Resurrection
All week what a sad grumpy girl I was. The day I stopped in at the frame shop the nice man there told me "Happy Easter" when we got done with our business. Oh I’m not much on Easter I said back nobody seems to care about Easter anymore except to give their kids two-foot-tall Easter baskets filled with crap, and anyway it’s too early, the ground looks like a dry old scab..... Not that I have anything against Jesus, I’m actually I’m a fan of Jesus! “I’ll be sure to tell him that next time I see him,” came his mild retort.
What a burden I often am to myself. It’s like having this embarrassing relative around all the time only I’m him. Her. She. I’m the relative.
I cheered up by degrees as the week went on. Sitting in the cemetery in the rain Wednesday night helped some since I do love a cemetery. Then I went to the Holy Thursday Service that I hadn't been to in like million years and I’d forgotten how it moves me to see the way the church gets darker and darker the deeper into the readings we go with Judas nervously fingering his prayer beads and the fellas telling Jesus how they’re with him all the way Man only then they’re all passed out and it’s the big moment when the soldier gets his ear cut off and Jesus sticks it back on and then the scene with Peter saying he didn’t know him when somebody asked him after the arrest. I tried that once when my doctor told me I had to find out what my father died of. “Nah," I said. "I don't have to really. I mean I didn’t even know the guy!” Which I thought was pretty funny though the doctor didn't. he STILL made me go digging back 50 years through a world of painful old papers until I finally did find a copy of the death certificate which some saint sent to my mom when he died in ’73 not having laid eyed on her since the day I was born. I liked saying that I didn’t even know the guy. It felt good to deny him. “You did it to me,” I remember thinking at the time.
And then Good Friday and I went to my favorite little pond and looked out at the water and the wind was so strong it was refreezing the wave as they splashed against the overhanging twigs and breaches, making this kind of beaded fringe like you used to see on lampshades in the 1920s and 1930s and the fringe clicked as the wind blew and I kept falling sleep trying to read my book about the Civil War dead and how nobody thought to mark the poor soldier’s uniforms with their names and there were no ambulances or hearses, no system for carrying away the wounded or burying the dead. (Cheerful reading I know.)
And then yesterday we had the wind again but a crazy bright sun too and I bought enough flowers for a mobster’s funeral and brought then home and mad ea giant mess in the kitchen with the vases and the stems and the scissors and the greens . A mess! But I began to get really happy and then I made a salad with cumin and artichoke hearts and these really fat oranges, and then we went out and saw a production of The Tempest and I cried when the mean old bastard of a brother who years before snatched the Dukedom away from the rightful ruler Prospero and then washes up on Prospero’s island ha HA after the big storm that Prospero made using his magic…. When he sees his boy and realizes he hadn’t drowned but was actually just fine and more than fine because here he is sitting cozily with this lovely girl Prospero’s daughter and he weeps with joy and is a mean old bastard no longer……
And then it was today. Then it was Easter Sunday and our little boy cat who was hours from death just 20 days back sashayed into our bedroom and hopped light and quick the tub edge while I was in the bath and I saw that his sutures were clean gone and the wound was healed and he looked at me with his bright green eyes and lifted his chin as of to say Hey momma and I just started to smile and my smile got wider and wider and wider and wider as the day went on and we got all dressed and went to church and had a meal together and the sun shone down all day.
All week what a sad grumpy girl I was. The day I stopped in at the frame shop the nice man there told me "Happy Easter" when we got done with our business. Oh I’m not much on Easter I said back nobody seems to care about Easter anymore except to give their kids two-foot-tall Easter baskets filled with crap, and anyway it’s too early, the ground looks like a dry old scab..... Not that I have anything against Jesus, I’m actually I’m a fan of Jesus! “I’ll be sure to tell him that next time I see him,” came his mild retort.
What a burden I often am to myself. It’s like having this embarrassing relative around all the time only I’m him. Her. She. I’m the relative.
I cheered up by degrees as the week went on. Sitting in the cemetery in the rain Wednesday night helped some since I do love a cemetery. Then I went to the Holy Thursday Service that I hadn't been to in like million years and I’d forgotten how it moves me to see the way the church gets darker and darker the deeper into the readings we go with Judas nervously fingering his prayer beads and the fellas telling Jesus how they’re with him all the way Man only then they’re all passed out and it’s the big moment when the soldier gets his ear cut off and Jesus sticks it back on and then the scene with Peter saying he didn’t know him when somebody asked him after the arrest. I tried that once when my doctor told me I had to find out what my father died of. “Nah," I said. "I don't have to really. I mean I didn’t even know the guy!” Which I thought was pretty funny though the doctor didn't. he STILL made me go digging back 50 years through a world of painful old papers until I finally did find a copy of the death certificate which some saint sent to my mom when he died in ’73 not having laid eyed on her since the day I was born. I liked saying that I didn’t even know the guy. It felt good to deny him. “You did it to me,” I remember thinking at the time.
And then Good Friday and I went to my favorite little pond and looked out at the water and the wind was so strong it was refreezing the wave as they splashed against the overhanging twigs and breaches, making this kind of beaded fringe like you used to see on lampshades in the 1920s and 1930s and the fringe clicked as the wind blew and I kept falling sleep trying to read my book about the Civil War dead and how nobody thought to mark the poor soldier’s uniforms with their names and there were no ambulances or hearses, no system for carrying away the wounded or burying the dead. (Cheerful reading I know.)
And then yesterday we had the wind again but a crazy bright sun too and I bought enough flowers for a mobster’s funeral and brought then home and mad ea giant mess in the kitchen with the vases and the stems and the scissors and the greens . A mess! But I began to get really happy and then I made a salad with cumin and artichoke hearts and these really fat oranges, and then we went out and saw a production of The Tempest and I cried when the mean old bastard of a brother who years before snatched the Dukedom away from the rightful ruler Prospero and then washes up on Prospero’s island ha HA after the big storm that Prospero made using his magic…. When he sees his boy and realizes he hadn’t drowned but was actually just fine and more than fine because here he is sitting cozily with this lovely girl Prospero’s daughter and he weeps with joy and is a mean old bastard no longer……
And then it was today. Then it was Easter Sunday and our little boy cat who was hours from death just 20 days back sashayed into our bedroom and hopped light and quick the tub edge while I was in the bath and I saw that his sutures were clean gone and the wound was healed and he looked at me with his bright green eyes and lifted his chin as of to say Hey momma and I just started to smile and my smile got wider and wider and wider and wider as the day went on and we got all dressed and went to church and had a meal together and the sun shone down all day.
All week what a sad grumpy girl I was. The day I stopped in at the frame shop the nice man there told me "Happy Easter" when we got done with our business. Oh I’m not much on Easter I said back nobody seems to care about Easter anymore except to give their kids two-foot-tall Easter baskets filled with crap, and anyway it’s too early, the ground looks like a dry old scab..... Not that I have anything against Jesus, I’m actually I’m a fan of Jesus! “I’ll be sure to tell him that next time I see him,” came his mild retort.
