“I think I found out what God wants,” he told me a couple days later.
“What is it?” I said, stopping my reading.
“I think he wants everyone to be saved.”
“Really? Is he going to do it?”
My Someone stopped and read a little further.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“Jesus again?” I asked.
“Yeah, Jesus again.”
We waited.
“Will you tell me if you find out?” I asked him.
“Yeah. You’ll be the first to know.”
Like any good Christian campers, we were celebrating the Passover. Of course, it wasn’t actually the Passover. And I wasn’t even really a camper. I was just the tag-along kid of a faculty member who helped my favorite teams cheat at Capture the Flag, and noted for my future how to ask a boy to campfire. I spent my days with my best friend Jessica– also the tag-along kid of a faculty member– playing carpetball and sneaking to the back of the Canteen to get free handouts of Nerds and Snickers bars. We were scolded every other day for locking ourselves in the walk in freezer, listened outside of windows at the request of older girls to find out if the boys were talking about them, and meandered from cabins to mess hall to woods to creek, our tan skin getting tanner and our blonde hair bleaching blonder. But on occasion, our moms would deem something Important, and we would be required to put aside our free play and Attend an Important Lesson with all of the Older Kids.
This night, it was Passover. The mess hall was transformed into candlelight, round tables, and smelly Junior High kids trying to keep their thoughts pure in spite of the dim lights and close proximity to the opposite sex. As with most of the times my mother had me attend Important Lessons, I did my best to emulate holiness and prayed for a joke to break the tension. And I grappled with the Sadness that goes with trying to learn the Important Lesson of Loving God.
We ate our courses while the Camp Dean explained the Lesson, but didn’t explain the Sadness, and I felt cheated by the lack of authenticity of grape juice for wine and then felt guilty for thinking about wine when Jesus would want me to be thinking about grape juice. And then I felt guilty for thinking about Jesus when I was learning that there are people who don’t think about Jesus, and that in that moment, I was that person, which meant that I was essentially pretending to go to Hell. Then I wondered if just by pretending that I was Jewish, if that would count against me on Not Pretend Judgement Day. And then, for a second, I felt free of Jesus’ ever watching eye– like I could think anything I wanted since I was already going to Hell. Then, I knew I was definitely going to Hell. And no one could answer my questions because it was candles and round tables and holiness. And this was how I rattled around my 10-year-old brain until the parsley.
My Someone likes to trace our food history back, particularly when we eat something new or are trying to make new what we’ve been eating old. And we had been eating tabbouleh for weeks. My Someone wanted to know my first experience with parsley, and I was astonished to be taken back twenty years to a dark mess hall across the table from a chair left open for Elijah, picking up the green sprig and mustering my face into a grimace as I bit down on the garnish.
“The Bitter Herb of Enslavement,” I told my Someone. “That’s my first memory with parsley.”
Like in any classic suburban childhood, we did fancy dinner at Olive Garden. And after makeshift Passover, I was consistently confronted with the leftover garnish on the side of my Shrimp Alfredo. My secret eating of the Bitter Herb was caught twice by my brother, who insisted that the parsley was actually poison and not to be eaten. After my parents assured me I wouldn’t die, I continued chewing and swallowed it down. It was a habit I kept whenever parsley was present. Although I couldn’t quite remember the details, I knew it was my responsibility– because somebody somewhere had a bad thing happen, I had to keep eating the mock Bitter Herb of Enslavement. Either until there was no more enslavement or no more bitter herbs.
When we had successfully botched Passover, the lights came up. Something about not needing to be in darkness anymore. Something about Jesus helping us not have to eat things that don’t taste great. Something about let’s take communion now and be thankful we are not going to Hell in a Challah bread basket. And then we moved to the chapel and sang songs that kept us safe from other people’s traditions and other people’s Bitter Herbs of Enslavement.
I felt the relief everyone else did. We are saved! We are free from Bitter Herbs! And then I felt the Sadness of the Important Lesson of God’s Love: that the wrong glass of grape juice with the wrong slice of bread is a grave misstep. Not all glasses of wine are the same. Neither are all games of pretending what the wine should be.
I haven’t taken communion in years. I’ve tried to reconcile myself to all sorts of excuses. I’m allergic to the Body of Christ. I am too nervous to go up front. I am too afraid I will be struck by lightening. I am too self conscious that my parents or my friends or the strangers around me will sense I am a fraud. I am too aware that I don’t know how to pretend right. Out of habit, though, I still swipe the garnish from the side of my plate, trying to chew it thoughtfully– for somebody, somewhere.
Maybe what I am finding out is that it is much easier to chew on someone else’s suffering than to force feed myself shame. Maybe I am finding that the only tradition more bitter than the Bitter Herb is the bitterness of being excluded from a simple meal of wine and bread– and that somehow, somewhere, someone is being told they’re suffering was for nothing. That in the end, the wrong meal is sending them away from the Love of God.
Today for lunch, again, we will eat tabbouleh. It’s no wine and bread, but it nourishes us well and doesn’t leave us feeling heavy. It gives us strength to keep working away from our daily enslavements, and keeps our brains focused enough to notice those who are enslaved around us. I’m sure even Jesus would think it was tasty.
“What are you reading?” I asked him.
“About love and what happens if God gets what he wants,” he explained.
“What does God want?”
“Oh, you know.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Yeah. I guess I don’t, either.”
“I just think of stupid things lately,” he’d said to me. “Like, where am I going to do my laundry, or what happens when your tires get low– you’re always driving with your tires low and it’s dangerous! And your shoes. You leave them everywhere. You’re going to trip on them all the time because no one else will be there to pick them up.”
“I will pick up my own shoes, now.” I said.
“But what about that look you give,” he said, “It’s not mine, anymore, and I don’t know where it’s going next.”
“I will pick up my own shoes, now.” I said.
He called me from the other room.
“Nope!” I said.
My Someone– before we knew he was my Someone– had been playing this game with me nearly since we met.
“No?” he said, “Okay, then. What is it?”
“I want to be Oatmeal Pickens,” I said.
This got a laugh out of him. It always got a laugh out of him.
“Okay,” he said, “today you can be Oatmeal Pickens. Now, Oatmeal Pickens, what do you think about finishing this song?”
We should have been more careful. The more names that are made, the more you are likely to fall in love. Everybody knows that.
One of my favorite pop culture icons wrote in her new book that the nicknames we attribute to the ones we love are signifiers of our deep affection– with our pets being the most loved. I roll around this idea with my 88 pound pooch, Butter. My Muttly Crew. Peanut Butter. Butterdog. Buttrocious. Butterloni. Butthead. Butteropolis. Butt-Butt. Sleepy Dog America. Buttey. Crazy Dog Marie. Buttey-Pajamas. Cutie Banana Star. Buttons. Snifflesnort. Monster. Old Face. Icky Ticky Ticky Tacky Ickle Doggy.
This doesn’t even tap into the twenties of little ditties and songs written just to taunt and love her.
I’m pretty sure my icon was right.
When my Someone was becoming my Someone and we were fighting the way that two people fight when they are finding out that they are each other’s Someone and are afraid and excited and nervous and happy, he became too flustered and slipped–
“How do I know what you even want? You don’t even know what you want! You don’t even know who you are– all you have is your name, and you can’t even decide on that!”
We were quiet. We both felt the sting of a hundred moments being picked up and examined and thrown in a basket of What-Isn’t-Fun-Anymore.
“Ouch,” I said.
“Baby–” he started.
“That’s not my name,” I said. “My name is Mallory. I know that now.”
My Someone and I often try to find the moment we fell in love, but there are too many. This moment, though, may have been the one where we realized we had already fallen too far. If we hadn’t, it wouldn’t hurt so much to take back all my names.
Toehead. Begonia. Matilda-Marie. Motormouth. Malillery. These are the names I would respond to when my dad called them. I liked them all. Because when you are collecting names, you are collecting love. And I was being loved. And now, I am greedy for love. So I keep on asking for names.
He called me from the other room.
“Nope,” I said.
He poked his head around the corner.
“Okay,” he said, “Oatmeal Pickens?”
“Nope.”
“Macaroni?” he tried.
“Nope.”
“Stink-Donkey Koogle?”
“No. Rolodex Diggadoo!” I said.
This got a laugh. This always gets him to laugh. We’ve recovered each name we lost, and are making more.
“Okay, Rolodex Diggadoo,” he said, “do you want to take this little Mush-Button for a walk?”
“Yeah, yeah!” I tell him, “Sure thing, Scott-Scott-Tater-Tot.”
Chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee.
Chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee.
“You see,” Ash explained in her Adirondack lined home, “the first part is always the same.” She continued to coo–
Chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee…
“The second part of the chickadee call indicates their level of alarm. It’s their way of telling everyone else how dangerous the situation is becoming.”
That gray morning, parked on her farm, we were drinking coffee and learning to listen to the birds.
“So when I went out to my garden one morning, I was listening to them calling, and all the sudden–
-dee-dee-dee.
Chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee.
Chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee.
and I looked up and said, ‘Really? Me? I’m the reason for your alarm?'”
It was different than my other Hell dreams, mostly on account of there being no actual Hell in this one. Instead, I was confronted with each of my former pastors, all in a group, banding together for the sole purpose of the soul purpose of convincing me there is a Hell. Even my dream self is on the fence, anyway, so it didn’t take much. And they spoke in unison–
“Your belief in no Hell won’t save you from it. Your belief will never save you.”
BANG.
The gunshot echoed off the orchard trees and simmered in the air until my Someone’s and my eyes were open wide and expectant. We waited in reverence before turning to each other, curling up closer as the 8 o’clock morning sun warmed up the camper.
“The pigs are dead,” I said.
“Yeah,” said my Someone. Then nothing.
Jim had warned us last night, with full apology, when offering us a place to park on his property for the night. The butcher was coming in the morning, he had said, and while he can’t stomach it, it had to be done and he understood if we no longer wanted to park at the orchard. Maybe it was curiosity or disbelief or wanting to appear like the kind of people who understand life cycles. Or maybe it was just the thought of leaving a south Massachusetts bar at 2AM trying to find a rest stop, but we agreed to stay, anyway.
A few minutes more passed.
“I’m too sad to sleep,” I said.
“Me, too,” said my Someone.
So we waited and hoped for sleep. And when the sound of the gunshot began to detach its imprint, I listened to the birds. I started counting– the first part of the call always six notes. The second part I was losing track of. I thought it was three. But then maybe five. And as I kept counting, I realized I was hearing the chickadees, and they were extending their call as I imagined the pig’s blood was running into the ground. I pictured their little bird faces staring in disbelief.
And then I realized– I am counting their fear.
I’m starting to think the pastors were right. My belief won’t save me from their Hell. Only their belief can save them from their Hell. But first, their belief had to make a Hell. And then, they had to convince someone else to be afraid of it. Because lately, I think we use the Great Love of God as an excuse to make others afraid.
We knew what we were doing, but we didn’t say it. But after our goodbyes and thanks to Jim, we walked the perimeter as if there were no gunshots, but we kept our eyes to the ground. Our dog smelled it first. I don’t know if it made her afraid or curious or on the verge of a rabid break out, but we pulled her away.
“That’s where the pigs died,” I said.
“Oh. Yeah,” said my Someone.
And we kept walking. But, somehow, we felt a little better. Sad, but finally at ease. Maybe the chickadees’ call was overkill. Or maybe everyone responds to Blood differently. Somehow, though, it’s hard to hear anyone but the fearful chickadees.
The story is told like this–
There is a lady and a man, though potentially not in that order, and God likes them both well enough. And they are maybe even happy but definitely equal living in the newest and first flora and fauna. And then there’s the bad thing that no one knows who to blame for and hardly understands; but the truth is, someone has to pay for the damage. So God loses out on his Garden he’s been growing and considers a hermit’s lifestyle, something he was tipped off to recently from an oceanic creature he pinched out from his fingertips. Additional curses are doled out to the lady and the man– not necessarily one worse than the other, just different. But the difference makes all the difference. And the lady and the man find the whole thing unbearable, because they will never know what it is like to be cursed in the same way.
Lately, I wonder if the Great Love of God is just an excuse to not love each other better. Because the Great Love of God doesn’t seem to be able to find a way around our differences, either.
Then this–
the people are finally all getting along when they decide to build a tower to the sky. They want to touch God. And while now we craft all sorts of unsaintly love songs to Jesus with the same sentiment but no action, we aren’t about to get into trouble these kids were about to.
BAM! Confusion. Chaos.
And suddenly, no one is struck dead in the usual Way, but everyone is given a new tongue. And everyone’s tongue is ripe in their mouth for a language only they can hear. And the tower is called off– now God can go back to being an agoraphobic and peak out from under his blinds as the people, once united, are now separated by their differences. Which still hasn’t been solved today. Again, no language is better. Just that only a few people are able to know what it’s like to grow up with that language. And a few come to understand through Rosetta’s Stone…
–but then, a few are coming to understand our Garden Differences, too, with a little surgery and an inventory of the heart. And I wonder, once we are all united and we call the curses off and the tongues go back to how we can all hear them, will God be disappointed?
Will God be disappointed that after being the same and then struck different over and over again, this time we won’t be asking him for any closeness at all? This time, we will not choose to look for the first magic Garden. This time we will not try to build a tower tall enough to touch him. And will God open the door wide and stare at his mailbox at the end of the sidewalk and realize the damage had been done? There is no return this time?
Or, will we all be able to forgive God, too, for foiling our plans to love each other?
Then again, I wonder lately if my anger has been for years misplaced on the Great Love of God instead of the ones I love who aren’t looking out at their mailbox for me.
(It’s a theory or a truth that when)
We say “I love…” we are rolling out the beginning to test what will follow. To see if the funny movement that is toppling around our insides can be explained–
if the mouth agrees and perpetuates.
“I love…
…pineapple.”
I test to see if this formula will solidify my final thought on the matter.
When pineapple ends, does the mouth move around the fruit’s name like it belongs there? Does it twist with the thought of the tang and smirk at the edges with the sweet? Does the mouth wish it wasn’t the name but the thing itself?
We test “I love…” out to know that the mouth and the face agree with the heart and the brain.
Like when I tried it on you.
When I told you I love you, the mouth knew instantly it was true, because it did not want only the sound of you hovering in front of its lips, but you. And the ears agreed, too, because they wanted to hear only you from then on.
And this “I love…” test was the most successful in all of history. And the heart rests easy.
(because not everything can just be spoken into existence.)
I am having trouble with the Primordial Goop. Maybe in the same way I am having trouble with all of my unborn. But the bracket of Heaven is fluctuating, again, like some sort of Eternal March Madness, with religions and sciences and pure human emotions pitted against each other for the highest stake of Forever Not Burning. And it doesn’t seem like any amount of buying the right pennant or concocting the right bet is getting anyone any closer to pearly gates– it’s only keeping everyone else out. And no one seems any better able to explain it than I am able to use sports metaphors. Which is to say, it ends here.
“I wonder if Josh got what he wanted, or if we did,” I said to my Someone as we drove from Montpelier to Burlington, Vermont, through a sunset vaguely reminiscent of the one I watched three days after Josh’s death. I had been fighting that sinking feeling that there wasn’t another sunset I hadn’t seen, not another urge to fight for or against any more religion, not a single meal I hadn’t already eaten. I was beginning to feel the Earth as a bit of a disappointment, and wondering what exit strategy was being manufactured for me.
“I wonder if when people commit suicide, if they really get to move on and feel nothing and be in the Nothing to escape here, or if everyone who loves them gets what they want– to see them again in Heaven or the After,” I continued, “because it seems like the two are mutually exclusive.”
Then, as if in response to my morbid despondency, a tall, free standing rock formation stretched itself into view in the center of the highway. It was beautiful– like I had never seen before. Always when I am close to reconciling Josh’s suicide or my own sadness, out grows another fucking reason to live in the middle of the road.
“Which is better?” my Someone asked.
“I guess if it’s between feeling Nothing and feeling Everything, it’s not a fair choice.”
But even if there is a choice, and Josh got to go to the Nothing and I get to go to see my friends, I worry that we will be disappointed, anyway. Because if the Heaven I was raised on is right, there will be more love and inclusion happening in Hell. Sure, the blisters would be significantly more, too, but maybe there would be more consolation in the harmony of screams from ourselves and our loved ones echoing down the fiery cavernous halls than sitting on clouds at a feast they weren’t allowed in.
Sometimes I wonder if the reason some Christians hate the idea of Evolution isn’t because it warps with the idea of how God chose to start the Universe, but because it is already so difficult trying to keep 6,000-10,000 years worth of people out of an already crowded Heaven. If there are more years to tack on– not just a couple hundred, but millions– how can that floating mass of Heaven actually hold everyone up? And what do we do about Neanderthals? If we are going to include the uncountable number of aborted babies and miscarriages and all the other sentimental allowances we make for pre-found-Jesus people, accepting Evolution would force us also to consider the Primordial Goop. And I am so worried about accidentally stepping on the Goop. And if we count the Goop, maybe there’s more to All Dogs Go to Heaven than we thought, too.
In a parking lot outside of Burlington, my Someone and I checked in with our wiser-by-the-day pal, Ryan. I told him about the sadness and the Goop and the suicide. He said maybe Heaven looks more like everyone gets therapy on arrival. But God is the therapist. And then no one is sick in their hearts, anymore, which means we can all be there. Kind of like we are trying to do here. Which means Josh will learn to love not being in the Nothing. And I will learn to love everyone I kind of have a hard time with here.
It’s a tremendous amount of work checking every Heavenly Visa, and I doubt St. Peter gets paid hourly. I wonder if it might just be worth it to let everyone in. Goop and all.
“No, no, I can’t do cards. I’ll pay you later, but I can’t do cards,” Cindy said. I was packing up the last of my instruments, all smiles and goodwill floating through the small cafe in Utica, New York.
“Just hit us back whenever,” I told her, “the CD is yours.”
“Yeah, you see, I just dug myself out of serious credit card debt,” she explained to me. “It took me three years– I’ve had absolutely no life.”
“Congratulations,” I said, “that sounds hard.”
“Yeah, see, I got myself into this mess. I got cancer, you know. Thought I was going to die. Spent all kinds of money thinking, I don’t know, someone else is going to pay for it. Maybe him–” she nods over to who I assume is her partner. “–so I just keep spending. I wracked up $10,000 on one credit card alone, just spending it on vet bills and things for my hundred dogs.”
“That’s crazy!” I conceded, not sure if I meant the $10,000 or the hundred dogs.
“Yeah, see I went nuts. You think you’re gonna die and you got nuts. So I dug myself a hole.” And then, with the long pause and knowing look of a good punchline delivery, Cindy looked me in the eye–
“…but then, I lived.”
My Someone and I have been lately rattling around in our own brains trying to singularly create the best song ever written. Even though we’ve built our little band and our little lives over the course of five years together, lately we spend our time nosing around our own journal pages, jotting down secret entries and zipping up our secret thoughts from our mouths so that somehow we can carve out creative independence. The process has been exhausting. We come to the dinner table and the stage and the morning walks in Vermont or New York or Pennsylvania frustrated and gaping, but still unwilling to concede to the other’s help. Not really. We put on the reuse of asking for each other’s opinion, but the process itself has been divided. And we are suffering for it.
I have this theory that we are in the process of spying on our Alone Selves. Since we moved into our little 16′ home on wheels more than a year ago, we can easily tally the hours we have spent apart. It’s less than 20. Our new strategy is based on the old fear: the fear of losing. The fear of being lost. The fear of alone-ness. Whereas before we fought the fear by togetherness, squeezing out those bits of words and thoughts with trust and vulnerability, now we fight it with projection and speculation. We fight it with resignation of the inevitable. One of these days, one of us will lose the other to the Ground or the Nothing or the Eternal.
How do we cope with this sadness? We live as though we have already lost. We prove to ourselves that we can successfully write a song alone. We tear at the fickle curtain between having it all and losing everything by releasing less of ourselves to the other. Keeping fewer limbs out in the way of getting hurt. I keep some things just for me. He keeps some things just for him. To store away for our Future Selves– markers and spaces that we were always able to live and write and eat alone. And all the while we are coping with the loss of our future, we are losing, losing, losing our present.
We are wracking up a debt so big, and hoping the other will clean it up when we are gone. We are fighting how big our love can grow.
“Aaron’s out of town,” Bryan said, “which means that I am baking chocolate chip cookies.” And then, as if caught in a lie, he corrected himself, “Even if Aaron was here, I would still be baking chocolate chip cookies. But, you know, it’s different.”
As I slowly unraveled my anxiety to him over the next hour, I pictured Bryan moving around his kitchen, a slow meditation of baking soda and chocolate chips and flour. It is different, baking still and quiet with a long distance friend on the line and no one coming through the door to smell what you have cooking up. It is the same movement, the same recipe as when you have an adoring and salivating mouth waiting in the next room to take a bite. But, you know, it’s different. Should Aaron suddenly appear home on a surprise flight, those warm gooey meditations would be shared and appreciated and loved. Bryan is faithful to the ritual. But Bryan knows how to make room when room is needing to be made. And Bryan will wipe down the counters and load the dishwasher regardless of Aaron coming home in minutes or days. Bryan’s Alone Self doesn’t sneak in to change what Bryan’s Loving Self does. Bryan’s Future Self look just like his Present Self.
Two nights ago before sleep after a long day of fighting writing and embracing rest, I turned to my Someone.
“What if we wrote songs together?” I said, as if it had never occurred to me before. As if we hadn’t written every note of our lives in a tangled, wonderful weave.
“What a great idea!” he said, as if he, too, had never thought of it.
And in this way, we are chipping away at that image of our Future Selves, paying down its debt. Sleeping and waking and still unsure of how to fight the fear, other than to leave less room between us for it to settle in.
Quartz from Pallets 