crowning,” she answered between gale force winds. I suddenly knew what it felt like to be Bill Keneely in the eye of a storm. “Why do you ask, dear?” she said.
“Well, it’s just that you are breathing kind of funny,” I said.
“Having a baby,” she replied, conserving her words.
“It doesn’t look like it feels too good.”
“That’s why you better wait until you are twenty-six and married before you have one,” she breathed out and then greedily drank air back in with a loud whoop.
“I haven’t even thought about getting pregnant,” I said. I was only six and I thought my mother had just gone crazy. She was, however, in labor and Dad said that could do it to you. “How do you get pregnant Mom?” I asked.
“Now’s not the time to talk about it. Let’s just say that I’m not going to fall for any of that Immaculate Conception stuff like your Great, Great Grandma pulled,” she finished.
I looked at God. He looked guilty.
God drove the truck past the rest stop and hoped for the next town to draw near. “Don’t worry, Mary, we’ll get to a hospital soon.”
“I told you we should have waited,” mom replied. “Nine months along and you want to drive across the country. ‘What could possibly happen in sixteen hours’.”
God interrupted. “Well no use crying over spilk,” God said with a smile. He tried to lighten the load in the truck but only managed to make the air heavier.
“Spilk,” my mother’s voice clanged in my ears. “Spilt milk,” mom rubbed her tummy and moaned as another contraction rocked her body. “I can’t believe you just said that. After I give birth to this baby you will have to explain to him how a man can be his father, the supreme creator of the universe and an idiot all in one.”
“I guess that’s the mystery of the trinity,” God laughed. “Now, honey, we both know that’s just the hormones talking,” God smiled. He had become a professional at minimizing earthly complaints.
Mom, however, was not going to let it drop. “’No use crying over spilk’ is all you can say when I should be having this baby in an Ohio hospital and not in a U-Hall truck in the middle of Oklahoma,” Mom cried.
God laughed nervously. “Well, all I’m saying is that while bad things may happen for no good reason at all, we still shouldn’t lament over decisions that have already been made and therefore can not be changed.”
My mother countered. “If we were in Cleveland, I would be in a hospital by now. And that’s not milk on the seat of this truck; its amniotic fluid. You better get me somewhere quick because little Jesus is coming and you're about to see his crown.”
“Where?” God asked. He looked outward and I followed his gaze into nothingness. Brown fields with dry grass and brush spread out in every direction for miles in every direction. The fields rolled beautifully into each other and all that I was left with was the thought that none of this could offer us ay help tonight.
“Anywhere but here, wait…except not some Oklahoma rest stop,” Mom said.
We kept driving west, the three of us trying to ignore the fact that we were soon going to have a fourth passenger. In a way I guess he had been with us since the start.
After we passed the rest stop we came upon the world’s biggest McDonalds stretching across the freeway in an unabashing arch and Mom said don’t even think about it before God’s stomach even had a chance to growl. The sun began to fall and the light in our truck became dim. Ten miles later we came to a sign that said last services for seventy miles and God took the exit into New Bethel.
Monday, November 5, 2007
In the Begining
If you were God who would you choose to be your parents? Millionaires? Rockstars? Teachers? To be his parents God picked two working-class newly immigrated Italians with thick accents from Newark, New Jersey. God's mom was a seamstress and his father worked in a factory.
I asked him once, “God, if you could pick anyone on Earth to be your mom and dad and anywhere on Earth to live, why did you pick a poor couple from Newark. I mean didn't you want parents who could give you something?"
God smiled and shook his head. He thought for a moment and said, “They seemed like kind people, Mary. I guess they gave me what I needed.”
God grew up a poor child in a rough, factory town because my Grandparents seemed like kind people. Now that was crazy.
God described how inept he was at being human at first. He was overweight. “You can eat as much as you want in heaven, Mary, without gaining a pound. Also, they don’t have Twinkies in Heaven, although, when I get back there you can be sure that’s going to change.”
God didn't do much better as a pre-teen or teenager either. God just didn't really fit in. It was like he wasn't made for this world. He wore the out of style clothing characteristic of people in the poorest class: thick collars, gold chains, puffy hair. God still talked with a resonating and solemnly deep voice, like the one he used when he spoke from the burning bush to Moses or from the thunderous clouds down onto Noah. I'm sure it was really impressive when his voice came from a flaming bush, but from a fat, acne infested kid it just didn't work. People would say, “Who do you think you are talking that way? God?” And he would answer “yes”. And then they would beat him up. At a time when God was desperate to just fit in he stood out like a crown of thorns on a savior’s head.
God made it through adolescence with most of his psyche intact. Later, after finishing high school, God went to college where he fell in love with the woman who would later become my mother.
God rarely talked about those years with my mother. Perhaps he held them safely close to his chest out of the fear of losing them.
To fill in the gaps Jesus, Little Mary and I made up our own story. GOD: THE EARLY YEARS. From our imaginations we fashioned God’s initial dates with our mother. We saw the anxiety etched on his face when they first started taking walks together and he nervously reached out to hold my mother’s hand, wondering if she would accept it. God learned what it was like not to know everything before it happened. Did she feel comfort in sliding her palm against his? Our story concluded with God falling in love with our mother and together them having three perfect children with super powers.
God always said that three was the most perfect number in the universe and that’s why he kept putting it in the heads of the Biblical writers.
I asked God why he acted one way in the Old Testament and another way in the New Testament. He told me that we all learn from experience. “If you act the same way at thirty, Mary, that you did at twenty, than you are probably doing something wrong. I was just starting to learn how to be a deity in the O.T..” That’s how he refers to them: O.T. and N.T.. In order to keep the Universe together in the early days God thought that he had to be a little harsh. He considered this early malevolent nature mistake number four. “But whose perfect,” he was fond of saying “certainly not God.”
Between you and me, I am not so certain that God really understands his own motivations. See, God would have to go through some serious psychoanalyst to come to terms with his true inner emotions. I believe he suffers from something they call blocking. He really has built up a lot of walls. The real reason that God governed differently in the N.T. than he did in the O.T. was quite simple. Jesus. Not my baby brother Jesus, but the original N.T. Jesus, who was technically also my brother. I know, it can get confusing, life is often like that.
God had a son. Not Jack, a being whom he had created from spit and dirt, but an actual son, a child that he conceived with a woman and watched grow within her womb and then from an infant to an adult. And well, after God’s son came into the World, it mellowed him. It gave him a different perspective. God came to be more loving. Having a child helped God to understand true human emotion. He had to endure pain as he watched his son suffer and it changed him.
Sitting in his lap, I asked God what it was like going from being God up in Heaven to being a human on Earth and having to do all the regular things that people do.
“Why don’t you tell me?” he replied.
I looked at him blankly, confused by this answer. I mean, come on, how was I supposed to respond to that?
“Well I can see by the look on your face that you are not ready for that one, Jellybean.” God continued, “Charmin makes being human a whole lot easier. Man, when I think of all those Israelites in the desert. Forty years.” Then he laughed and laughed before adding, “In all seriousness people never understood what it is that makes the Universe so divine: that the real beauty in the world came with the everyday exchange between each person and the people in his or her own individual world.”
So let me tell you what God led me to believe. God enjoyed changing babies’ diapers, taking long walks at dusk, talking with his Grandparents about the tomato garden and working on the car because it was part of life. The car, by the way always ran worse when he finished, leaving mom to take it to the shop. Despite what you may have been told, God cannot fix everything. He thinks a carburetor is a type of vegetable.
God enjoyed all the things that made living a part of life. At least until Jesus became sick. After Jesus got sick everything seemed to change. The world just stopped revolving. God didn’t enjoy anything very much. I think it might have been because he forgot the lesson of one of his favorite stories: the need for a belief in something greater. But then who could blame him at the time, he was not the only one who changed. Mom went into the deep sleep. And Little Mary and me, well...we just became lost and confused. That was until we realized that our brother Jesus would always be with us, within us. And if you will pardon me for the round-about way that I arrived here, that is what I want to really talk about. But before I get to the end, I have to tell you how it all started. As God would tell me as I sat nestled in his lap, “Mary, it started with spilk.”
And spilk stands for spilt milk.
I asked him once, “God, if you could pick anyone on Earth to be your mom and dad and anywhere on Earth to live, why did you pick a poor couple from Newark. I mean didn't you want parents who could give you something?"
God smiled and shook his head. He thought for a moment and said, “They seemed like kind people, Mary. I guess they gave me what I needed.”
God grew up a poor child in a rough, factory town because my Grandparents seemed like kind people. Now that was crazy.
God described how inept he was at being human at first. He was overweight. “You can eat as much as you want in heaven, Mary, without gaining a pound. Also, they don’t have Twinkies in Heaven, although, when I get back there you can be sure that’s going to change.”
God didn't do much better as a pre-teen or teenager either. God just didn't really fit in. It was like he wasn't made for this world. He wore the out of style clothing characteristic of people in the poorest class: thick collars, gold chains, puffy hair. God still talked with a resonating and solemnly deep voice, like the one he used when he spoke from the burning bush to Moses or from the thunderous clouds down onto Noah. I'm sure it was really impressive when his voice came from a flaming bush, but from a fat, acne infested kid it just didn't work. People would say, “Who do you think you are talking that way? God?” And he would answer “yes”. And then they would beat him up. At a time when God was desperate to just fit in he stood out like a crown of thorns on a savior’s head.
God made it through adolescence with most of his psyche intact. Later, after finishing high school, God went to college where he fell in love with the woman who would later become my mother.
God rarely talked about those years with my mother. Perhaps he held them safely close to his chest out of the fear of losing them.
To fill in the gaps Jesus, Little Mary and I made up our own story. GOD: THE EARLY YEARS. From our imaginations we fashioned God’s initial dates with our mother. We saw the anxiety etched on his face when they first started taking walks together and he nervously reached out to hold my mother’s hand, wondering if she would accept it. God learned what it was like not to know everything before it happened. Did she feel comfort in sliding her palm against his? Our story concluded with God falling in love with our mother and together them having three perfect children with super powers.
God always said that three was the most perfect number in the universe and that’s why he kept putting it in the heads of the Biblical writers.
I asked God why he acted one way in the Old Testament and another way in the New Testament. He told me that we all learn from experience. “If you act the same way at thirty, Mary, that you did at twenty, than you are probably doing something wrong. I was just starting to learn how to be a deity in the O.T..” That’s how he refers to them: O.T. and N.T.. In order to keep the Universe together in the early days God thought that he had to be a little harsh. He considered this early malevolent nature mistake number four. “But whose perfect,” he was fond of saying “certainly not God.”
Between you and me, I am not so certain that God really understands his own motivations. See, God would have to go through some serious psychoanalyst to come to terms with his true inner emotions. I believe he suffers from something they call blocking. He really has built up a lot of walls. The real reason that God governed differently in the N.T. than he did in the O.T. was quite simple. Jesus. Not my baby brother Jesus, but the original N.T. Jesus, who was technically also my brother. I know, it can get confusing, life is often like that.
God had a son. Not Jack, a being whom he had created from spit and dirt, but an actual son, a child that he conceived with a woman and watched grow within her womb and then from an infant to an adult. And well, after God’s son came into the World, it mellowed him. It gave him a different perspective. God came to be more loving. Having a child helped God to understand true human emotion. He had to endure pain as he watched his son suffer and it changed him.
Sitting in his lap, I asked God what it was like going from being God up in Heaven to being a human on Earth and having to do all the regular things that people do.
“Why don’t you tell me?” he replied.
I looked at him blankly, confused by this answer. I mean, come on, how was I supposed to respond to that?
“Well I can see by the look on your face that you are not ready for that one, Jellybean.” God continued, “Charmin makes being human a whole lot easier. Man, when I think of all those Israelites in the desert. Forty years.” Then he laughed and laughed before adding, “In all seriousness people never understood what it is that makes the Universe so divine: that the real beauty in the world came with the everyday exchange between each person and the people in his or her own individual world.”
So let me tell you what God led me to believe. God enjoyed changing babies’ diapers, taking long walks at dusk, talking with his Grandparents about the tomato garden and working on the car because it was part of life. The car, by the way always ran worse when he finished, leaving mom to take it to the shop. Despite what you may have been told, God cannot fix everything. He thinks a carburetor is a type of vegetable.
God enjoyed all the things that made living a part of life. At least until Jesus became sick. After Jesus got sick everything seemed to change. The world just stopped revolving. God didn’t enjoy anything very much. I think it might have been because he forgot the lesson of one of his favorite stories: the need for a belief in something greater. But then who could blame him at the time, he was not the only one who changed. Mom went into the deep sleep. And Little Mary and me, well...we just became lost and confused. That was until we realized that our brother Jesus would always be with us, within us. And if you will pardon me for the round-about way that I arrived here, that is what I want to really talk about. But before I get to the end, I have to tell you how it all started. As God would tell me as I sat nestled in his lap, “Mary, it started with spilk.”
And spilk stands for spilt milk.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The Mind Blowing Dessumption
God loved to tell stories. My father would sit in this large, billowy chair and call us to his side. I competed with my brother Jesus, and sister, Little Mary, to sit on the prized lap from where all of my father’s best stories arose. Whoever did not make it onto the lap first had to sit on the floor. The floor was not a bad spot either; it was just different. From his lap, the resonance in my father’s voice infected the stories and brought them to life. I became a part of the story when I sat near him. On the floor I felt more like an observer, like watching a concert on television.
God had hundreds of stories. He told us of the great battles that occurred up in the Heavens between the good Angels who followed him and the misguided ones led by Lucifer. God never called Lucifer and his followers bad or evil; they were merely misguided. He said an omnipotent vantage point allowed one not to be so judgmental. (I did not know what omnipotent meant but it sounded like something that if you caught, your Mom would have to give you medicine to get rid of it.) God recounted tales about Fairies and Brownies searching for treasure in the lands that existed before the Earth was as it is now. He told us about early man, who he called Jack, his wife, Jill, and all their offspring living in large tribes. Some lived in trees, others deep within caves. One day he told us of a matriarchal, orphan clan that inhabited a giant shoe.
“Why did they live in a shoe?” Jesus asked.
"Was it because the Mom did not have a job and didn't know quite what to do?" I offered, my voice a little too eager.
“No. No. No," God replied, waving his hand and hushing our questions. "It was because a boot would have been too hard to climb into.”
My favorite of all the stories was the one where he told about how he became man. I especially liked it because he would end the tale by saying that he would not change a single thing because in this world he had found the love of his life, his Jellybean, his Jesus and a dream in a Little Mary.
God taught me that there was nothing more that anyone needed other than love, nourishment, something greater to believe in and a dream.
I also learned from him that the telling of the story was as important as the story itself. There were pauses, gestures and grunts that went into good storytelling. It was hard work but God was a pro; it came with his job.
The storytelling usually began with a call.
While we were playing God crept into the room. He sat himself down and said, “Why don’t you come over here and I’ll tell you how I descended from the Heavens and became human. I call it the Immaculate… Wait, that name’s already been taken by the Catholics.” God shook his head and paused to study the ceiling.
I stopped playing with my dolls and raced over to his side just barely beating out Jesus and Little Mary. I climbed up on his lap while they took their places on the floor. As was our routine we followed his gaze upward, but all I saw was a ceiling in need of paint. God saw more.
God tapped at his chin with one deliberate finger as he searched for the right title. “I call it the Mind Blowing Dessumption.”
He failed.
“The Mind Blowing Dessumption,” I laughed.
“Sounds good, doesn’t it?” God feigned a look of pride. “Sounds important,” he added.
“Sounds like something you do in the bathroom.” I giggled while the corners of his mouth turned down in mock disappointment. It was a performance he had given a hundred times before.
The story begins some time around 1964 when God became tired of taking care of the planets, stars and mankind in particular. “It just wasn’t fun like it used to be,” God grunted. He then rolled his eyes longing for the good old days when the Universe was a soupy pool of elements and he was still trying to decide in which of his images he should create man and woman. God rocked back and forth in his recliner as if he was imagining how things could have been. But those days were long gone and he believed his first mistake was choosing the wrong image, too divisive.
“Ya see, kids, in the early twentieth century the stars and planets still appreciated the gifts that I had given to them but people choose a different path. People started thinking that the origins of life on Earth had become obvious and simplistic. They learned a few things about atoms and molecules and decided that they understood it all. What people could not see was that the creation was much more complicated than the mere physical. Many people stopped seeing a need for something spiritual and gradually stopped believing in me. In fact, entire nations sprung up and denied my existence as a matter of public law. One world leader even referred to religion as a drug. That all just showed you how ignorant human beings had become. Religion was meant to open a person’s mind not dull it like a drug. While sitting up in Heaven I did not desire mindless followers from my creations. Where would the fun be in that? I longed for enlightened, free spirits.”
“Rather than focus on the bliss of their mystical unity, people focused on their bodily separation. When man lived in caves, the entire tribe acted as one for the benefit of the whole. Man lost that when he learned how to build subdivisions. He started to feel isolated, and the vastness of the universe seemed oppressive. Actually, when one considered the physical hardships endured by organisms throughout time, life was considerably easy for most people. Even compared to their contemporaries, humans have it easy. They should try being amoebas in a septic tank. Now that’s tough,” my father said.
“Or playing dodge ball in a long, green dress,” I said.
“Yes, Jellybean, or playing dodge ball in a dress. Life’s adversity was no reason to give up on God. People had dominated the other species on Earth and really became their own natural enemy. Humans were the only species who could claim that their primary threat emanated from themselves. Perhaps that was part of their problem?”
“I think people just had way too much free time to ponder their existence. I hadn’t planned for that when I created them. And since I really had not given them a purpose. I thought living would be purpose enough. Humans encountered problems coming to grips with this reality. People wanted more, but I had already given them everything.” God let out a sigh. “The whole opposable thumb thing really was a big mistake. Why couldn’t humans be more like slugs? Now, that is an organism that really has itself together.”
“As long as it avoids salt,” Jesus said.
Jesus and Little Mary had started to play with some blocks on the floor. Jesus built a small pyramid and then knocked it over. I thought that he had stopped listening, but he still was. Jesus was tricky like that.
God continued with his story. “I suppose that it was sometime around 1923 when people just stopped liking the idea of Heaven. I don’t think it seemed exciting enough for them. They had already done away with Hell and my main adversary, the Devil, was reduced to a cute little man dressed in a red suit who tempted people to eat cans of processed meat. So what was I, the supreme creator of the Universe, really doing anyway? I mean what role in people’s lives was I playing?”
God paused for dramatic purposes and then hung his head, “I had become obsolete.”
And nothing hurts a deity more than the feeling of being unwanted.
“Free will: mistake number three. If you are going to give an organism free will, you must give it the ability to reason,” God said.
“But we can reason,” I countered.
“Most people can think, very few can reason. A person might think that they do not need God but reason would lead them to understand the importance of a belief in a higher power. People are unable to understand themselves in relation to the universe on a spiritual basis. Man is so caught up in the physical that he ignores an entire dimension of his being, and believe me he has only scratched the surface on the physical stuff.” God rolled his head and shook his eyes. I really didn’t know what he was talking about but I laughed at his dramatics.
He pretended to be hurt by my laughter. “I thought about destroying everything and starting over, you know. In my youth that’s exactly what I would have done. Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea,” he threatened as if the thought was still being mulled over. As if in the wink of a lash he could abolish the entire world.
I wondered if God could destroy the planet. I sat on his lap feeling protected, draped within his big arms. He rubbed my back and smiled. I smiled back. Not as long as I was in the world, he couldn’t.
“The dinosaurs laughed at me and look where they are now,” God raised his eyebrows. “Of course I expected arrogance from them. I didn’t make their brains very big. Big body, small brain: major design flaw. Small brains and arrogance walk together hand in hand like lovers on a sandy beach at dawn.”
“I destroyed the world a third time with Noah. Between the dinosaurs and Noah’s flood there was the Protozoa Incident, as I like to call it. I tell you, Jellybean, there is nothing more irritating than a know-it-all, single-celled organism. When a protozoa thinks it no longer needs to believe, that it can exist without the help of God, now that’s a good time to start over. The thing does not even have a cell wall for Christ’s sake.”
“What?” my brother looked up from the blocks that he was busy arranging into a small hydro-electric plant.
“Oh nothing,” God said, “just a figure of speech.”
“With Noah, I brought forth one ton of water, had to borrow some from Mars and that planet hasn’t been the same since. Think of all those people scrambling up onto the tops of trees and hills as the water slowly climbed up their ankles, knees, stomachs and necks. Most of them believed in God on that day. But man seldom learns. On a smaller scale, I destroyed Sodom, turned a woman into salt just for being curious and taking a peak.”
“Something had to change, Jellybean. I needed to put the days of destruction behind me. I didn’t like having all that anger in me. Anger makes the soul heavy. So after about two thousand years of deliberation I decided to give it all up and become human. See for myself what all the complaining was about. I put Great Grandmother Mary in charge and came down for a jig. Truth was she ruled the roost anyway.”
“Ruled the roost?” I asked.
“Forget about it, you’ll understand when you’re married.” God looked over at Mom and let out a huff. “And I’m glad I did come down to earth. I have to tell you, Jellybean, with you here with me I think at times this place rivals heaven.” God smiled and patted my leg.
I let my body fall back against his chest and stared up at the ceiling. I traced the shapes of cats, people’s faces and airplanes in the little stones pasted to its surface. My legs dangled well above the floor. My head lay against God’s chest and I could feel the gentle shifting of his body as he took slow, deep breaths. I tried to match them with my own. I imagined that we were breathing together with one giant lung as he went on with the tale.
God had hundreds of stories. He told us of the great battles that occurred up in the Heavens between the good Angels who followed him and the misguided ones led by Lucifer. God never called Lucifer and his followers bad or evil; they were merely misguided. He said an omnipotent vantage point allowed one not to be so judgmental. (I did not know what omnipotent meant but it sounded like something that if you caught, your Mom would have to give you medicine to get rid of it.) God recounted tales about Fairies and Brownies searching for treasure in the lands that existed before the Earth was as it is now. He told us about early man, who he called Jack, his wife, Jill, and all their offspring living in large tribes. Some lived in trees, others deep within caves. One day he told us of a matriarchal, orphan clan that inhabited a giant shoe.
“Why did they live in a shoe?” Jesus asked.
"Was it because the Mom did not have a job and didn't know quite what to do?" I offered, my voice a little too eager.
“No. No. No," God replied, waving his hand and hushing our questions. "It was because a boot would have been too hard to climb into.”
My favorite of all the stories was the one where he told about how he became man. I especially liked it because he would end the tale by saying that he would not change a single thing because in this world he had found the love of his life, his Jellybean, his Jesus and a dream in a Little Mary.
God taught me that there was nothing more that anyone needed other than love, nourishment, something greater to believe in and a dream.
I also learned from him that the telling of the story was as important as the story itself. There were pauses, gestures and grunts that went into good storytelling. It was hard work but God was a pro; it came with his job.
The storytelling usually began with a call.
While we were playing God crept into the room. He sat himself down and said, “Why don’t you come over here and I’ll tell you how I descended from the Heavens and became human. I call it the Immaculate… Wait, that name’s already been taken by the Catholics.” God shook his head and paused to study the ceiling.
I stopped playing with my dolls and raced over to his side just barely beating out Jesus and Little Mary. I climbed up on his lap while they took their places on the floor. As was our routine we followed his gaze upward, but all I saw was a ceiling in need of paint. God saw more.
God tapped at his chin with one deliberate finger as he searched for the right title. “I call it the Mind Blowing Dessumption.”
He failed.
“The Mind Blowing Dessumption,” I laughed.
“Sounds good, doesn’t it?” God feigned a look of pride. “Sounds important,” he added.
“Sounds like something you do in the bathroom.” I giggled while the corners of his mouth turned down in mock disappointment. It was a performance he had given a hundred times before.
The story begins some time around 1964 when God became tired of taking care of the planets, stars and mankind in particular. “It just wasn’t fun like it used to be,” God grunted. He then rolled his eyes longing for the good old days when the Universe was a soupy pool of elements and he was still trying to decide in which of his images he should create man and woman. God rocked back and forth in his recliner as if he was imagining how things could have been. But those days were long gone and he believed his first mistake was choosing the wrong image, too divisive.
“Ya see, kids, in the early twentieth century the stars and planets still appreciated the gifts that I had given to them but people choose a different path. People started thinking that the origins of life on Earth had become obvious and simplistic. They learned a few things about atoms and molecules and decided that they understood it all. What people could not see was that the creation was much more complicated than the mere physical. Many people stopped seeing a need for something spiritual and gradually stopped believing in me. In fact, entire nations sprung up and denied my existence as a matter of public law. One world leader even referred to religion as a drug. That all just showed you how ignorant human beings had become. Religion was meant to open a person’s mind not dull it like a drug. While sitting up in Heaven I did not desire mindless followers from my creations. Where would the fun be in that? I longed for enlightened, free spirits.”
“Rather than focus on the bliss of their mystical unity, people focused on their bodily separation. When man lived in caves, the entire tribe acted as one for the benefit of the whole. Man lost that when he learned how to build subdivisions. He started to feel isolated, and the vastness of the universe seemed oppressive. Actually, when one considered the physical hardships endured by organisms throughout time, life was considerably easy for most people. Even compared to their contemporaries, humans have it easy. They should try being amoebas in a septic tank. Now that’s tough,” my father said.
“Or playing dodge ball in a long, green dress,” I said.
“Yes, Jellybean, or playing dodge ball in a dress. Life’s adversity was no reason to give up on God. People had dominated the other species on Earth and really became their own natural enemy. Humans were the only species who could claim that their primary threat emanated from themselves. Perhaps that was part of their problem?”
“I think people just had way too much free time to ponder their existence. I hadn’t planned for that when I created them. And since I really had not given them a purpose. I thought living would be purpose enough. Humans encountered problems coming to grips with this reality. People wanted more, but I had already given them everything.” God let out a sigh. “The whole opposable thumb thing really was a big mistake. Why couldn’t humans be more like slugs? Now, that is an organism that really has itself together.”
“As long as it avoids salt,” Jesus said.
Jesus and Little Mary had started to play with some blocks on the floor. Jesus built a small pyramid and then knocked it over. I thought that he had stopped listening, but he still was. Jesus was tricky like that.
God continued with his story. “I suppose that it was sometime around 1923 when people just stopped liking the idea of Heaven. I don’t think it seemed exciting enough for them. They had already done away with Hell and my main adversary, the Devil, was reduced to a cute little man dressed in a red suit who tempted people to eat cans of processed meat. So what was I, the supreme creator of the Universe, really doing anyway? I mean what role in people’s lives was I playing?”
God paused for dramatic purposes and then hung his head, “I had become obsolete.”
And nothing hurts a deity more than the feeling of being unwanted.
“Free will: mistake number three. If you are going to give an organism free will, you must give it the ability to reason,” God said.
“But we can reason,” I countered.
“Most people can think, very few can reason. A person might think that they do not need God but reason would lead them to understand the importance of a belief in a higher power. People are unable to understand themselves in relation to the universe on a spiritual basis. Man is so caught up in the physical that he ignores an entire dimension of his being, and believe me he has only scratched the surface on the physical stuff.” God rolled his head and shook his eyes. I really didn’t know what he was talking about but I laughed at his dramatics.
He pretended to be hurt by my laughter. “I thought about destroying everything and starting over, you know. In my youth that’s exactly what I would have done. Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea,” he threatened as if the thought was still being mulled over. As if in the wink of a lash he could abolish the entire world.
I wondered if God could destroy the planet. I sat on his lap feeling protected, draped within his big arms. He rubbed my back and smiled. I smiled back. Not as long as I was in the world, he couldn’t.
“The dinosaurs laughed at me and look where they are now,” God raised his eyebrows. “Of course I expected arrogance from them. I didn’t make their brains very big. Big body, small brain: major design flaw. Small brains and arrogance walk together hand in hand like lovers on a sandy beach at dawn.”
“I destroyed the world a third time with Noah. Between the dinosaurs and Noah’s flood there was the Protozoa Incident, as I like to call it. I tell you, Jellybean, there is nothing more irritating than a know-it-all, single-celled organism. When a protozoa thinks it no longer needs to believe, that it can exist without the help of God, now that’s a good time to start over. The thing does not even have a cell wall for Christ’s sake.”
“What?” my brother looked up from the blocks that he was busy arranging into a small hydro-electric plant.
“Oh nothing,” God said, “just a figure of speech.”
“With Noah, I brought forth one ton of water, had to borrow some from Mars and that planet hasn’t been the same since. Think of all those people scrambling up onto the tops of trees and hills as the water slowly climbed up their ankles, knees, stomachs and necks. Most of them believed in God on that day. But man seldom learns. On a smaller scale, I destroyed Sodom, turned a woman into salt just for being curious and taking a peak.”
“Something had to change, Jellybean. I needed to put the days of destruction behind me. I didn’t like having all that anger in me. Anger makes the soul heavy. So after about two thousand years of deliberation I decided to give it all up and become human. See for myself what all the complaining was about. I put Great Grandmother Mary in charge and came down for a jig. Truth was she ruled the roost anyway.”
“Ruled the roost?” I asked.
“Forget about it, you’ll understand when you’re married.” God looked over at Mom and let out a huff. “And I’m glad I did come down to earth. I have to tell you, Jellybean, with you here with me I think at times this place rivals heaven.” God smiled and patted my leg.
I let my body fall back against his chest and stared up at the ceiling. I traced the shapes of cats, people’s faces and airplanes in the little stones pasted to its surface. My legs dangled well above the floor. My head lay against God’s chest and I could feel the gentle shifting of his body as he took slow, deep breaths. I tried to match them with my own. I imagined that we were breathing together with one giant lung as he went on with the tale.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Heaveny Trumpet
At first I didn't know how to tell this story and decided that a Blog would be the best way. But once I decided to write the blog I realized the easy part was done. I still didn't know how to tell the story. I know how it ends and I know how it starts. I guess we will figure out the middle togther. As I said I know where the story starts. It starts before my brother was born. When there was just Mom and Dad and me. It starts when my Dad told me that he was God.
My father often said that he was God. Not that we should consider his words as those of God or that he was the head of our household or even something less grandiose such as that he was responsible for giving us life; my father believed that he was actually the Almighty Father, Creator of everything Heaven and Earth.
The first day that Dad let me in on this secret I could not have been much older than five. Mom and I were scurrying through the house, trying to get me ready for picture day at kindergarten.
I tried on about a thousand outfits before Mom settled on the light green dress. I can remember the day clearly for two reasons: the first being that I hated wearing dresses and the second being that I hated wearing the light green dress most of all. The dress had a winding stem and broad leaf pattern that grew along the bottom hem. The plant twisted back onto itself forming a barbed wire tangle giving the appearance that I was being attacked by wild shrubbery. If the pattern was not bad enough, the length was the killer. The dress hung below my shins making running nearly impossible.
“None of the girls wear dresses,” I protested as mom silently slipped it down over my head. My mother’s thoughts seemed elsewhere and she didn’t respond. I looked at her face and registered a blank. “It will slow me down at recess when we play tag,” I cried.
I could tell by the strain that lined her face that something upset her and my efforts would be futile. Still, even with a hopeless cause, I had to try one last time. “Nobody will pick me to be on their kickball team,” I said. It was the best thing I could think of to say.
Without flinching, Mom fixed the cuff of the dress. “I don’t have time for this today,” was all she said as she shoved a rice cake into her mouth and headed out my bedroom door.
There was never enough morning; at least that’s what Mom always said. Each day began in a sprint. Waking, cleansing, brushing, eating, dressing, grooming, gathering and packing: all before 7 AM. Mom said that God might have created the world in seven days but that was before he had any children.
In the midst of the quiet chaos that started our day Dad stumbled out from the hall and into the kitchen. The last touches of sleep still hung in his eyes. My father stayed up late most nights watching the television and writing on his computer. He was a teacher and a novelist. He wrote all his novels at night while watching the television. He said late night television and writing gave him a break. I gathered that it was during this break that he had his revelation because as far as I could remember, when I kissed him before going to bed last night he was still just Dad.
Dad smiled at Mom and moved over to the coffeepot. The dirty stain of a beard sprouted along his solid chin. Thick, black hair sprung out wildly from the top of his head like the crown of a pineapple. He wore a Fat Albert T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. I ran over to him and kissed his bristly cheek. I loved him.
Dad poured himself a cup of dark coffee. He said that he liked it as thick as tar. Dad said cream and sugar was for people who pretended to like coffee but really just wanted a grown-up milk shake.
Coffee in hand, Dad gathered himself around a bowl of Fruit Loops. In between shoveling large spoonfuls of multi-colored, fructose fortified rings into his mouth he looked over to Mom, who was busy retrieving a mayonnaise jar from the refrigerator, and proclaimed, “Honey, I realize now that I am the supreme creator of the universe made into flesh and blood.”
“That’s nice, dear.”
Mom answered him without looking up from the kitchen counter. Her eyes were slits and a ridged had formed along her brow as she concentrated. She counted ingredients. Something was missing.
After a moment, Mom reached back into the refrigerator and tossed out a packet of lunchmeat that landed within a foot of God’s bowl of Fruit Loops.
“Now that you’ve finished tinkering with the universe, dear, do you think you can create a ham and cheese sandwich for your daughter?” Without waiting for a reply, Mom was out the room and into her bedroom to finish touching up her makeup.
Dad (or God) looked at me.
I smiled.
“A sandwich, I think I can mustard that,” he said and then started laughing.
I stared at him in silence, wondering if he would actually make the sandwich and hoping that he wouldn’t put too much mayonnaise on it.
“Get it, Jellybean,” he said. “Mustard, like what you put on a sandwich. I can mustard it. Okay, I guess not.” He stopped laughing and set to work on the sandwich.
I stared at Dad, trying to give my eyes the most serious look possible. I wanted him to know that this sandwich was important. I did, after all, have to eat it with other people watching. I did not want a fiasco on the scale of the one that occurred when J.D. Salinger’s Dad made his sandwich. Gary’s Dad put pickles on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When word of the pickles spread throughout the class, everyone gathered round J.D. chanting “pickles, pickles, pickles…” until he vomited the sandwich back up. To this day J.D.’s nickname is pickles. I did not want a nickname like pickles.
God finished packing the ham and cheese between the two pieces of bread. He carefully pulled off the crust the way I like it, and then inserted the sandwich into a plastic bag. He looked down at what he had created and was pleased. “It is good,” he said. He then handed the divine sandwich to me and I placed it unceremoniously into my backpack and headed out the door to catch the bus.
I, of course, thought my father was crazy.
My father often said that he was God. Not that we should consider his words as those of God or that he was the head of our household or even something less grandiose such as that he was responsible for giving us life; my father believed that he was actually the Almighty Father, Creator of everything Heaven and Earth.
The first day that Dad let me in on this secret I could not have been much older than five. Mom and I were scurrying through the house, trying to get me ready for picture day at kindergarten.
I tried on about a thousand outfits before Mom settled on the light green dress. I can remember the day clearly for two reasons: the first being that I hated wearing dresses and the second being that I hated wearing the light green dress most of all. The dress had a winding stem and broad leaf pattern that grew along the bottom hem. The plant twisted back onto itself forming a barbed wire tangle giving the appearance that I was being attacked by wild shrubbery. If the pattern was not bad enough, the length was the killer. The dress hung below my shins making running nearly impossible.
“None of the girls wear dresses,” I protested as mom silently slipped it down over my head. My mother’s thoughts seemed elsewhere and she didn’t respond. I looked at her face and registered a blank. “It will slow me down at recess when we play tag,” I cried.
I could tell by the strain that lined her face that something upset her and my efforts would be futile. Still, even with a hopeless cause, I had to try one last time. “Nobody will pick me to be on their kickball team,” I said. It was the best thing I could think of to say.
Without flinching, Mom fixed the cuff of the dress. “I don’t have time for this today,” was all she said as she shoved a rice cake into her mouth and headed out my bedroom door.
There was never enough morning; at least that’s what Mom always said. Each day began in a sprint. Waking, cleansing, brushing, eating, dressing, grooming, gathering and packing: all before 7 AM. Mom said that God might have created the world in seven days but that was before he had any children.
In the midst of the quiet chaos that started our day Dad stumbled out from the hall and into the kitchen. The last touches of sleep still hung in his eyes. My father stayed up late most nights watching the television and writing on his computer. He was a teacher and a novelist. He wrote all his novels at night while watching the television. He said late night television and writing gave him a break. I gathered that it was during this break that he had his revelation because as far as I could remember, when I kissed him before going to bed last night he was still just Dad.
Dad smiled at Mom and moved over to the coffeepot. The dirty stain of a beard sprouted along his solid chin. Thick, black hair sprung out wildly from the top of his head like the crown of a pineapple. He wore a Fat Albert T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. I ran over to him and kissed his bristly cheek. I loved him.
Dad poured himself a cup of dark coffee. He said that he liked it as thick as tar. Dad said cream and sugar was for people who pretended to like coffee but really just wanted a grown-up milk shake.
Coffee in hand, Dad gathered himself around a bowl of Fruit Loops. In between shoveling large spoonfuls of multi-colored, fructose fortified rings into his mouth he looked over to Mom, who was busy retrieving a mayonnaise jar from the refrigerator, and proclaimed, “Honey, I realize now that I am the supreme creator of the universe made into flesh and blood.”
“That’s nice, dear.”
Mom answered him without looking up from the kitchen counter. Her eyes were slits and a ridged had formed along her brow as she concentrated. She counted ingredients. Something was missing.
After a moment, Mom reached back into the refrigerator and tossed out a packet of lunchmeat that landed within a foot of God’s bowl of Fruit Loops.
“Now that you’ve finished tinkering with the universe, dear, do you think you can create a ham and cheese sandwich for your daughter?” Without waiting for a reply, Mom was out the room and into her bedroom to finish touching up her makeup.
Dad (or God) looked at me.
I smiled.
“A sandwich, I think I can mustard that,” he said and then started laughing.
I stared at him in silence, wondering if he would actually make the sandwich and hoping that he wouldn’t put too much mayonnaise on it.
“Get it, Jellybean,” he said. “Mustard, like what you put on a sandwich. I can mustard it. Okay, I guess not.” He stopped laughing and set to work on the sandwich.
I stared at Dad, trying to give my eyes the most serious look possible. I wanted him to know that this sandwich was important. I did, after all, have to eat it with other people watching. I did not want a fiasco on the scale of the one that occurred when J.D. Salinger’s Dad made his sandwich. Gary’s Dad put pickles on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When word of the pickles spread throughout the class, everyone gathered round J.D. chanting “pickles, pickles, pickles…” until he vomited the sandwich back up. To this day J.D.’s nickname is pickles. I did not want a nickname like pickles.
God finished packing the ham and cheese between the two pieces of bread. He carefully pulled off the crust the way I like it, and then inserted the sandwich into a plastic bag. He looked down at what he had created and was pleased. “It is good,” he said. He then handed the divine sandwich to me and I placed it unceremoniously into my backpack and headed out the door to catch the bus.
I, of course, thought my father was crazy.
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