Come to realize I’ve been praying this whole time!
I did it on the bus home today, and last week when I thought about Spring, trying to bargain with the groundhog. That’s what’s so funny about myths – wives tales? – whatever they’re called.
For a moment we step into them, imagine there is power in something we know to be categorically false, but the misstep is still belief.
Anyways, it was prayer, even when I didn’t recognize it. I prayed last week when I helped mom get out of the car and saw a glimpse of her ankle under her beige dress pants. Vericose veins -- thick as udon noodles -- and angel-hair popped blood vessels. It made me queasy to think about aging like that, but she was doing it anyway, whether she liked it or not. And I would too. I don’t remember what I thought, but it was prayer.
I’d started going to church with her every now and then, which is perhaps why I was thinking about prayer at all, or how it might have started to disguise itself in my thoughts. There were things I liked about it: closing my eyes and feeling my other senses expand to fill the room. I didn’t really listen, it was more about following the shape of the sounds, beginning to understand why this was what we decided Holiness sounded like. Mom went to talk to people, to become absorbed in some way, but the only way I was able to make sense of it was by imagining I could be fully alone in the room.
Afterwards, I stood at the periphery of the church banquet hall drinking lukewarm coffee, smiling when needed, trying to look neither too present nor too distant, toeing the line of visibility. I trained my eyes on the weave of the carpet, thinking about the mechanism of it. The stitch becoming something else, taking shape as a whole thing, getting stapled to the church basement and trod over by clogs and orthopedic sneakers.
I wanted to ask mom if she’d thought about dying, since she’d never brought up her will. But it’s something I figure I should have the decency to let her bring up on her own. Not something I’d want her to feel rushed towards.
That afternoon I got home and found myself grateful for a dark apartment. It faced west, but all the windows were on the North side, so it never really got direct sunlight. Most of the time that made me depressed, that and the white tile and mildew smell. But those things could be charming if I was left alone in a room with them for long enough.
The dark was alright too, at least on Sundays.
I decided I would write a will. I began an inventory of my belongings. I realized there was very little in the room that meant enough to leave to anyone. The coffee cups – which were white with a green rim – had been in the apartment when I’d moved in. Most of the furniture was from Craigslist, so it was already tinged with something that made it impossible to value. Leaving it in a will would be like leaving someone an orange peel.
Something to be said for believing in God, I guess. Mom has a wall at the entrance to her place that is covered in crosses, she’s been amassing them for years from church markets and the like. Places she visits on vacation, shops selling hand-painted masses. I know at the very least that I will inherit a box full of them.