Holy Mommy!
A divine creator in the flesh!
One day I noticed that I used to pray every night, and then I stopped when I started spending the night with my agnostic boyfriend. Upon the realization, said boyfriend was then my ex-husband. I didn’t miss him, but I did miss praying. I remembered that I had stopped praying before because I felt like I didn’t have much left to say, and this psychic lady said something along the lines of maybe God needed to talk to me, and I just needed to listen. I thought of her when I started praying as an agnostic. Now, every night, I say the Lord’s prayer in Aramaic because it feels powerful and makes me feel nostalgic, connecting me to so many childhood memories. I remember my mom and sister teaching it to me, my father’s side of the family laughing as I said it, and wondering if I was insulting God by mixing up the gender references as I often did in Aramaic. I had stopped because I thought I was either offending God or cracking him up like I did my father’s family. I started again because my God must have a sense of humor and no ego, so he shouldn’t be offended, and if I could amuse him, great! I don’t care if he is laughing with or at me. I always imagined a big, blue, male, god who looked kind of like he’d been made of sheets of ice with a very gender neutral compassionate face. I probably imagined this because I was told he lived in the sky and wondered why I couldn’t see him and imagined he camouflaged in with the sky’s color. The face I imagined from so many Renaissance era religious paintings. Why did I always imagine a male? Of course, being Christian, my family always referred to God as male. That could have been it.
When I was younger, I followed the formal Lord’s Prayer with a casual talk I enjoyed with my imagined Big Blue God. When I started again a couple years ago as an agnostic, I followed the prayer with a casual talk to an unknown deity, followed by a Buddhist mantra to manage my temper. It was interesting how my informal prayer changed as I considered what deities I might have helping me from the beyond all my life that existed beyond my imagination. I thought of any female deities I might have had that I’ve taken for granted my whole life like most of us do our mothers. No matter how much we appreciate them, could we ever be grateful enough? Some people have shitty moms that don’t deserve much gratitude. I can’t ever imagine judging moms though because I know motherhood is way bigger a commitment than I could ever brave. How glorious are good moms though? Seriously!? I realized as I tried to still my mind and open it to all the possibilities within the unknown that could fit the form of whatever created me that I never needed to imagine a female supreme being. My mother was the female supreme being in my life who was so genuinely awe inspiring in the flesh that I didn’t need to imagine a more wondrous female creator. My dad, not so great. Alas, my Big Blue Imaginary Male authority figure.
How magical was my mom!? Imagine:
I spent so much time helping her while she cooked or asking her questions about her past because her life story intrigued me as much as her food delighted me. I spent so much time under her sewing machine gathering scraps to make my barbies the most awesome outfits. Matter, material, and metal all come from the word mother. Watching my mother transform materials into different creations taught me so much about Goddess energy. I remember being 5 & complaining about being cold while walking somewhere with her through a typically freezing Chicago winter. She taught me that if I moved faster, my body would burn more calories producing more heat to make me warmer. Imagine learning, at that age, that motion could transform my present conditions while transporting me! Later, I would move to and live in warmer and warmer cities. Most importantly, she wasn’t as annoyed or as worried as other responsible adults were about my curious nature. She knew how to effortlessly nurture that nature and let me safely explore my surroundings. Nothing shows that aspect of her better than this picture:
How human was she?
Well now that's also important. It was very important for me to see such superhuman and human qualities intertwined in my mom. It helped me forgive the basest of actions another human could take against me as long as it was just human after all. It fascinated me and inspired in me a desire to explore the extents of the human range, so I can better know what kinds of behaviors to expect of my fellow animals.
One day, when I was three, my mom got me all dressed up in church clothes and took me to work with her when she couldn't get a sitter. She put me in an empty office and gave me some pens and papers to write and draw with. She gave me a coffee with mostly cream and probably some other treat from the break room. Well, the coffee gave me the runs, so I was careful to act like a very responsible and respectable young woman as I walked directly to the restroom to relieve myself. I passed by two official looking businessmen talking & nodded at them as I walked by as if to assure them that this was totally normal. I remembered that day a few weeks later as I sat on the sofa all dressed in church clothes with my mom's purse on my lap. I had begged to go to work with her again; I was good last time, and I'd be good then; I'd do anything to get to be with her and get away from my sitter. She said she was going to warm up the car then come back to get me. She couldn't leave without her purse, and I had her purse, so I could be assured she wouldn't leave me there. She wouldn't leave me, right? I was so good! I didn't do anything wrong when I went last time. I knew she wasn't coming back, but I refused to move until I understood why. Was I bad last time? Did I get her in trouble? I tried so hard to do everything right, what could I have done wrong? It was the bathroom trip wasn't it? Why wouldn't she bring me with her? I know how important her work is. She always explains how important it is for us all. Those 2 guys I walked by looked pretty important. Did I get her in trouble? What could I have done to cause her to leave me here? An hour later the babysitter who used to abuse me was sitting on the sofa across from me saying, "you know she's not coming back, right?" I clutched the purse even tighter, and I saw pity creep into my abuser's eyes. How could my personal monster feel sympathy towards me within the precise moment which I refused to acknowledge that my greatest hero betrayed me? How important a lesson to learn of villains and heroes: We're all just human underneath.
There are the inhuman among us, and those are a different animal altogether. They can't feel human emotion at all, so they're the most dangerous of all. If they're not serial killers or mass shooters, they're pharmaceutical CEOs, cops, and politicians.
One day it hit me that I had been filling out medical forms about my family's medical history without at all acknowledging my father's side of the family. They divorced while I was young, and I was so at peace although my sister tried to teach me to wish them back together. I knew that as a toddler, I had seen my father hitting my mom. My mom chose to divorce him at an airport when he came back from a trip, and she saw 2-year-old me run up to him and grab his legs crying and begging him not to kill mommy. I didn't know until decades later that I had been in the same room with them for 2 years while he'd beat and try to rape her. I identified so much with my mom and had so little of a relationship with him growing up that I forgot half of my genes came from him. I realized it one day while completing family medical history on a form that I had been leaving out that side’s history altogether. I cut him out of my identity so much it didn't hit me until much later how much of my ancestral history I was denying and the physical consequences that could ensue! I did recently learn, though, that my father has perfect teeth: his baby teeth even! He never lost his baby teeth and never had a cavity. Dentists are mystified by his mouth I hear! Why couldn't I have gotten that? I had to acknowledge that I do, indeed, have a history of heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke in my family. My family has a history of rapists and psychological illnesses on both sides, and both sides want grandkids. Fuck them all. I'd rather not bet a lifetime of unconditional love on such a genetic gamble in an environment that's clearly over us. I'm not interested in making little baby monsters with heart problems but perfect teeth :-D