Today my mother went to church, so I attended to Grandmamma's breakfast and morning coffee. She had a pretty good day today--miraculously, she continuously remembers my name, but she never can remember where she is, so we had that conversation lots of times today. I think she remembers me because I was her favorite grandchild. Besides being the first one, I was the only one to ever develop a sincere love of books. When I was little, Grandmamma would read Alice in Wonderland to me and I would act it out, squishing myself under a chair that represented (in my mind at least) the house that Alice gets trapped in when she grows too quickly.
Mom didn't ask me to go to church with her. On the one hand I was relieved, because for one thing, I didn't have to spend a boring hour in mass, and for another, I didn't have to feel like a hypocrit for attending ceremonies in which I have no spiritual investment whatsoever. But I was a little bit sad, because it is now apparently clear to my mother that my soul is beyond saving. Of course, my father has never been a church-goer (except for a few times during the Divorce Years when he took my brother and me to a tiny rural Methodist church out of some sense of obligation), and in spite of (or because of?) nine years of Catholic school, the whole Catholicism thing just never really caught on with me, and I think we've all known this for a while. Women can't be priests? Why not? No birth control? Why not? Plus, why go bothering all kinds of other cultures with our beliefs? They seemed to be a lot better off without. I just didn't get it, and I think at this point I've past some kind of faith threshold. I have a good bit of respect--even envy--for the faithful, but I think it's safe to say I'm never going to be one of them. (If you are religious and reading this, please do not try to convert me through my guestbook.) I do sometimes get an inkling of some kind of Something (more in a 19th century Romantic poet way than in a Star Wars way), but I'm definitely not betting the farm on an afterlife. I'm not betting against it, I just don't have a strong hunch either way, and I think hunches are all anybody has.
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