About My Little Girl, Catherine Marie

“So I’ve got a date for you – September 4.” That was the first thing the doctor’s assistant said when she saw me on August 28. My heart sank. I was hoping to have a natural childbirth, or at least give it a try. But I was now past my due date of August 25, and my doctor was going to induce labor in one week. I hadn’t progressed much in the last month – my little Catherine was refusing to “drop;” in other words, move further into my pelvis, as I had explained to family and friends, and my cervix hadn’t dilated beyond 1.5 cm in almost three weeks (and how odd to give people updates on your anatomy). After a smooth pregnancy, my body seemed hesitant to do the whole labor thing. My doctor told me, “well, if nothing happens in a week, be at the hospital at 5:30 am, and September 4th will be her birthday!” I told her that my original due date according to my cycle was August 31, so maybe my baby would decide to come then. My doctor jokingly said, “well, they do sometimes hear that first date and commit to that one.” I had my own romantic notions that my first child would be born two years to the date that her father and I became engaged – September 1st. But I was very disappointed to think that I might have to be induced, increasing the likelihood of having a caesarean section. I called and told A.V. the news, then my sister, then my mom. I started off with, “I have an induction date, but the baby and I are perfectly fine.” Indeed, Catherine had been kicking most of the morning, and had a strong heartbeat of 154 bpm. My weight and blood pressure were fine; again, I just wasn’t doing the whole labor thing. My mom said that she would pray that I’d go into labor over the weekend. I said thanks, but was starting to consider that unlikely.

The next day, Saturday August 29th, I woke up having a few mild contractions every 20 minutes. When they weren’t stopping after an hour or so, I suggested to A.V. that we go and walk around the mall, having read and heard over and over again that being active can determine whether you are in false labor, or help your labor progress. We went to Lakeside Mall, ate beignets, and visited every soap shop. I was looking for something primrose scented, which my doctor had heard stimulated labor. Of course, I couldn’t resist going into Pottery Barn Kids. I saw a wand I really wanted to get Catherine that I thought would be adorable with her Halloween outfit – I had decided months ago to dress her as a butterfly for her first Halloween. I decided to wait to purchase it, but looked at the dollhouses and thought about telling my parents to get my old dollhouse out of the attic for her to play with when she was older. I did buy some antibacterial lotion and lectured A.V. over and over again that he must use it, especially when coming home from the gym, because Catherine’s immune system wouldn’t be fully developed in her first few months, and there was swine flu going around….

The contractions didn’t get stronger, but they didn’t go away either. We went grocery shopping around 6 pm, had some leftover quiche, and then got ready for bed. Around 11 pm, I was so uncomfortable with contractions every 10 minutes that I decided to go lie down on the sofa and watch some t.v. Over the next several hours, I watched the clock on the t.v. and timed my contractions – every 10 minutes, now about every 7, now about every 6 minutes. I counted out to myself – lasts 45 seconds, peaks in intensity at 20 seconds. I squeezed the medal I had started wearing on her due date – St. Gerard Majella on one side, Our Lady of Perpetual Help on the other. I had prayed to St. Gerard every night since I was about 3 months along that I would have a healthy baby who would be baptized. A.V. had prayed to the Virgin everyday, and lit two candles for her every week at Mass, also that we would have a healthy baby to take home. I liked that the ribbon the medal was on was long enough that it hung right over my very pregnant belly. That made it all the more convenient to squeeze during my contractions. Around 3 am, I got a bit concerned that I hadn’t felt Catherine move in awhile (I knew all about kick counting and ways to get the baby to move). I got up – the contractions were far worse when I moved around – and drank some orange juice. About 5 minutes later, there was her familiar fist pummeling. I lay down again and tried to sleep in the 5 minutes between contractions.

At 6 am, when A.V. got up, I told him that I thought we should go to the hospital. I packed up the last of my toiletries, he threw some of his supplies in my hospital bag (which had been packed for 3 weeks), and I called my doctor to describe my symptoms and ask if she thought this was labor. She did, and told me to go ahead to the hospital. Honestly, I was in enough pain at that point that I would have gone to the hospital anyway. At 7 am, I remember walking down the steps of the house and looking back at the front door, thinking, the next time I’ll be here, Catherine will be coming home with us. OH MY GOD, this is really it! I had about three contractions on the way to the hospital, but didn’t feel incapacitated enough to go to the emergency room. A.V. parked the car, and we walked to the maternity ward, where I could only say, “I think I’m in labor?” to a large group of nurses sitting behind the desk. Someone said, “Okay, come this way, your doctor already called.” I walked into my labor and delivery room and was given a gown to change into. I went in the bathroom, and had a wickedly difficult time getting this gown on. I was (oddly) trying to be modest, and couldn’t figure out how to tie it without leaving my whole backside exposed. And I was having contractions the whole time.

Finally, I conquered the gown string thing, and took a seat on the bed. The nurse started asking me the usual questions – any problems with the pregnancy? Gestational diabetes, high blood pressure? Any tests come back unusual? No, no, and no. I had undergone genetic testing, glucose testing, and of course blood pressure monitoring, and everything had been completely normal. My ultrasounds at 13 and 26 weeks had indicated a perfectly healthy baby, with everything functioning just like it should. All my prenatal visits (once a week for the last six weeks) had gone smoothly – my little girl was a healthy, tough cookie. She then went to attach the fetal heartbeat monitor to me. Over one side of my belly, then the other. “When was the last time you felt the baby move?” “Around 2 am (I got the time wrong), but I just haven’t been able to tell since with the contractions.” I told her that there was usually a little bit of difficulty getting the baby’s heartbeat – she liked to be a bit difficult, and it was a little bit of a challenge for the doctor’s assistant every week too. But the nurse was distracted by also having to record all the information on me, so called in another nurse. The other nurse slid the monitor over my belly for over a minute while I answered even more questions. Yes, I wanted to try to breastfeed her. Yes, I had picked out a pediatrician, though I thought he might be out of town on vacation and one of his associates would examine her. The nurse working on my belly wasn’t having any more luck, so she got up to call in the ultrasound doctor. This doctor came in with the portable machine, and began scanning my belly. “Sorry, these things are pretty old,” she said. “When was the last time you felt the baby move?” “Um, 2 am.” She kept going, clicking the monitor here and there, then turned to the other nurse and asked, “have you called in Dr.?” I missed his name, but within two minutes, he was there too. I was getting a bit annoyed, thinking, gosh, their equipment is having trouble picking up a heartbeat. Maybe she really is positioned oddly. This new doctor scanned here and there, “When was the last time you felt the baby move?,” and I once again saw the outline of her cute little head. He moved further down, right where her heart should be, and clicked the button that had always let A.V. and me hear her heartbeat. Except this time there was no sound. No movement on the monitor. I had first seen her heart beating away on January 19, and then three more times when I’d had ultrasounds. It was always amazing – pounding away. Except this time I couldn’t see or hear anything. The doctor took a breath and turned to me and said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there’s no heartbeat. Sometimes the placenta stops providing enough nourishment.” I think he said something else, but I was zoning out at that point, Okay, they can’t find a heartbeat. So they’ll do an emergency c-section to try to save her and she’ll probably come out screaming like a normal baby. But where was their sense of urgency? I looked at the nurses, and they had started crying. Another doctor came up to me, tears in her eyes, rubbed my arm and said “I’m really sorry.” In this foggy haze, I gave her a big smile and said, “thank you.” “We’ve called your doctor; she’s on her way,” said my nurse, also crying. “I’m so so sorry.” This isn’t really happening. I need to call my family so they can pray and then Catherine will be fine. I know A.V. was hugging me and holding my hand, but I have no real memory of it. A.V. didn’t want me to talk to my family until after my doctor had arrived and examined me. She was crying too, “It’s not supposed to be this way, this is supposed to be joyous. I looked over all your charts again, your ultrasound, and everything was perfect.”

I called my parents. My father answered. “I went to the hospital because I’m in labor, but they couldn’t find a heartbeat.” “Huh? They couldn’t find a heartbeat?” “Yeah, I don’t know…” “Well, how couldn’t they find a heartbeat?” And then my cell phone lost its signal. I called my sister. “Are you in labor?” she asked. (For the past week and a half, every time we talked, she began the conversation with, “are you in labor?”) “I was in labor so I went to the hospital but they weren’t able to find a heartbeat.” “What?” “They said they couldn’t find a heartbeat, and that they were sorry….” “Okay, I’ll be over right away.” I may have said more, she may have said more, but I don’t remember that either. I remember everyone wanting to make me as comfortable as possible – I had an epidural; they were speeding up labor as much as they could. My sister fed me ice chips as if I were a baby bird. There was a “Golden Girls” marathon on t.v. A.V. ate dried cherries and cheddar and sour cream chips. I asked, “Once I’m well, can we have another baby?” “Okay,” he said. I fell asleep a couple of times. My nurse brought in a folder with some literature about stillbirths, grieving, and support groups. This isn’t really happening, so why is she bringing me this?

Finally, it was time for me to push and deliver her. I couldn’t move my legs, couldn’t feel my lower half at that point. “I think it’s going to be really hard for me to push – I don’t feel anything.” But I was still doing a “great job” according to my doctor and nurse. Delivery was easy – it lasted about 15 minutes. In the back of my mind, I still thought Maybe when she’s born she’ll be okay. Maybe there was some type of error. Maybe it’ll be like that little baby who they thought had died, but started crying in the morgue. But when she passed out of me, and I saw the nurse’s face, I knew that a miracle hadn’t happened. “I watched her come out of you – dead,” A.V, would tell me the next day, sitting in her nursery. I had told the doctor that no, I didn’t want her placed on my chest when she was born; no, I didn’t want to give her a bath (her first and last); yes, I would like to hold her for awhile once she was cleaned up. My doctor said the placenta was a little smaller than she expected for the size of the baby, and ordered cultures and more blood tests. (These didn’t provide any clues as to what had happened.) After delivery, I started shaking uncontrollably. A.V. asked me if I was okay, and I told him that I was just a little cold, but the truth is I was in such an extreme state of anxiety that my whole body was shaking. I knew the nurses were bathing her, dressing her up, taking pictures with her so that I would have keepsakes. It seemed like it was taking forever. At times I wanted to yell, “Just please, bring her here so I can at least see her.” Instead I waited 45 minutes before she was placed in my arms.

When I held her, I was surprised at how heavy she felt. A.V., the two nurses, and my doctor stood over me, watching these first few moments of me holding my daughter. My arm movement was limited by my i.v. and blood pressure cuff, and it was hard to hold her the way I wanted too. I really wanted to see her hands and feet, but couldn’t seem to unwrap the blanket. Six hands reached out to help me. I rubbed her little nose, tried to open her eyes, kissed her little head and hands. The blood had accumulated in her head and torso, making her face look strangely red with anger, while her hands and lower legs were very pale white. While in labor, I had had an awful thought. I love the name Catherine so much. Maybe I should name this baby something else so that I can name another daughter Catherine. But Catherine had always been Catherine, even before I knew I was having her, and she didn’t deserve to be robbed of her name.

A.V. held her. My parents and sister came in and held her. As macabre as it might have seemed, I asked my sister to take pictures of me and Catherine together. My sister had gotten us a digital camera, to make sure that we took lots of pictures. It had been one of the things I had placed in my hospital bag earlier that morning. (She’d later tell me that she had bought a camcorder, to record part of my labor and the whole lifetime of important moments with her first niece and goddaughter.) I said goodbye. My father placed her in her little basket. Someone asked if we wanted an autopsy done. While I wanted answers, I couldn’t imagine letting some stranger cut into that perfect little body. My body was all that she had known; I had protected her, kept her healthy. I loved that little body. I couldn’t let some stranger examine her that way, cut into her. I know she was healthy. Whatever went wrong may have happened in a matter of hours. A.V. and I agreed that we did not want an autopsy. My nurse brought me Catherine’s keepsake box – the dress they had put her in to take pictures, the teddy bear and blanket in the pictures, even the small bottles of shampoo and baby soap they used to wash her.

Eventually that night I was brought to another part of the maternity ward. They asked me if I wanted to go to another part of the hospital, but knowing hospitals, I was concerned that I would get less treatment there – I was starting to experience some pain – than in the maternity ward. I was rolled in a wheelchair to my new room, with a sign “Congratulations on your new baby” right next to the door. Congratulations on your new baby. I read that sign over and over again over the next 16 hours. I didn’t feel angry or bitter reading it. I felt fascination. Women come here, and they give birth to babies that they take home. How odd. For me, my experience had become normative; all the other healthy labors and deliveries were unusual. I listened to Brahms’ Lullaby, which the ward plays every time a baby is delivered – though not for Catherine – with the same fascination. Wow, there’s another woman having a healthy baby. That’s so strange. I heard that song four times during the 30 hours I spent at the hospital.

When my doctor came in the next morning, she said that I could leave the hospital around noon that day, if I wanted. “Yes.” She told me I had done a “superb job.” I’ll probably cling to those words for the rest of my life. My new nurse brought me more literature on grieving, along with Catherine’s footprints. Along with the literature were papers on organ donation. I looked on the last page: “Stillborn – unknown causes. Organs not suitable for donation.” I threw it in the wastebasket.

After what seemed like forever, I got my final instructions and prescriptions. My sister left to pick up my pain medications. A.V. helped me get dressed and packed up our stuff. My father said he was starting to look into making arrangements for a burial. I was wheeled back into the parking lot, and got into the car. I sobbed leaving the hospital – I was leaving without my baby.

Catherine’s car seat was still in the backseat, like I had attached it two weeks earlier. Her car seat was one of the first items we had gotten for her, after my friend sent a duck outfit for her. A.V.’s cousin had given it to us, and I’d gotten head supports and put those in along with a duck-shaped pull toy for her. I had bought and attached one of those safety mirrors so that I would be able to see her face when I was sitting up front. When we arrived back at the house, I opened the back door of the car and began taking it all out. “We can do it later,” A.V. said. “No, I don’t want it here!” For two weeks, I had seen that car seat every time I got into and out of the car, waiting for her. I’d told her that everything was ready for her, that we had set things up to be able to take her home from the hospital. Now she was never going to use it, and I didn’t want it there.

In fact, I didn’t want anything of hers out in the house. I walked into the house like a tornado, looking for anything and everything Catherine-related. Baptism documents (she was going to be baptized on September 20th)? In the trash. The schedule for sign-and-play classes (I was going to take classes with her so that we could learn basic sign language for babies and communicate that way before she could talk)? Also in the trash, along with the notes on pediatricians and the “Care for Your Newborn” pamphlet the pediatrician I had chosen had given me. What to Expect When You’re Expecting? Removed from my nightstand to the nursery. Ditto with What to Expect: the First Year that A.V. and I had been reading that week. Best Baby Gear, the book I had used when surfing the internet for exactly the right – and safe – crib and diapers and clothes and pacifiers and thermometers and bedding, also disappeared into a cabinet in the nursery. Even the laundry detergent and spray wash I had bought especially for her – pediatrician recommended – out of sight. I unpacked my hospital bag: the nightgowns I had bought just a couple of weeks earlier for my hospital stay, the nursing bras, the nursing pads. I unpacked her diaper bag, the two outfits I had packed for her: one pink onesie covered with strawberries, the other a purple polka-doted nightgown. Her little socks. Her newborn disposable diapers with Sesame Street characters on them. Her baby Tylenol drops, the diaper wipes. My mom and sister hovered. “She’ll never use any of this stuff, so I just want to put it away!” Her baby book. I had brought it to the hospital, wanting to make sure that I got her footprints inked into it at the same time that they took them for records. Now the “Welcome Home!” section would be filled in with memories of her burial, pictures of her gravesite at a cemetery. A.V. and I sat on the floor of her nursery and cried.

Two days later, I woke up and began putting stuff in her nursery away. I took her crib bedding apart. I had spent a week and a half picking out that bedding, wanting to make sure it had lots of colors and textures for her. I took her mobile apart – the one with leaves and tropical birds that moved. It played songs and had lights. I took the batteries out of all her toys – the bear she’d gotten at her baby shower, the pink seahorse with a glowing belly that I had seen online and knew I had to get for her. Her changing table, the one I had carefully selected and then made sure I had all the recommended supplies for. I thought about taking down the Winnie the Pooh curtains my parents had bought and hung up for her, but decided not to. Back into the box went her AngelCare Monitor, which would alert me, with some irony considering her death, if she stopped moving for longer than 20 seconds. I put away all the larger toys that my parents’ neighbors had given us, even her stroller. But I couldn’t stop thinking – was any of this ever really hers? It had been bought for her, but she would never use it. Was she never meant to use it?

The next day, September 3rd, was her funeral and burial. A.V. was the last person to see her. He placed a stuffed animal, a rosary, the medal I had worn, and some prayer cards to St. Gerard Majella in her pretty pink coffin, and then closed it forever. “When we have another baby, we need new saints to pray to. The saints we prayed to do some jacked-up s---,” A.V. had said. Through the generosity of the abbot, Catherine was buried in the same plot that my parents will one day be buried in at St. Joseph’s Abbey, so they’ll be able to take care of her at the Resurrection. A statue of St. Joseph is only a few paces away from her, and the next section of the cemetery is where the priests and monks are buried. I noticed when we visited there recently that there’s a park bench underneath the trees nearby. “Look Catherine, you can play and have picnics underneath the tree, and all the priests nearby will say what a lovely and adorable little girl you are!” I like to believe that the rainbows we have been seeing recently, the lovebugs that surrounded our car, are her gifts to us from a much happier place. So many people were excited about her, couldn’t wait to meet her – they were so many people, and so much love at her baby shower - , and prayed for her, that I like to think that the Virgin and saints just wanted her even more than all of us did, so they decided to keep her for themselves.

So that’s what happened. When you tell someone that you had a stillborn baby, they think that there were all sorts of things wrong, with the pregnancy or with your health (you try to avoid the people who are so callous as to actually ask you to your face). Nope. I was perfectly healthy; she was by every measure she had perfectly healthy also. I gained the exact amount of recommended weight, I ate fish once (and only once) a week, I ate small meals with lots of fruits and vegetables, I had fast food no more than once a month, I started drinking lots of water a day (and I hate drinking water) and didn’t touch diet drinks or anything with caffeine, I didn’t even eat lunch meat because of the risk of bacteria. I have my suspicions about problems with my placenta once labor began, but with no autopsy these will most likely never be confirmed, and that doesn’t bother me. In 50% of cases, the cause of a stillborn birth cannot be determined. And it occurs once in every two hundred births.

Now I have a desire to tell every woman who tells me she is pregnant, “Oh, I had a great, healthy pregnancy. And I gave birth to a dead baby. Just something to consider.” I’m not trying to be mean, or add to their anxiety. It’s more like managing expectations. Because honestly, once I hit 37 weeks, I thought the worst that could happen is that I would need an emergency c-section but still have a healthy baby. I knew all the things to watch out for – lack of movement, bright red bleeding. I read books and internet sites; I went to my childbirth classes. Catherine’s lack of discernible movement while I was in labor was no different than in other moments of my pregnancy when I was active and couldn’t feel her as much. Not that there is ever a way to prepare oneself for this sort of tragedy, but a stillbirth had never even entered my mind. That’s something that happened to women 50 years ago without modern medical care, I thought. I had no idea.

Along with my desire to warn every pregnant woman I come across, there’s the discomfort of certain questions and moments. “Do you have children?” I was asked recently. I don’t want to say no – I was and always will be a Mommy to Catherine. But I’m guessing that most people mean currently living children, and I’ve decided that it’s extremely insensitive to assume that all children must be living. I have similar feelings about Mother’s Day now. Do I get to celebrate Mother’s Day, or am I bumped back into childlessness because I had a dead baby? (By the way, the Mother’s Day card my own mom gave me this past year, from Catherine, that read how she couldn’t wait to meet me and play with me, is the only thing that still gets me choked up at this point.)

So now I’ve talked all about my dead baby. But I don’t think of Catherine as dead – the vast majority of the memories I have of her are of her alive. And so even though I know people are more interested in her death, I’d prefer they remember her alive. And since I knew her better than anyone, here’s what my Catherine was like.

Catherine Marie was born at 5:26 pm on August 30th, 2009. She was 19 inches long and weighed 7 lbs, 5 oz. She had dark, fine hair like A.V., with slight curls like mine. She had dark eyes. She had pouty lips, like me. She had baby jowls, like A.V. did as a baby. Her fingers were ridiculously long – way longer than anyone in our immediate families’. Great for the piano, but as my sister pointed out, those big, short legs may not have been long enough to reach the pedals! She had sturdy Mexican peasant legs, and rather large feet.

I remember the first time I saw her on an ultrasound. I had gone to the doctor to confirm that I was pregnant, and she looked like a little tadpole then, with her heart beating away. She was a little miracle. In her next three ultrasounds, as she grew bigger and bigger – and looked more obviously like a baby – I noticed that she loved to hold her right hand above her head. Both A.V. and I do this when we are sleeping, and it was amazing to realize we’d somehow passed this down to our child!

When picking up A.V. from work, she would always get really active, and I’d tell her, “vroom vroom,” (because I’m a notorious speeder who wants other cars to get out of the way) and she’d kick her little legs like crazy. At her burial, the hearse she was placed in – with 3 motorcycle police escorts no less – was going ridiculously slowly at 25 mph. I know she was yelling and kicking, “vroom vroom, Mommy, vroom vroom!”

I also always listen to music in the car – A.V. got a kick out of the fact that I invoked St. John Vianney to fix my car’s cd player – and she loved…Aerosmith. Completely loved them. Whenever Aerosmith would come on, she would practically start somersaulting. OMG, she wants to be a stripper. I might have been the first Mommy to have to go into a toy store and ask, “Um, do you sell stripper poles for toddlers?”

She was also stubborn! She and I had a deal: if I’d drink some orange or pomegranate juice, then rub my tummy, she’d do a flurry of kicks for me. But she could be moving like crazy, and when her dad put his hands on my tummy, she’d completely stop. Two seconds after he’d move his hand away, she’d start up again. Even though A.V. called her “little sweetie,” I think she was planning on being quite the handful for him!

She had quite the relationship with our cat, Sadie, too. Sadie likes to sit on me, and loved to put her paws on my big belly. Catherine hated this. She’d hit back. I think, “Get off, Sadie!” would have been her first phrase, especially since Sadie would have loved nothing more than to cuddle up with her little warm body.

She had really strong hiccups. I first felt her hiccuping in my sixth month, and in that last month, her hiccups were so strong that you could see my whole belly pulsing! I like to think that she was practicing her breathing for her big arrival in the world, though I was a little nervous about what type of screamer she would have turned out to be.

Catherine was such a tenacious little girl. In the middle of my pregnancy, A.V. and I moved halfway across the country. In preparing to leave our old apartment, I spent an afternoon crawling around on the floor, crouching behind an oven, and using strong cleaning supplies. I was so worried that I’d go to the doctor the next day and find out that something was wrong. But no, her heartbeat was as strong as ever.

I also got nervous during those few days that we were driving from California to Louisiana, especially since my visit with my new doctor was a few weeks away. I had had to sit in a car for many hours and hadn’t been drinking as much water as I would have liked. I was so scared that there would be problems. But no, in her ultrasound everything was functioning perfectly. That’s when we also found out for sure that she was a girl, and I couldn’t help telling her, “You’re one tough cookie, Catherine!” Considering my mental state at times, she overcame some real obstacles because I know that as much as so many people were excited about meeting her, she really wanted to be here too. I like to think that it’s that fighting spirit that made Someone want her even more, where she could be a part of even bigger and better things.

And then there are the moments I will never get with her, the dreams that I had for her. Of dressing her as a butterfly this Halloween, of taking care of her at the dinner table for Thanksgiving this year, of putting up the Christmas tree, buying “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments for her and even making a few. Of getting her a Christmas dress and an Easter outfit. Bringing her to the park this coming spring, right when she would have been old enough to be interested in the outdoor world and excited about all the new life that appears.

I know that for those who didn’t know Catherine as well as I did, the dreams they had of her and for her are even more vivid, and probably feel like all they will ever have of her. I don’t really have any words to say that would comfort them, other than to have written this to let them know, “This is what Catherine was like, and is like. She died unexpectedly for reasons that none of us will ever know in this lifetime, but in her own way, she led a very full life while here on earth. And she knew how many people loved her, and she wanted to be with you, too. God just wanted her even more.”

Family Music

When I was a child, I told my family I was going to marry Smokey Robinson one day. I could recognize Smokey's beautiful tenor, the child-like innocence and sadness in his lyrical phrasing, the second I heard it. Hearing Smokey sing, “One day, I’ll hold you near, whisper I still love you, but ‘til that day is here, oh, I’m crying…” sent me into girlish ecstasy. And he was so darn cute. I could do a wonderful Diana Ross impression, tilting my head, brushing my hair away from my face, and lifting up my hands to sing "Ain't no Mountain High Enough," but only if it would have seduced Smokey. The first cds I ever owned (given to me by my parents) were Smokey Robinson cds. I'm fairly confident they weren't really trying to make me so obsessed with Smokey that I WOULD pursue nothing in life other than being Mrs. Robinson, but I do think they took joy in the fact that I was so seduced by that music, that voice.

I've written previously that my father grew up as a sharecropper, from a paternal line of sharecroppers. He graduated from high school (neither of his parents had), went to college, majored in physics, and got a job working as an engineer with an oil company. He worked there for nearly 30 years, retired, and now works there as a consultant. Upward mobility.

But other than neighborhoods, houses, and cars, my father has never embraced any of the other aspects of upper middle class American society, or what it means in such society to be "cultured." He doesn't care about plastic art or opera, Mozart or Magritte. He has no idea why I own so many books about ballet or history. The first time classical music crossed the threshold in our home was when my sister and I became fanatical about it, exposed to it through piano lessons.

But my father does love music. And how he loves it - with a stereo system that certainly rattles the windows of the house next door, blasting Ray Charles, offering up a, "Sing it, boy!" to an impassioned plea of a male soul singer to his lost lover. I could probably label each year of my childhood by the songs that my father was playing over and over again.

When I was very young, I particularly remember B.B. King and Bobby "Blue" Bland. My father would be driving the car on the way to Opelousas, eyes on the road, but tilting his head back and forth and slapping his knee, singing a half step behind B.B. King to "The Thrill is Gone." When "Caledonia" came on, he'd look at my mom, and sing,"what makes your big head so hard?!" I also knew, even then, that this music meant something special to him. As a kid, his family hadn't owned a record player, except for the brief time his family had one on "loan," lent to them by his older sister's suitor. When the romantic relationship ended, the young man took his record player with him, and my father and his siblings were once again left in musical silence. I think my father's been making up for the lack ever since he could afford to.

Once we arrived in Opelousas, what can only be described as the great zydeco tape exchange would occur. My paternal grandmother (MaMa) would usually have the radio on and tuned to a Saturday morning zydeco program, on a radio station that probably played other types of music during the rest of the week. MaMa or my father's brother would start the exchange: "This is a really good tape..." and so it would go - making copies of tapes, putting them on to listen to a particular song and laugh out loud, my father occasionally looking at me and repeating what had just been said in French by Clifton Chenier (pictured above) or Queen Ida or Buckwheat Zydeco to me. I don't understand Cajun or Creole French, or even formal French, but this didn't stop my father's delight in repeating the French lyrics of zydeco songs to us. It also made him reflective, and he'd tell us about his pig named Susie, who'd given birth to six pigs on his sixth birthday, or how picking okra was so much worse than picking up cotton (okra cuts open your hands, neck, and back), or give us instruction in how to make a stubborn mule move.

There are songs I remember from my first five years of life, songs that I sang and danced to, that have no place in a particular memory: James Brown's "Night Train," and "I Got the Feelin,'" Rufus and Chaka Khan in "Tell Me Somethin' Good." And later, when I was about 11 and my father got a brand new stereo system with speakers that could rattle the glasses in the kitchen cabinet: Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long," Wilson Pickett, Marvin Gaye, and Sam Cooke. I don't think my father has ever bought music by a white artist for his own consumption. Whether it's because he doesn't like it or doesn't relate to it, I'm not sure. But there is something about that zydeco, the blues, the R&B and soul singers, that he does relate to. And as even I can recognize, there's something about the music of black artists that's utterly absent in the music of white artists, and if you've grown up with the former, you long for that special something.

I referenced bell hooks' essay on Madonna in a comment, and this valuable quote: "White folks who do not see black pain never really understand the complexity of black pleasure." I include that here, because listening to these songs often put my father in a reflective mood, not only about the poverty of his childhood, but about being black in south Louisiana. He'd recall, sadly, being in (segregated) schools and getting 'new' textbooks, only to look inside the cover and see that they'd already been used, with the names of the white kids who had used the books in the years before written there, just as an extra reminder (as if it were needed) of black inferiority, since one had to sit out on the curb to eat, not being allowed to sit in most restaurants, and using the back door. Or of having no place to stay in New Orleans in the late 60s, being refused to have a car sold to him in the late 70s, or of being told in the late 80s that black people weren't allowed to live in certain neighborhoods of the community where we moved.

The pain in his voice, the resignation, was so similar to that of a former roommate. She was from Zimbabwe; her parents came to America because, in her father's words, "It's better to be treated like a dog in someone else's back yard than in your own." Elegant would be the one word I would use to describe her, and she had been a molecular biology graduate student, looking for a place to live in College Station, TX in 1999. Over the phone, she'd talk to potential roommates and landlords and they would be enthusiastic about meeting her. But when they'd see her, the expression would change, the voice would become curt, and they'd say, "sorry, someone else wants the room/apartment." This happened six times, until she learned to say, "Hi, my name is Sharon, and I am African-American..." in her phone introductions, which at least reduced her travel time to visit places to live.

In our own home, my father would sometimes get down on his knees, to show us the way James Brown performed his song "Please, Please, Please" -“Please, please, please, please…please, please…Baby, take my hand. I wanna be your lover man. Oh yeah, good God Almighty, honey please…” I learned what it meant for a man to love a woman from those soul songs. In the vocal range of male R&B singers there has to be the falsetto, the duplication of female vulnerability, the adoration of the beloved. In some fundamental way, in the stylings of black vocalists and the simple lyrics of their songs, all that mattered was having a woman - she could mitigate the rest of the pain caused by the reality of life for a black man. Maybe that's why the pleas of Redding, Brown, Cooke, Charles, and other R&B and soul singers are so much more moving than in any other style of music I've heard. They're back down to basics - nothing in life to look forward to or hold on to but love. The most simple joys of life are all you've got.

My mother's musical interests centered around easy listening, like Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole, and Julio Iglesias. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “99 Miles from L.A.” in my life, or how many alternate lyrics my sister and I came up with for Dionne Warwick's "Do You Know the Way to San Jose." My mother got excited over receiving an Anne Murray album. I thought these were appropriate musical selections for a woman who had nearly been a nun, who attends daily Mass, who spends several hours using the Montessori method to teach underprivileged 3 and 4 year olds their letters, numbers, shapes, and colors, and who would then prepare meals or pick up dinner for the homebound, spending extra time at their homes to talk to them, wash their dishes and clothes, and clean their house if necessary.

But these musical preferences weren’t always the case with my mother: get her to talk about herself (a nearly impossible task), and she’ll admit to loving the Commodores, the Beatles - the Temptations’ “Just My Imagination” is her favorite song. So every now and then, when my mother wasn't cleaning up, cooking, or sitting at the kitchen table learning the names that went along with the faces of the kids she taught (and oh, what names), my father could induce her to dance with him for part of a song. He'd call her name, ask her to dance, she'd say she was too busy, but okay, and they'd dance to a song like Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "Your Precious Love." My mother would giggle, my father would tease my sister and me with a "don't look!" and we'd listen: "heaven must have sent you from above/oh, heaven must have sent your precious love." (And my parents have been married for nearly 34 years now, so it must work.)

But for female ecstasy when listening to soul singing, oh, that came from my cousin and her devout love/lust for Al Green. My cousin would occasionally babysit us, and she'd put my parents' copy of Al Green's "I'm Still in Love with You" LP on the record player, and moan and sing. She'd fling her head back and sing, "Lay your head...on my pillow...make believe you looove me...one last tiiiime...for the good times." And then salivate over the pictures of Al Green on the album cover. I learned from her that the mere sound of a man's lyrical voice could make a woman leave reason behind.

As I wrote at the beginning of this way too long trip down memory lane, my own favorite was Smokey Robinson. However, my favorite song came from another soul great, the one who objectively, I have to say had the most beautiful, lyrical voice. There's no one like Sam Cooke ("A Change is Gonna Come" has probably sent chills down the spine of anyone who's ever heard it), and no song I love more than "Bring it on Home to Me." With Lou Rawls singing backup vocals, this song is as perfect as can be in conveying the desire for a lost lover, the desire to be the steady force in her life, and her haven. And it's so utterly, heartbreakingly simple, starting off with just a piano and bass.

If you ever change your mind
About leavin', leavin' me behind,
Oh, bring it to me, bring your sweet lovin'
Bring it on home to me.

I know I laughed when you left
But now I know, I only hurt myself
Bring it to me, bring your sweet lovin'
Bring it on home to me.

I'll give you jewelry and money too
That ain't all, that ain't all I'd do for you, (Oh, I'm gonna give you)
Bring it to me, bring your sweet lovin',
Bring it on home to me, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know I'll always, be your slave
Til I'm buried, buried in my grave,
Oh honey, bring it to me, bring your sweet lovin'
Bring it on home to me, yeah.

Of course, alot of the great R&B and soul singers of days past started off singing in gospel choirs, several were sons/daughters of pastors, and at least two notable ones, Little Richard and Al Green, actually became pastors after huge secular success. And in their music, I think, you can hear the lack of difference between loving in this life and worshipping the Lord. When it works, this is music that demands that every fiber of your being be turned over to love, to the moment, to the music, to the Almighty. It testifies, it praises, it pleads. And I'm thankful for every moment my father unintentionally blasted it in my eardrums, and for seeing him with his eyes closed, sway back and forth to it, with the most peaceful of smiles on his face feeling that music and the joy.

P.S. Here is a review of Al Green's album mentioned above, from 1972:

This is what they are: "I'm Still in Love with You" opens the album with one of Green's more extraordinary vocals. The line, "I'm ... wrapped up in your love," delivered twice, is sung high, almost disappearing at the end of his range, and yet enveloping—the perfect vocal equivalent of being hugged tightly in someone's arms. He stretches the word "heaven" and it shimmers or he dips his voice down low at the end of a line as if to insinuate it into every possible corner of the song. As with most Al Green songs (this one written in collaboration with drummer Al Jackson and producer Willie Mitchell), the lyrics are simple, almost unremarkable and in this case touchingly inarticulate: "Spending my days/thinkin' 'bout you girl./Being here with you/being near with you/Can't explain myself." Throughout, Willie Mitchell's production work is as consistently strong as Green's vocals. It's never trite, never obtrusive—none of those wedges of unrelieved production (something quite different from music) you find driven into so many other albums—and always several steps ahead of being just right. Mitchell provides a texture in his production that is the perfect complement to Green's singing while establishing its own richness but avoids calling attention to itself with those hey-hey-aren't-I-hot touches so many big-time producers love to indulge themselves with.

"Love and Happiness" is about my favorite new cut here (the other previously released cut, aside from the title song, is "Look What You Done for Me," released early last spring)—after a powerful, take-your-time introduction, a very upbeat, horn-punctuated five minutes. The lyrics aren't much, but they have a loose, elliptic quality that allows the song to drift off into all kinds of improvisatory-style things at the end. The following two cuts are lovely, almost too pretty but with a saving edge of emotion. Again, the lyrics are not exceptional but, oh god, who cares with these glowing arrangements and Al Green caressing, stroking, loving the words until they're about to burst. On "What a Wonderful Thing Love Is," he says "I been cryin'" with a feeling that equals Smokey Robinson's "I'm cryin'" in "Ooo Baby Baby." Is there anything finer? "Simply Beautiful" is more vocal exposition, very loose, slightly indulgent but so tenderly sexy it gives you shivers.

Rolling Stone review, Vince Aletti, 1972.

Happy Birthday Sadie!

For my spoiled feline companion, who turns 4 today! How they grow up!

And I could never forget my big boy, who turned 8 in February!

When the Saints Come Marching in...

An appreciation to all my Brothers and Sisters who, through Christ, spoil me so!

Every morning around the same time as the sun is rising, my father comes into my room and kisses me on the cheek, though I'm still sleeping.

Every night, my mom comes and kneels next to my bed, and we say our bedtime prayers…Our Father Who art in Heaven…, Hail Mary, full of grace… (three times), Glory be to the Father, the Son…, O My God I’m heartily sorry for having offended You…, Angel of God my guardian dear…, St Michael the Archangel defend us in battle…, Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord…, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, we love you, save souls. She then sprinkles me with Holy Water (she keeps the bottle in the pocket of her robe), says I love you, kisses me on the cheek, and says Bon soir, bug as she walks out.

I became acquainted with the saints very early on. They were on their pedestals in church, on the windows, on prayer cards, around the house, in my coloring book. (I’m grievously sorry, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, that I colored your veil green and your face a motley range of reds and purples. I'm also sorry that this picture of you is of such questionable artistic merit.) I would get my mom to read me the Bible and the stories of the saints until I had them memorized and could correct her when she was reading to me and mis-spoke.

I was only partially joking when I said here that we bargain with the saints. I said the Prayer to St Joseph every single morning for years, lured by the promise of Christ visiting me on my death bed. I said any number of other prayers, and still do in a jiffy to get certain favors (my favorite is the Prayer to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, that is accompanied by the wonderful line “it has never been known to fail.”) My eyes light up like a kid's at Christmas when I see the words "Promises to those who say this prayer" next to the text itself. I think we Catholics salivate over those “say this prayer (this way) and (such-and-such) will happen” the way others must pick out their lottery numbers for the jackpot. But it's not really that it's works-based - it's how we know that they are holding our hands. In the same way someone is just an acquaintance until they give you a true gift, a sincere gift from their heart. It's how God and the saints become our intimates. Besides, I'm sure God knows we're human.

I loved reading of the martyrs like St. Cecilia, who had held her hands in a certain position and prayed for three days with her head only barely clinging to her trunk, I loved seeing bad pictures of St. Francis Xavier with a ball of fire above his head and having the facial expression of a man who is about to burst an aneurysm. I loved reading about all those young saints, so consumed with God’s love that it was literally consuming their bodies, and they were happily suffering and living on nothing but the Eucharist alone. St. Aloysius Gonzaga as a rosy-cheeked boy cherub. St. Rose of Lima undergoing all sorts of self-deprivations. St. Anthony of Padua being offered the Child Jesus by the Blessed Virgin. St. Rita of Cascia taking solace from the pain of a bad marriage in the pain of the suffering Christ.

We have saints that always knew they were going to be saints (St. Maria Goretti) and saints who got there initially kicking and screaming (St. Francis of Assisi). Saints who refused to fight (St. Martin of Tours) and ones who led armies (St. Joan of Arc). Saints that levitated during Mass (St. Joseph of Cupertino), and saints that fell asleep (St. Therese of Lisieux). Ones who were kings (St. Louis) and ones who did without great possessions (St. Anthony the Great). Ones who founded religious orders (St. Madeleine-Sophie Barat) and ones who did great things in existing ones (St. Bernard of Clairvaux). Ones whose lives are concealed behind myth and legend (St. Dymphna) and ones who kept diaries (St. Maria Faustina Kowalska). And on it goes. I risk irreverence here, but I always felt we Catholics could do a commercial: "We've got thin ones, tall ones, short ones, fat ones. Smart ones, silent ones, old ones, young ones. Mystics, peasants, nobles, confessors...."

I started reading the actual writings of the saints at a fairly young age. I read the writings of the Carmelites, Spiritual Exercises, St. Augustine’s Confessions and City of God, I read a book of Patristic writings while deliberately skipping everyone who wasn’t a saint - I checked my saint book first (so long, Origen and Tertullian), I even read chunks of Summa Theologica without knowing one single thing about scholasticism. (What I did know was that St. Thomas Aquinas had the sweetest, most quizzical expression on his face in my saints book for children). All I knew was that a saint had written it, so it must be good, and he wrote some cool things about God and human nature.

Around adolescence, I started to get into Catholic apologetics. I have an analytical mind, so it was fun to learn about all the disputes on soteriology, ecclesiology, sacramentology, and all the other -ologies. Previously, I had never read a Council document. In the next ten years "for fun," I would read Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Melanchthon; I would memorize canons and wordings from Councils; I'd read Patristic writings with an entirely different eye. I'd read modern Catholic theologians with an ear for edification, not illumination. I'd debate Protestants and correct my fellow Catholics, I'd chastize the poorly catechized and tell them to read, read, read. (Although those who honestly believe that Constantine founded the Roman Catholic Church and made Christianity a state religion DO need to read, read, read.) And then I got completely bored with it. Tired of it. It was an intellectual obsession that ultimately dead-ended for me. (Note: I am not criticizing Catholic apologists. Some great saints, like St. Francis de Sales, were apologists.) And it dead-ended because it was not where my heart was, it had no relation to the simply piety of my childhood. I took a two-year whirl through apologetics again, as someone close to me was considering Orthodoxy.

About six months ago, when the brouhaha over Benedict XVI’s Regensberg address was on-going, a friend sent me an article from the London Times that sought to address papal infallibility. I wrote what must have been a four page response, outlining every single way the article had gotten papal infallibility wrong, providing Scriptural passages, points of debate in Orthodox and Catholic circles, and so on. It felt so good to do and I was so sad that I hadn't saved it to admire my own brain's output. But after that triumphalist rush, I thought, "wow, that was a waste of time."

[Note: I hate when Catholics label themselves as traditionalist or neo or liberal or rad or whatever else, as if the Church is a political party and there are certain planks that define your position. For Heaven’s sake, if you are Catholic and feel you MUST label yourself, at least choose something that makes spiritual sense - something resonates with the rhythm of your heart and the melody of your soul. Say, “I’m in the beat of the Carmelites, to the melody of St. Teresa of Avila” or "I move to the rhythm of the Redemptorists, to St Gerard Majella's resounding baritone." Otherwise, you’re just talking about the ideas that bind your mind. (And the debate between Thomists and Molinists cannot slide in this way).]

I wonder, if I ever have children, what it is I will teach them. Maybe I'll read ecumenical council documents to them when they're still in utero. Will I whisper in their ears details of the Hesychast controversy while pushing them on the swing? Will I greet them every morning with a fact about humanism and sola scriptura? Will I demand discussions about the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity over the dinner table? Maybe I will tape pictures of Popes Hormisdas and Honorius I in their rooms, so Catholic-Orthodox debate will be natural to them. And I will put notes about free will and nature in their lunch boxes, to discuss with their friends at school. Maybe my children (by the age of 10!! God, I pray that in your infinite mercy and wisdom, you will give me genius children. Amen.) will finally figure out how Calvinists can believe in unconditional election and irresistible grace and yet care so much about what others do.

And yet this is outside the rhythm of my life. I like to pray the prayers I've known since childhood. I like the silly artwork and the medals. I like the variety. It has flavor, and I come from a family heritage that is a motley mix.

I began with the two images from my childhood for a reason. They are the images of St. Joseph:

O St. Joseph, I never weary contemplating you and Jesus asleep in your arms. Press His fine head and kiss Him for me, and ask Him to return the kiss when I draw my dying breath. St. Joseph, patron of departing souls, pray for us.

And St. Anne teaching the Blessed Virgin:

Good St. Anne, mother of her Who is our Life, our Sweetness and our Hope, pray to her for us, and obtain our request.

The saints are everyday life. They are the rhythm, the ebb and flow. In the darkness, they are the medium through which God's light shines. They are family, and they have cool names and led awesome lives. Read about them, talk to them, get to know them. Find out what they have to say about Christ. They'll talk your head off, if you let them.

Beloved - Part II

Continued from this previous post

When I tell people I'm black - the fact that I sometimes have to tell them indicates something about both how I look and how many whites don't realize that "black" was legally enforced at the state level as the racial classification for anyone with a known drop of Negro blood - they sometimes look at me quizzically and ask, "so, you really consider yourself black?" Nah, because I go to the opera and ballet I no longer consider myself black. Nah, because my hair is straight and I'm so fair my skin burns within 30 minutes of sun exposure, I don't consider myself black. The funniest remark was from a friend whom I told I was filling out a questionnaire about 'passing,' "What, are you answering questions about how you try to pass for black?" ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND???? Why would I, or anyone, choose to be black?

[Note: the subject of white fascination with blackness is, well, another subject that I will cover at some point. Then, I will discuss black popular entertainment and how it's often a version of minstrelsy - for instance, over 70% of hip-hop records are sold to young white males. Let this statement of bell hooks' suffice for now: "It is a sign of white privilege to be able to 'see' blackness and black culture from a standpoint where only the rich culture of opposition black people have created in resistance marks and defines us."]

Anyone on the other side of the color line knows that they'd have a better life as a white person in this country. I doubt my family would have ever chosen to be black, but through pre-Civil War white man + black woman, that's how it ended up. MaMa's materal grandmother was brought over as a slave from Africa, and ended up having a child by a white man. On both sides of my family, when we reach back into the past, that's the story we find again and again: our named white male ancestor, owning x number of acres and y number of slaves, had a child with a slave woman known only as slave. (Except for a somewhat famous case in history that one can read about here. Joseph Gregorie Guillory is my great-times-six grandfather; his slave mistress Marguerite is my great-times-six grandmother.)

[Note: The slave trade was not only an exchange for manual labor but also for sexual goods. In fact, in places it was de rigueur for a young white man to have a black woman as mistress (consensual or not) before marriage to a white woman. An attractive, lighter-skinned, young female slave could auction off for as much if not more money than a young male laborer. There are even records of plantation owners selling their own daughters, conceived with a female slave, to other plantation owners as sex slaves. But that’s another post.

Pictures of mixed race children were spread by abolitionists in the North, especially in the late 1850s, to alarm the largely white supremacist population: ‘Soon, the n-----s will look like us! We won't be able to tell them and us apart!’ Abolitionists also published pamphlets arguing that the good Christian white men of the South needed to be ‘saved’ from the witchery that these soul-less black women must be using to seduce them. The extent to which abolitionism was motivated by white supremacy and segregationist goals is also a topic for another discussion.]

It did not matter how white the progeny of these unions (consensual or not) looked. As in the picture above, all of black slaves, Negro blood made you a Negro. And it made you inferior. It meant that you had to be segregated, had to get the hand-me-downs of whites in schools, weren't allowed to go certain places. When my father went to college when he was 18, he interacted with whites for the first time. He went there sure of his own inferiority, expecting to not perform as well as they did. To his surprise, as he will modestly admit, he was better than 90% of white people. What he had been taught his whole life, what had been encoded into the American black experience by whites, was wrong.

[Note: Only get me started on the Civil War if you want to be made to go sit in the corner. It was fought over slavery. Stop. The rest is historical revisionism. Stop. Anyone who doesn't think it was fought over slavery is either misinformed or deluding themselves for psychological reasons. Full stop. Now if you want to see me debunk the states' rights argument, just ask.]

I've written all this as an introduction to my experience of reading Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987). In that book, it's all there - the passing down by oral tradition, houses that move, spirits that come back to walk the earth, and most terribly, the personal cost of slavery: its loss of freedom and dignity.

Beloved, in a basic way, is about a slave woman named Sethe, sexually assaulted and beaten by her owners, who escapes her plantation in Kentucky and crosses over the Ohio River to Ohio where she is reunited with her three oldest children ( who had already escaped with others). When her master comes to retrieve her (thanks to those Fugitive Slave Laws), she kills one of her children and is on her way to killing the rest before she is stopped. Convinced that she is out of her mind, her master leaves her there. Eighteen years pass, and the house she and her surviving daughter live in communicates with them, haunted by the spirit of the murdered child. When Paul D, another slave on the old plantation called (ironically) Sweet Home, enters into her life again and demands the spirit leave the house, the spirit that has been haunting it takes on corporeal form; they call this 18-year-old girl Beloved.

To be continued.

Beloved - Part I

Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people’,
and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’
Romans 9:25

I mentioned previously that although I was born and reared in and around New Orleans, my parents were from southern Louisiana. As a child, I'd get in the car and my father would drive west on I-10, over the Bonnet Carre Spillway (pronounced "Bonnie Carrie," for those readers NOT from southern LA), over the Mississippi River Bridge in Baton Rouge. We'd then either continue on 1-10, dipping southwest over the Atchafalaya Basin towards Lafayette, or we'd take a more direct route on HWY 190. We always knew we were getting closer to what my parents call "home" once signs for hot boudin, cracklin', and boiled shrimp and crawfish appeared alongside the road. We were going there to visit my paternal grandmother, out "in the country" near Lawtell. My father would comment on how recently gravel had been put down on the dirt roads we were on, and then we'd be there, out in the middle of nowhere, in farm country, with MaMa on the porch - it's not like you couldn't hear someone coming with all that gravel. MaMa, who grew the most beautiful red, pink, yellow, and white roses outside her house, would greet us and invite us to go straight to the kitchen, where the fried chicken, potato salad, Coke, and homemade chocolate cake and fig pies were. After MaMa's greetings to us, she'd start talking a mile a minute in French to my dad (now whether this is Creole French or Cajun French, I have no idea).

Then, my sister and I (and any cousins who happened to be around) would go out on this land where my dad moved with his family when he was 13. Before that, his family had been sharecroppers, his father coming from several generations of sharecroppers. Here they had bought land - 20 acres - and grown cotton, sweet potatoes, and corn. The corn was for the animals and themselves; the sweet potatoes and cotton were the cash crops. They had added okra too, and here when my father was 17, he'd picked 4000 pounds of okra a day with MaMa and PaPa (my grandfather), making 4 cents a pound.

But that was then, and now my father was a petrophysical engineer - the longest, most impossible to understand title I knew of at the age of 5 or 6. I knew that he knew how to find oil in the ground and that things like "getting in a helicopter," "offshore," "drilling," and "Gulf of Mexico" were connected to that. For all I knew, he'd be taken up in a helicopter somewhere southwest of the delta, part the water like Moses parting the sea, use an oil-detecting form of ESP, point his finger and make the proclamation: "There!" "Hallelujah!" his co-workers would say, and then they'd get out the huge suction vacuum to remove the oil from the ground. (I thought the drilling part was to make room for the suction vac). The prices at the Shell gas station fluctuated based on his success and failure at these activities. (But this is a digression and only shows how small of a world children live in.) As a result of my father's magic oil-finding mind, I'd never picked cotton or okra. Instead, I played with dried okra and a cotton branch in our house. "You wouldn't play with it if you'd had to pick it!" my father would say after rolling his eyes, and I'd rattle the okra more, because I hate being told what I would and wouldn't do.

On most of that land was now a cornfield that MaMa didn't own (and where we didn't want to play anyway - corn is really tall when you're only two feet yourself and so I thought cornfields were scary way before I saw Children of the Corn). We'd play war and blow dandelions all over the place and dodge huge bumblebees that loved those roses too. I used to imagine the well was one of those hogs my dad told us they used to have, and I'd pretend to ride it (for heaven's sake, AG). There were also cats around, oh so creatively named by the grandchildren "Grayie" and "Blackie." The smell was interesting there, sort of metallic with an overburned tinge to it. It would take years for me to finally mention it to my wiser older sister who gently informed me, "It's the burning oil from the LouAna plant in town. DUH! You're SO STUPID!"

We'd leave sometime after my dad had finished mowing the lawn. He'd drive us into the big city of Opelousas, where my mom was born and raised. Opelousas is the Yam Capital of the World, just in case you didn't know. My mom being "from the city" and my dad being "from the country" is an issue that's continually raised by my mom, although they both grew up poor. "I grew up in the city so we didn't do those things. That's your family out in the country that did that." My maternal grandmother lived in Opelousas.

Grandmother had the perfect maiden name, Marie Celeste Fournier, to go along with her petite frame. Grandmother also grew beautiful roses and did things like capture butterflies to show her grandchildren, save snow in a container in the freezer to show us when it snowed in Opelousas and not in New Orleans, and make us pray endless rosaries in bad weather. But she was stubborn and strong too - she'd had eight children, cleaned other people's homes for a living, and in middle age, way after a point where it could economically matter, went back to school to get her GED (none of my grandparents had more than an 8th grade education). It was always so much better to stay at Grandmother's (or with my cousins on my mom's side of the family) then go back out to the country and have to stay out there with MaMa.

Not only is MaMa not at her most fluent in English (although all my grandparents were bilingual), but no one knows what her real name is: if she's Estella or Stella. No one knows her date of birth either: January 30 or 31, or maybe the 29th. MaMa can remember the exact weather conditions of any even slightly significant day in her life. "That's what's important to you when you're a farmer!" my dad would explain. MaMa could wait for my dad to drive out a possum in her house, smack it again and again, and then weapon still in hand and with the possum's head as flat as a pancake, turn to my dad and ask, "Nee! You think it's playin' possum?" Smack smack smack. "Nee, you think it's dead yet? It could be playin' possum!"

[Clarification: Nee is not my father's real name. It's his nickname because he was a preemie, born small. That doesn't change the fact that a number of his relatives actually do think Nee is his name and wonder why they can't find him in the phonebook.]

But that's not why we didn't want to spend the night with MaMa out in the country. It's because of the stories she'd tell: "Ya know, if you see them lights floating outside, that's the old spirits coming by" and then tell us about how she'd been visited by the souls of people the night before their death, "He came to see me, and sure 'nuff next day I hear he'd died in his sleep."

And stories about her father, my great-grandfather: Rene Broussard. A man who was superhuman not because he'd fathered 23 children by my great-grandmother or because he was an entrepreneur who owned almost 300 acres AND his own country store where he'd sell products that he - or his many kids - produced. No, he was superhuman because he was impenetrable to knives and bullets and could make a man fall to the ground without placing his hand on him. According to MaMa, it was because he was under the protection of all sorts of archangels (he, and my paternal grandfather and their kin and family dabbled in what we'd now call "the dark arts," - peace Dad! - although all were in other ways strict Catholics). MaMa would talk about holes opening up in the earth, objects disappearing, and houses shaking because of supernatural forces, and then send us off to bed. At Grandmother's, at least we had the comfort of orange street lights outside the window so that we could see on the dresser an orange-haired plastic statue of Mary crushing the serpent; at MaMa's you were left in the darkness with the full weight of all these strange events in the past she had just talked about, listening to all manner of sounds you hear in the country.

[I haven't written about my grandfathers here because I never knew them. They had been around, both stayed married to my grandmothers up to their deaths, but they had both passed away before I was born.]

The first thing I knew about my paternal grandfather, MaMa's husband, was that he had blue eyes. Felicien/Felton (we're not quite sure of his name either) had blue eyes. I knew that was some mark of distinction, because this was a rare trait for a black man to have. We could even trace the blue eyes in his family. I think it's through this fact that I knew that we weren't white: whatever white was, white people had the monopoly on blue eyes, except for PaPa sneaking in there.

I didn't think being black was a big deal when I was a very young child. I was born into a comfortably middle-class home. I'd been to that temple of commercial Americana, Disneyworld, three times by the age of 18. I knew that being black wasn't really about skin color 'cause there were a whole range of complexions and colorings in my family - my cousins and I could have made our own Benetton ad. No, it's about history: the history of a treatment of a people because they had some measure of drops of Negro blood. Because that Negro blood taints the body, mind, and soul, and makes one less than a white person, inferior to the superior white race. Being black is to be caught up in a history of subjugation and oppression, hearing the refrain "you're less than I am" sung by a chorus of whites. "What I have can never be yours" sung so long you start to believe it, internalize it, think that because you have some ancestors from Africa, it's true.

Oh, the people you meet...

The Sarabite has honored me with his own blog entry, On Statues..., based on my Lenten New Orleans post. Please read it.

Then read my comment to his post, reproduced here below (I decided my thesis writing could wait a few more minutes):

Sometimes I feel like singing “gimme that old-time religion,” ‘cause I love me some Roman Catholicism, with all the prayer cards and scapulars and plastic statues sitting out in the yard. Where you hold your breath to hear about saints who have had the stigmata or Mary’s consecrated life in the temple. As I wrote on my own blog, I left deeply rooted Catholic soil when I was in six. I’ve been living in Protestant America since that time. I first entered it when my family moved to Houston and we became parishioners at the local church that was pentagonal and had a flat, mosaic, empty cross above the stage/altar and I was a member of the children’s choir, singing only songs that were composed after 1960. That’s Novus Ordo to me.

I don’t know what my faith would be like had I not been raised in a devoutly Catholic family where we said Rosaries and litanies every day, in a constant cycle of novenas. I learned my faith in the family, for after the age of six, the local Catholic parishes were of little to no help other than as dispensers of sacraments; CCD classes were even detrimental.

My mom would sign us up for all manner of ‘traveling’ religious artwork, so the pilgrim statues of Our Lady of Carmel, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Lourdes, and a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe would visit our house for a month at a time, and we’d keep a votive candle burning next to her and pray in front of these depictions of the Blessed Virgin every night. When we were in pain, the first response out of my mom’s mouth was, “offer it up for the poor souls in purgatory.” We blessed ourselves with holy water every time we left the house and Lourdes water was always on hand, as were palms from Passion Sunday to burn above a candle whenever bad weather approached. My mother also kept a picture of Christ’s face, in agony and covered in blood while wearing the Crown of Thorns, on our refrigerator door. The big pictures of Mother Mary and Jesus with their chests opened and fingers pointing towards their Immaculate Heart and Sacred Heart, respectively, were in the bedrooms. Even now, my mom calls me whenever she lights a candle at church for me – which is as soon as the last candle she lit for me has burnt out - to tell me to make sure I say a special prayer to St. Joseph or Mary.

I was once involved in Catholics apologetics – I left it not only because I got tired of the same old arguments, but because of the intellectual oddities of some of the Catholic converts I would encounter. A former Baptist who, when asked why people light candles in front of statues of saints, said “of course we pray to the saints, but the candle lighting is just some superstitious thing some people do.” A former Presbyterian who, after attempting to explain a few of the Marian teachings, said “as a Catholic, you actually pay very little attention to Mary. It’s no big deal – other than the only three times she’s mentioned in the mass, you don’t have to do any of the other Marian devotion stuff.” What kind of Roman Catholicism did these friends of mine convert to? What in the world did they see in the Church? Why in the world do they, newborn in the ancient faith as they are, think they know better than people who have lived it for generations?

I suspect they had a hankering for a connection to the apostles, but with the 2000 years between then and now somehow smoothed over and wiped out. I sometimes think they became HUGE defenders of every Catholic teaching because they want that apostolic succession to be true OH SO BAD, because otherwise, why even bother being Catholic? They seem to find only the certainty of it attractive, not the ‘get your arms in all the way up to your elbows’ ways it’s been lived out (prior to V2, of course). I think it’s a hollow religion they have, one where they love being part of the communion of saints but are completely embarrassed that anyone would have such an effusive love for Mary and the saints that they’d seek to have depictions of them around, even if it’s bad artwork. Somehow the assent (bad Newman!) to Catholicism is, so they think, more important than the experience. I have no idea what kind of Church people like my Catholic convert friends are trying to re-build. We believe that a crucified Jewish carpenter rose from the dead. Some Lourdes water won’t kill you.

Sorry if I’ve used your combox as the beginning of a love letter to that old time religion.