There and Back Again

          That morning we hardly talked about it at all.  Robert already knew and we told Carson on the drive home from school.  We had planned a get together with friends and family for that Friday so when we got home we went into pre-party mode.  Food was already cooking, wine and tea were purchased and brewed respectively, and the inside table and the outside chairs were cleaned off.

            The children ate outside around the fire pit while the adults sat around the table.  There was no consensus of not talking about it; we just spoke of what we usually do.  People commented on the inclusion of cranberries in a salad or talked about being caught up on their favorite TV shows or what movies they wanted to see.  After dinner we examined wine labels like archeologists over shards of pottery like we knew what we were talking about, and decided which dessert we wanted.  Or just took a sampling of each.   

            People congratulated me on finally finding employment, said our house looked great with the halls decked, agreed that Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Riviera Paradise -which was playing in the background- was a pretty good tune, probably drank too much, definitely ate too much, and generally relaxed from a long week that got a little longer Friday morning.

            The kids were sent to bed and mom and dad crammed as much as possible in the dishwasher before following them.  Sleep came both gratefully and quickly.

            The next day Carson said simply, “I want to see The Hobbit.”  Our finances won’t swing a first run movie excursion right now so I told him maybe after Christmas.  Likely after the new year when paychecks start coming in again.  He wandered around the house muttering the cry of the pre-teen, “I’m sooooooo bored.”  I suggested he read a book, perhaps, oh I don’t know, The Hobbit.  He instead asked if I’d read it to him.  At first I was tempted to tell him he’s too old to have books read to him, but then I decided, why not.

            We lay down side by side on his bed.  I read about Riddles in the Dark and the escape from goblins.  By the time I was describing entering the dark and brooding forest of Mirkwood and struggling with the names of 13 dwarves -I think they are Fili, Kili, Thorin, Bombur, Dasher, Dancer, Groucho, Stucco, Romney, Speedo, Fantine, Prius, and Fiscal, but I could be wrong on a couple of those- Robert came in and lay down on my other side.  I caught a glimpse of Andrea in the doorway snapping a picture with her phone.

            There is something pure and simple about reading to your children.  Something that I know no matter how  many times I did it there still could have been many more.  I haven’t read to them out loud in years so it was nice to come back again.  I know that their innocence is a shadow of what it used to be.  I know they know the horrors of what happened last Friday, but for maybe a half and hour or so they were safe in their beds, warm in their beds, visualizing those forests and caves, and fat and silly dwarves falling asleep in enchanted streams, and a father and mother who love them and will protect them forever.

            I hope their last thoughts as they fell asleep were of fantastic worlds full of magic, where the good guys win and the bad guys always loose.  I know what mine were.

One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor

“Dear Corinthians, how are you?  I am fine. Come down to Rome sometime.”

-Dave Thomas’ late night priest character from SCTV adlibbing one of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians when his Bible accidentally closes on live TV.

An Okalahoma teenager and his friend were drinking.  They got in a pickup and for some reason the driver swerved off the road and hit a tree, ejecting his friend who died.  Tragically commonplace.  The blood alcohol level in the driver was 0.07 percent, just under the legal limit for an adult, but far above the legal limit for a 16-year-old which is 0.00.

            He pled guilty and was sentenced to 4 years to life with parole.  But the judge said he didn’t have to go to prison if he graduated from high school, spoke about the evils of drug and alcohol use/abuse, took periodic drug tests, and oh yes, went to church every Sunday for 10 years.

I was raised Catholic.  It was pretty much expected that I to go to mass every Sunday until 18 or so.  I don’t remember the day my parents actually said I didn’t have to go any more, or if they ever did, but I do remember how much I grew to dislike church.  To me mass (church) was the same thing every week, literally, the exact same thing.  We would repeat prayers precisely as we said them the previous week, and the week before, and the week before ad nauseam.  Give me a few minutes and I could probably remember the Profession of Faith.  The priest would get up and repeat what he had probably said a thousand times, word for word before that morning, and then deliver (what was to me) an uninspiring sermon, most of which was reciting long passages from the Bible, Paul’s letters to Corinthians and such; I don’t remember a single point from a single one. 

I would watch the clock, daydream, flip through the hymn book or the missalette; anything to make the time go by. It got to the point for me that I would put off going until the final service of the weekend, 8:00 PM Sunday night, so I could sit in my dad’s car in the darkened parking lot where I would listen to the radio instead of going in.  I feel bad about that now with my parents gone and all, but I can’t change it.

Maybe it was and undiagnosed ADD, maybe the priests were just going through the motions, maybe I was lazy, but I feel I got absolutely nothing from the hours I spent in a church pew.  I was curious about God and faith though.  I joined the Christian group Campus Life in high school, maybe at first to see if I could meet girls rather than to build a strong faith, but I did show up and I did listen.  But my constant questions to the poor, under-prepared counselors about why they believe and how they knew, and my obvious dissatisfaction with their answers left both of us frustrated and eager to move on.  I quit after awhile, leaving both faith and those girls I wanted to meet behind.

There are people I love and respect for whom church is the greatest joy of their week, their lives.  I look at them and I get a little jealous.  What did they see that I didn’t?  Were the people working at their church better at conveying the message than those at mine?  Did/do I not have the intellectual chops to “get it?”  Why does something that brings utter happiness to them bring only boredom and frustration to me?  Why is their reward my punishment?

Over the years I’ve tried to find some form of faith that works for me.  I’ve prayed, I’ve talked to some of those loved and respected people from the previous paragraph, and I’ve read.  But I guess I’m still the kid sitting in his father’s car behind Sacred Heart Church on Clinton and Cedar in Fresno, listening to ELO or Led Zeppelin, waiting until it’s time to go home.