Saturday, February 24, 2007

Power and glory

My mother has a few customers who are Born Agains. (Do I cap it??) One couple in particular lives just down the road in a house worth several millions, and when it sells it will generate a substantial commission for Mom, who's a Realtor. (A wonderful Realtor. An honest and smart one, and they're really rare, believe me.) That's the context.

Today she attended, as their guest, a five-hour simulcast in their church, and sat beside them to watch some 100-lb, big-hair creature in Texas prattle on about begging Jesus to help them change their sorry lives. Jesus, the woman said, would lift them out of the holes they were in and set them on a rock, and then they could roll that rock into the hole so they wouldn't fall back in. At noon boxed lunches were passed around, and everyone was instructed to seek out a stranger in the crowd and pray together. My mother went out and sat in her car and ate the sandwich. ("Why didn't you leave then?" I asked. "How could I?" she groaned.) Then lots of group song--lots of hands in the air, lots of confessional stuff, lots of sincerity. Hours of it.

My mother is Catholic. She struggles with it--has struggled with it all her life. When she was a child in Ireland her father owned the village pub, and so the family had to attend church. And they had to give generously, too, because the priest would recite names and amounts given every week, and if you ran the pub you sure as hell better be on the righteous path with the good father. And so then, as now, my mother would attend church because there was a relationship between attendance and the family livelihood.

Every Sunday they would go. Every Sunday, just before communion, my mother would pass out in the pew. She doesn't know why--only remembers feeling the air leave her chest and the lights going out. There was a special chair set out for her by the door, and her father would prop her there until the service was over, and then they'd walk home.

"I really think the only church I could tolerate at this point is the Unitarians," she told me again tonight. I reminded her about how she used to pass out, and told her that the fact that she would pass out had really gripped my imagination all these years: had it been an allergic reaction, or something else? If something else, what heavy thing was happening that would make her pass out? She nodded and agreed, and said she thinks about it, too.

"Whatever that heavy thing is," I said, "it's much more interesting to me than any sanitized, democratic stuff the Unitarians might have to offer." She nodded.

"The thing about the Catholics," she said finally, "is that you can go in and sit down and listen, and then you can leave--and you could do it for twenty years anonymously, if that's what you want to do, because if there is such a thing as a personal relationship with God, it's personal. You'd never see a simulcast about Jesus and the rock in the Catholic church."

Amen, Momma.
***
L has decided he wants dreadlocks. It's been three months of determination now, and he's growing his hair. We Googled it, since I don't know how to make dreadlocks, and read about back-combing and dread wax and all the pain-in-the-ass things you need to do to get the dreads to hold in Caucasian hair. Hey, what's the worst thing that can happen? He gets a buzz cut.

"Are you sure?" I asked, and showed him some not-very-flattering shots of dread heads. (The skinny ones can be cute, but those fat ones... Bleuch.) "I love your curls."

He's identifying Af-Am: he calls himself black. I correct him sometimes--tell him he's brown, and that all Indians are brown, and I don't know why the semantics play out that way but they do. But then I stop, because the politics come soon enough, and I don't want him thinking I care all that much what color he calls himself.

"Dreads are cool," he says, and that's the end of it.

7 comments:

phosda said...

l wants dreads? i'm so excited. that's darling. i used to help boyfriends with theirs. don't skimp with the rubber bands in the beginning. make sure the sections are tiny, otherwise he'll get those nasty turdy big dreads that are just gross. you don't want any of the ponytails to be bigger than half a pencil's width. you'll want to kill yourself after sectioning off half his head, of course, but it's worth the trouble in the long run. mine swore by dr. bronner baby soap for washing, but black hair is different than brown hair, so i don't know if it applies.

Grumpy Old Man said...

Wow.

He's too young to be doing this just to piss you off.

If I had a kid from Bengal, I'd rather he decided to be Bengali than a wannabe African-American.

Liam's gonna be ok, though.

phosda said...

people will be correcting him soon enough. and then he'll learn for himself, which is the only way anyone learns anything anyhow. till then, let him sport the dreads. what's the harm?

Anne said...

my nephew had them for many years, beginning as a young boy too. his mom was white, his dad black. they looked great! now he is 30, plays baseball in the minor leagues, is married and a born again christian. everything changes.

tomvancouver said...

I used to tell my sister to let her kids do anything they wanted to their appearance ( within reason ) piercings etc, but never, ever allow tatoos because they're permanent. Everything else is changeable. Your poor Mother having to sit through the (I'd cap it all as BORN AGAINS ) because their so loud about it, but I guess she has to do what she has to do, but remind me never to become a realtor. The pub owner I could handle as I'd just be drunk all the time, and not care what the church thought of me, or for that matter, anyone. I have a simalar backround to you, except mine is Swedish, and Irish Protestant.

alan said...

Hugs to your Mom...I can't imagine going through all of that!

Hopefully sweet L. won't get picked on for doing this; that would be my only worry. Not having a lot of hair left, I wish I'd "played with it" more when I did! At least if he ends up like me (and I hope he doesn't!) he'll have the memories!

alan

taza said...

i had dreads for over 10 years "back in the day" and my hair is curly, not kinky. i just stopped combing it, and those little "rat's nests" in the nape of the neck turned into dreadlocks over time. it did take a long time for all of my hair to "lock up" but once done, it was the coolest hairstyle i've ever had. i loved it, just didn't love the attention i got for it....