Mass Hysteria

I really needed Mass yesterday. And whether you’re religious, spiritual, agnostic or atheist, when you get a hankerin’ for whatever brings you solace, you gotta have it. Right? Am I right?

Mass is all what you make it. I’ve attended Mass on beaches, in woodsy-chapels, in bingo halls, in mountain mosques. So it was no skin off my back that the church I spontaneously decided to attend yesterday had folding chairs instead of pews. But I was understandably sad to not be able to kneel. That’s how I pray the best. Prostrate. Reverence. Submission. Surrender. Personal subjugation. All that good stuff. Without it, I’m nothing.

So I did what I always do. I made the best of it. And when I die, if that is all that is inscribed on my headstone, that “Mary made the best of it,” I’ll think I did a decent job at life. I was happy to be there, mask and all. I picked a seat far away from everyone else and I listened to the words of Catholic Mass, the words I love more than any words written in the English language. I have listened to these words my whole life, and with every passing year, they become more and more significant to me.

(Side note: Last week I threw a book across the room and into the trashcan before I even finished it. The book was Nora McInerny’s widow memoir No Happy Endings, and not shortly after she railed against Catholicism was when I threw it in the trash. I have something to say to her real quick:

Nora: The words in Mass may not mean anything TO YOU. The symbolic reason we kneel may be foreign TO YOU. The responses and prayers and Signs of the Cross may not make sense TO YOU. But many of us studied hard and have known since childhood why we pray, respond and kneel the way we do. We understand your confusion and support your decision to leave Catholicism, since you are someone who confesses to spiritual ignorance but refuses to educate herself about her faith. Buh-bye. Don’t let the rectory door hit you on the butt on your way out.)

Anyway, peaceful prayer and serenity was not meant to be mine yesterday. Because a family of five walked in, looked around the nearly empty church and plopped their act right down next to me. A mother, a father, two cranky preschoolers, and a grandmother. Told you, this happens to me everywhere I go. They could have sat anywhere in that cavernous building, but chose my row.

Normally I would have moved elsewhere, without hesitation. But this was not my normal church, and I was aware of the distinct possibility that perhaps I was intruding on their territory. Maybe they sit in this row every Sunday, I thought, and I have inconvenienced them. So in penance, I remained. I’ve always believed that a little suffering is good for the soul.

Big mistake.

This family was a train wreck. The two little boys cried and screamed and whined from the second they walked in. They wanted cups, snacks, hugs. No cups, no snacks, no hugs. Nana, Mommy, Daddy. I dropped it, I hate it, I want it, I lost it. Waah, waah, waah. For forty minutes straight. I mean, of course antsy tired children attend church. But none of the three adults did anything to placate, soothe or discipline the children. Nothing.

Hey, my boys weren’t angels in church when they were that young, either. But I’ll tell you, when they did behave badly, I immediately and calmly removed them from church, told them I was proud of them for lasting as long as they did, and then took them to get pancakes for breakfast. The next time we went to church, maybe they would last fifteen minutes. The next time, maybe twenty. But as soon as their shenanigans inconvenienced other church-go’ers, which wasn’t often, we’d leave.

But that’s just me.

Taking little angsty kids to church is like winding up one of those cymbal-clanging monkeys, setting it down on a church pew, then yelling at it for being loud. It’s just doing what it was made to do. Bang its cymbals. Why did you wind it up and bring it to church if you didn’t want it to bang its cymbals?

The family sitting next to me yesterday couldn’t have cared less about the religious serenity of the rest of the parishioners, and I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet. The grandmother thought it was appropriate to text with full volume on. I’m not joking. Texting. With volume. And the parents kept moving down the row to accommodate wherever the children wanted to sit, so before I knew it, there was only one seat between me and them. I closed my eyes to focus on prayer, and then I heard a bad noise.

It was something like Scccrrrrunch…

I opened my eyes to see one of the little boys sitting in the seat right next to me. Smiling up at me. I smiled back. He was kind of cute, but teary and sweaty from having spent the better part of thirty minutes acting like a miscreant. He stared at me with his pure saucer eyes, and I tried to figure out what was bothering me about his sitting there. Not social distancing guidelines, no. It was something else, something I had to reach far back into my short-term memory stores to find. What is it, what is it, I wondered, and I searched and grasped around in the dark recesses of my mind until I remembered…

Ah yes. My prescription Ray Bans and car key had been laying on that chair. The chair that now held a greasy, blonde-ringleted child with juice stains on his Doc McStuffin shirt. A child who for forty minutes had been jumping around like a squirrel on crack, but who was now settled in his chair as if he was content never to move again. With his little legs sticking straight out, he looked away from me towards the priest, stuck his thumb in his mouth, and tried to keep a straight face.

Yeah, like I would fall for that. Like he didn’t know perfectly well he was squashing expensive mirrored sunglasses and an Audi fob. It wasn’t so much the smashed sunglasses that distressed me, though. It was that I wanted to leave, and in order to get my glasses and key back, I knew I would have to speak to one of the grown-ups in the family. I so didn’t want to.

The grandmother was closest. She had pulled the toddler close to her, and he was now asleep in her armpit, my glasses and key still partially obscured under his butt.

Here goes. I whispered.

“Excuse me?”

She looked up from her phone.

“Can you lift him up so I can get my sunglasses?”

Confusion registered on her face.

“My key. He’s sitting on my key.” I motioned to the little boy.

Still confused, she lifted the boy up imperceptibly. I retrieved my twisted sunglasses and key, smiled and thanked her, and stood up to leave. She gestured to me and I leaned over.

She whispered. “Lens Crafters will fix those for free.”

Yeah, thanks. And no apology necessary, really.

My Red Coat

On Saturday I arrived on vacation without a book to read. Any book from the stack on my kitchen counter would have done nicely, sure, but for some reason I never threw one in my carry-on. Hard to believe. I was without a book on vacation. Harder to believe.

Nothing caught my eye in the airport. Mostly “Orange Man Bad” tomes. After I landed, I popped into the local Walgreens hoping to find a light memoir, maybe a biography. Nope. Just junk-food literature. You know, stuff by Nora Roberts and Danielle Steele and Robyn Carr, who by all rights shouldn’t be able to sleep at night, and who should be arrested for the petty crime of hooking lonely women on the mindless drivel that they pump out every thirteen weeks. While writers with real talent, those of us who understand real dialogue, and how real men and women speak and act, stand firmly beside our literary morals and watch these amateurs, these half-wits, rake in the big bucks.

But I digress.

I browsed the romance novels, just for fun. Sexually suggestive titles like Long, Hot Texas Summer, Virgin River, Laid Bare, and Beasting Beauty featured scantily-clad women in mid-embrace with tan, buff pec-blessed studs, implying that maybe the women gave in to their desires, maybe they didn’t.

Who knows and who cares?

One particularly insipid title, Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake made me so angry, I grabbed all five copies and placed them on a shelf in the gardening section. I hoped I at least gave someone a laugh for the day.

I have to have at least one book on vacation. I mean, when you wake up at 5:00 a.m. in someone else’s home, you’d better be able to entertain yourself for four to five hours. I’ve developed a routine here. I brew a cup of coffee from her Keurig, I pet her cat, I post on my blog, I pet her dog, I check my phone notifications, I pet her other dog, I brew another cup of coffee and then watch the desert sunrise from her back patio. Then I read. This routine has served me well.

(Wait, what do you read? You still don’t have a book!)

Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me.

When I arrived, my friend handed me a book she thought I would like, at least until she could get me to the local Barnes and Noble. It was a motivational book titled On Fire, by John O’Leary, who had been burned in a gasoline fire as a young boy. So ashamed of his deep scars, he wore long-sleeves and long pants, no matter what the weather, well into his twenties. Since his face hadn’t been burned, he did a pretty fair job at keeping his story a secret from anyone outside of his family and his close circle. He didn’t even date, in fear of being found out.

No nookie for John.

And while the story of his recovery was courageous and inspirational, it was a little too cheesy, a little too maudlin for my taste. I mean, the anecdote about the little girl with the red coat, who walks into the classroom, and throws her coat on the floor? Please.

Please pick it up, the teacher tells the little girl.

The little girl shook her head.

Pick your coat up, honey.

It’s not mine, the little girl answered.

I just saw you come in with it, the teacher answered. Please pick your red coat up off the ground and place it neatly in your cubby, the teacher admonished.

It’s not mine, the girl screamed.

We saw it, we saw it, we saw it on you, the other students screamed.

No, no, no, no, no, she screamed. It’s not mine!!!!!!!!

The point of the story?

Own it. If it’s yours, own it. You can’t just throw your shit on the ground, make everyone have to walk around it and step on it, and continue to pretend it didn’t happen. If it belongs to you, PICK YOUR SHIT UP.

Your life story, that is.

Oi, I thought, as I closed the book On Fire. Off to B&N.

After an hour of perusal, I picked up No Happy Endings by Nora McInerny. Nora’s widowed life parallels my own in that she is a widow, a writer, and a blogger. The description of her abject sorrow and frustration when a tricycle she had ordered for her young son arrives in a big box resonated with me deeply. She was so happy ordering that bike for her son. It had made her feel empowered, that she could take care of him herself, the way she had promised her husband she would. But when that box arrived, and she realized she would have to assemble it herself, she flopped down on her floor and wept. How can she do this herself? Her husband always did this stuff.

She wept as she opened the box. She wept as she read the instructions. She wept as she put the pieces together. She wept when she thought she was done, but then the handlebars fell off. But eventually you know what?

She did it. Herself. It took her eight hours, but when her son came home from school, there was a shiny blue tricycle sitting in the driveway. His joy at seeing that bike was the first time she ever thought, “Yes. I can do this myself.” And any widow can attest that this is both an empowering and sad moment. When you realize you are on your own, and you must figure things out on your own. And when you do, you feel pride. But you also feel sad that other women have men in their lives to help them with stuff. And you don’t.

(Brief pause for Pity Party……)

O.k., all done.

But something more struck me as I read Nora’s memoir.

She discusses her penchant, her attraction, to people with stories. People with miles on them, miles they wear proudly. People who have been through shit, tough shit, and who have emerged, stronger, wiser, kinder. People who have walked through the fire and come out smarter and cleaner. People who own their life stories, who wear them with pride, who…

Wait, fire? Recovery? Stories? Baggage?

Have you heard it yet? A lot like John O’Leary’s book, right? Turns out John O’Leary’s real healing didn’t start until he decided to show the world those scars. Until he started talking about the accident, his guilt, and his intense pain, he couldn’t even entertain the notion of loving or being loved. Once he owned up to his story, all good things began to happen.

Hm.

So if you will forgive my journalistic transgression of burying the lede so deeply in this post that it may be unforgivable, let me leave you to ponder the metaphor. And as I wrap up my week here, I think of O’Leary and McInerny’s messages and hope that with my blog posts, I do the best I can to own my stories. And that I wear my red coat with pride and dignity.

That’s the best I can do. Have a great weekend. You bet your ass I will.