Grateful

Agatha and I led our Sunday school class this week in an exercise about gratitude. We first talked through prayer types again: intercession, contrition, gratitude - then zeroed in on gratitude. Being the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the progression was organic.

To clarify, I am woefully unqualified to teach Sunday school. There are flaws in my religious views, holes in my 'wisdom' and practice.

I have problems with the literal nature of our curriculum. I greet Old Testament stories with skepticism. When teaching that Adam and Eve's Cain and Seth go on to populate the world... presumably with the help of "Mrs. Cain and Mrs. Seth-" I want to know who the women were. Where they came from.

In story after story here is violence and trickery and pettiness with catastrophic consequences - and often rewards. And God is very direct in His communications with the People.

I struggle with it - existing, as I do, in a world where God is far more vague - even in his omnipresence.

I am not good with prayers of intercession. I can't quite give myself over into believing the magic fairy dust element of it - the conceit that I get something, or something is all better, because I am a Good Christian, and I asked - fervently, with an open heart. I know too many better Christians with real problems - sickness, death, crisis, debt.

So I ask God to help give me more faith, or patience, or the ability to observe and find the Good in Bad. I ask for strength, for shoring up. And for more of that patience.

I do OK with penance. I can always admit to a screw-up. And I collect them. Though this Sunday, as we talked through this idea of prayer with the four kids that showed up, I tripped a little on "penance," stopped myself from giving a concrete example.

My son wasn't in class. He got left at home after an epic battle with me that resulted with him, in his room, while others went to church. The bad part was what came before, when I let him push all my buttons - and good robot that I am - I short-circuited in just the way intended. I spent time on penance after that one.

Contrition fuels itself, if you fancy yourself a prayer, and have a conscience.

I have my own religious tenets - things I hold myself to - that give me ample opportunity to fail in small ways, or to fail outright in larger ways.

My grandfather was a farmer. He worked hard, and he was quiet, and humble and Competent in all things. I never knew where he stood with Catholicism specifically, but he went to church every Sunday. He only went to communion when he had gone to confession. Twice a year, I believe. I could never imagine what Grandpa possibly had to confess. And I would try to imagine.

Away from the natural rhythms of the farm, my sins are many. In modern suburbia, there are no consequences for life sloppily lead - for laziness, for unpreparedness, for not reading the seasons or canning when the vegetables are fresh. This is the basis for my guilt, for the religion in my head, for the touchy relationship I have with God, for my awareness of how much I do wrong.

Things for which I kick myself regularly for my own hypocritical approach: I am sure that God would prefer I never stay inside on a sunny day, don't waste food, that I am active in my role as shepherd of the earth, avoid sinful meat not raised humanely, never scream at people smaller than me, don't fritter away time, maximize my gifts. Care for those who have less. Stay aware of injustice in the world. When I fail, I can't quite ask Grandpa to intercede on my behalf - because they are not mistakes he would have made.

And I willfully forget, sometimes, to seek absolution for these daily failings.

But gratitude...that one I can do.

My default is, generally, contentment. Hormone-laced-beef-eating, shouting, time-wasting contentment. I look around and I notice: I am well fed. I have a roof. I have beautiful, healthy, fascinating children. I genuinely love and enjoy my husband. I have extended family and far-flung friends and am estranged from no one. I have a car that runs, and two crazy cats. I can read and I can write. I catch my breath looking out at a great view or looking deeply into the intricacies of a single, perfect fall leaf. I know, intellectually, that from bad eventually comes good, and by strokes of luck in timing, geography and birth, no real bad has ever befallen me. And I am grateful for that, too. For the work of my grandfather that got us all to here.

And on Sunday, I sit in the pew and I try to keep children (those I bring) still and relatively engaged. I breathe deep and I tune in and out of the homily. I sing the hymns. And I give thanks. And I find, invariably, I have lots and lots of thanks to give. And this, in itself, is a blessing.

Champion

We went to the dentist last week.

"We" means 2/3 of my children.  The night before, the Big One saw the dental appointment and asked 'why now?', meaning - why now, when we are cutting back expenses, have a pile of bills, and have started the hell of paying off this year's taxes.

The short answer is that 'next month' never seems to come - that is, we can put it off, but to what end?

Later, a few things occurred to me - that is, that dental visits are simply what you do.  And that as a child, we never missed our annual dentist appointment.  And that whatever the cause, we all had perfect teeth and giant smiles.  Teeth, and our family smiles, were a source of misplaced pride (since luck, genetics, and fluoridated water each played a larger part in our big, straight, cavity-free teeth than did the daily brushing, or occasional swipe-throughs with floss.)  

My mother raised us alone, with no financial or emotional assistance from my father, who abandoned her and his four children when I was 18 months old.  She struggled as a counselor, and then a teacher, to make all ends line up - and to give us the extras so we wouldn't notice.  

Visits to the dentist happened in the summer, when we would stay with my grandparents on their farm in a small town in rural Connecticut ("farm" is a retired tobacco farm, and "Connecticut" is rural riverbank broadleaf tobacco territory.  Lest you be confused and immediately associate "Connecticut farm" with Martha Stewart's plush Westport horse ranch...This was decidedly Not That.)

On the farm, I got to be queen.  My naturally bossy tendencies were given full reign, as my grandfather imagined poor, fatherless Cathy the victim of every nefarious plot.  I followed him with a matching salt shaker in my pocket so we could eat hot tomatoes off the vine.  I talked non-stop, and he listened - mostly silent.  We picked blueberries for my grandmother's flourishing summer blueberry business, and he would come to my defense when I got in trouble for handing over a bucket of mostly red berries, speckled with hard little green stems, and rubbed almost translucent from over-handling.

Famously, my siblings (4, 6, and 7 years older) would be admonished if I tripped.  If I cried when left out of games with even older cousins.  Or, when younger, wet my pants.  

Grampa was my champion.  I could do no wrong.

I have no idea if the trips to the dentist were paid for by my grandfather or my mother - but it doesn't matter.  They would have happened either way, because my mother firmly believed in good teeth and in doing what you Should, and because my mother was a notorious refuser-of-aid (even if had come in the form of dental visits, provided for by her father.)

I wasn't really thinking of all of this.  Not yet.

I visited my son - proud and four - in the chair.  He had a mouth full of flouride treatment, and I involuntarily shuddered.  I took a picture.  I said to the hygienist, "I remember those, back before they had those little suction straws.  They were awful.  You weren't allowed to swallow and it was so hard not to."

Annabeth wanted details.  So I told her.  "When I was little?  You had that awful stuff and no sucky straw, but you couldn't swallow - you had to keep spitting in a little bowl.  But once, I did swallow. And when I got back to my grandparent's house, I threw up in the bushes."

"Really?  Did you go to the hospital?"

"No,no.  Nothing like that.  But  I can remember my grandfather yelling about 'that goddamned dentist had no idea what the hell he was doing!' and my grandmother yelling back that we were told not to swallow, that she heard the dentist say it..."  

"Was the dentist wrong?"

"No, hon.  He wasn't.  But my grandfather was always quick to stand up for me.  He imagined everyone was doing wrong around me, and that I was never at fault."

"Wow.  Was that nice?"

Conspiratorily, I answered, "It was fantastic."

And it was.  I think my grandfather honestly believed it was his duty to single-handedly make up for the fact that my father was an unmitigated ass.  That he had abandoned all of us, and never looked back, was something so far out of my grandfather's loyal and hardworking imagination that he was compelled to make up for it.  It was an abomination, and needed to be revealed as such - and not imagined to be any sort of norm.

My grandfather was my knight.  There to prove to me that men were not, inherently, bad.  That hard work and loyalty should always prevail. That I was wonderful just being.

It was folly to think he could do all that.  On his own.  In just eight weeks a summer.

But he did.  

And I would have had no reason to think of him last week.  No reason to talk about him to my kids, no reason to remember what it was like to have a champion, to be spoiled in grand and real ways.  What it was like to be beautiful and Right and smart.  To be listened to, by an adult, as a child. To feel hot dirt between your toes, and to eat hot tomatoes out of a field.  To pull a salt shaker out of your pocket.  

Had it not been for an ill-timed trip to the dentist?  I might not have had any reason at all to think of Grampa.  

And that's a pretty good job for a dentist.