novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ashes, ashes. (note: the quote is from a google search. i am googling everything lately.) Today is Ash Wednesday. My lapsed-Catholic father gives up alcohol for Lent every year, ignoring all other idiosyncratic religious practices. I wonder about him, how his childhood was shaped, why this pious nod is so important that it survived. I grew up with spats of religion. Always present in our little church on holidays, sometimes strings of Sundays in a row when my mother remembered. Dad would usually golf but sometimes woke us up blaring Vivaldi just in time to be late and sneak in. If we were late enough we'd drive, but our church was on the other side of our suburban block, so usually we'd sneak behind houses. Or try to sneak, ducking our heads as my father hummed. Our reverend lived next door and I'd run around his yard once I learned to walk. When I learned he had a piano, I'd enter uninvited and surprise him with made-up child chamber music. His house smelled like our small stucco church, like dust and age and something unnamed. He would lay his hand on my head and leave it there, smiling down at me. He also coached my track team. His wife was constantly sick and eventually died of cancer a few years later; his sons rarely visited. Randomly my father would take me (just me as I remember it, not my brother or mother) to the local Catholic church and I'd marvel at the stained glass depictions of martyrs and stigmata. The tiny bowls of holy water, the satin robes, the padded pews. A collapsible kneeling rest. Rows and rows of candles and benedictions sung in Latin, their notes lilting and straining to fill the entire cavity of the high-ceilinged church. Once when we were present we filed in line and approached the imposing priest. He placed in my dry mouth a perfectly round wafer. My father nodded and I sipped the wine. I was light-headed until we got back in the car. Until he let us leave, that is. He positioned himself on the side of the church after the ceremony, standing on the sidewalk by the manicured lawn, watching the congregation file out and chat. Only after they left did he let us leave. "And the LORD said to him [one of the four cherubim], 'Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark [literally, "a tav"] upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.' And to the others he said in my hearing, 'Pass through the city after him, and smite; your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity; slay old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one upon whom is the mark. And begin at my sanctuary.' So they began with the elders who were before the house." (Ezekiel 9:4-6) Unfortunately, like most modern translations, the one quoted above (the Revised Standard Version), is not sufficiently literal. What it actually says is to place a tav on the foreheads of the righteous inhabitants of Jerusalem. Tav is one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and in ancient script it looked like the Greek letter chi, which happens to be two crossed lines (like an "x") and which happens to be the first letter in the word "Christ" in Greek (christos). The Jewish rabbis commented on the connection between tav and chi and this is undoubtedly the mark Revelation has in mind when the servants of God are sealed in it. My father is not one to tell stories or detail his past. Very few times he'd relent and I'd learn about a trailer park on top of a Laguna cliff overlooking the beach, sandy salty days of skipping school and surfing, surfing. I pictured intense blues and greens. His skin sun-charred, his hair sun-bleached. A few years after I moved to Oakland he came up on business. He took me out to lunch and noticed for the first time my second tattoo as I slid out of the passenger side door; a star in the middle of my lower back. He huffed and I froze, half outside, one arm on the car's frame. He ran a finger along the freshly-healed outline, gently, like he was checking for a forgery. He never wanted me to permanently mark my body; even when he was a biker he resisted getting tattoos. I remember him resting his forehead against the steering wheel and asking me, in that voice he reserves for speaking to me like I am a misbehaved child, if I knew my star would be there for my entire life. A visible reminder of permanence. The Sunday before he left, he took me to a giant marble chapel next to the 580 freeway. I'd never noticed the church before; I was amazed I hadn't. So tall and dark. Gothic and mossy. I watched my father's eyes widen in recognition at his imprinted mannerisms rising to the surface. He knew when to stand, to kneel, to recite in Latin, to sing. I mimicked him when I wasn't staring at the giant wooden rafters shining in the dusty late morning sun. When the choir began to answer the priest I was startled; I hadn't even seen a choir. My father pointed behind us and told me that they had their own seats on a hidden balcony, an architectural nod to acoustics and the hint of angels. Seen and not heard. I craned my neck but couldn't make out shoulders or faces past the carved banister. I wonder what he sees when he looks into his past. I wonder what will survive mine. 1:26 pm - 02.25.04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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