Around the holidays I do tend to remember to be thankful. I don’t pray much, and anymore, and I’m not sure how I feel about there being a particular God; in fact, I am slowly becoming an Atheist after many years of wishful Agnosticism. I believe in spirit. I believe in energy. I believe in element. And my father has somehow convinced me through all his preaching and general drunken babbling that when we die our positive or negative elements become the universal particles of existence. Sometimes, I like to believe my father; be thankful for this air we breathe, the carbon we’re made of.
As silly as it sounds, I tend to be less grateful when I have too much to think about. So I keep it simple. Friends, food, whiskey, cats, and calling my family, because with so many people sick in my family, sometimes calling is much better than seeing.
I am exhaling now with a gigantic beautiful sigh.
When the weather gets cold, and as I age further my bones begin to hurt. Aching bones = a lack of oxygen on my part. I have more charcoal in my system some days than love. This is a habit I am trying to expunge. Life should a constant change of pace, but habits tend to keep us always in the same place. Aching bones may also be the product of stress, of trying to keep all your love steady and in place. Sometimes it is difficult to keep love steady, but when the weather gets cold, I do tend to remember to be thankful for it. The love, that is. Upon facing the facts, I realize that the world is so fucked up; I don’t have much else to go with but the love. Give thanks give love. It keeps me sane.
The fantastic Miranda July asks, Are you the favorite person of anybody? And I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t answer the question. To be sure is to breed decision, to breed confidence. Mostly, I float listlessly through life without decision or confidence, but I still love.
When I think of my favorite people the way I think of ice cream flavors. Colorful, varied, and sweet.
I have many favorite people, but my grandmother takes the cake most days. Her unconditional love for me seems to ever-expand, and I still can tell her anything and she will not judge, she will not comment without honesty, and its only love.
When the weather gets especially cold, I try to call her at least once a week, and she thinks I do it out of obligation. My grandma has always thought anyone who does anything for her is only doing it because they are being forced to. When I think of my grandma, I think of butterflies. I imagine her flying, bumbling about in that awkward up and down butterfly way, her orange and yellow wings crazy and flamboyant. I imagine her as a butterfly wearing huge patent leather platform shoes on her delicate butterfly feet. I have always been proud of my strange grandmother, whose eclectic nature can’t be beat by another human soul.
When I talk to my grandma on the phone the first thing she always asks me is what I’m wearing. Then she asks me what I’m surrounded in, so that she can picture me just so. I never ask back, because I feel asking someone what they are wearing is kind of creepy, so I imagine her chain smoking at her little desk, her kitchen walls completely covered in ivy. It only takes an ivy plant three years to entirely cover your kitchen walls, in case anyone may be interested in the endeavor. You must learn how to carefully pin up the different strands so that they take on a curved, spider web effect across your stove and then down, in front of your window so that there is a portrait effect, ivy against window, against yard landscape, orange cat and white shed in the background. I think of how she spices everything in her house with a paint job. She paints flowers or seascape on everything she owns. It is never quite tacky, because when you reach 75 years of age you have license to do whatever you please and no one is allowed to have an opinion.
Tonight Gram tells me about her former lovers, why she dislikes all white men because they remind her of her ex-husband. How she loves all the black men on her street because they check in on her, take care of her, help her and my disabled aunt cut their grass and move things about. She tells me about her first night on the town in San Franscisco in the 70s; how her friends take her to a club and she encounters the most beautiful women she’s ever seen. Those aren’t women, Nancy! Her friend states this while laughing, and that night my grandma falls in love with men who dress in drag. I tell her how my partner was a bearded lady for Halloween, she loves this and asks about how his breasts turned out, and she continues to love and laugh at the idea of my boyfriend dressed in drag. She’s very good at loving every beautiful thing without regard for strangeness. I am grateful for this gene, and thankful, for I am always so in love with everything strange thing all at once.
Gram tells me that she is currently reading Fredrick Douglass. An odd choice considering her usual reads, so I am surprised but I don’t respond. She commences:
How can anyone read Fredrick Douglass and still believe in God?
I had to agree. She made a valid point. I think of the abuse we go through. As beautiful as life is, in some moments the pain is fucking unbearable time and again. She says, He was being whipped and beaten time and again, and you tell me where God was. She says, my son dies before me, and you tell me where God was then. You tell me why Ed (my grandfather) had to go and die before my son and leave me all alone to deal with this kind of horror. Its just like him to go and die when I need him most. You know Ed didn’t believe in God, and he knew it was coming, and I know he chose to die so that he didn’t have to deal with the death of his son. Nothing and noone saves you from that kind of pain, except death.
She calls her sister with the same point. Once you’re almost 80 years old you either cling to the idea of god furiously or you say fuck it because you are tired of pain, and you know you’ve lived graciously and you don’t care what any one else, legendary or not, thinks of you.
Her Sister can’t agree, and loves God furiously, and for her I hope that in death there is a God which reaches out to her kindly and strokes her cheek. But not for my Grandma, or for me. I will love now, and continuously, and in my death I will branch my love outward so that my elements exceed the earth and fly into orbit with the stars and light up every once in awhile with the solstice. When my Grandma dies, I know I will feel her from time to time, because her energy can not cease. I think I will let others have God, and I will hope for them they have comfort, and joy.
As for her question, how can you read about the horrors of the world and still believe in God? I am not sure, but I can not extinguish what others want to believe. I can only love what others believe graciously and accept that which is different than my own. And I will think of my own pain and be grateful that I am stronger now, and that at every day I am at my greatest point. For those of you I’ve loved in my life, I will never cease to feel that and remember, for its all I got. My entire world has been filled with favorite persons rolled into one long life.
This year, may your holiday be warm and full of heart.