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During mass,
my parents
had an argument.
God didn't interfere.
I'm convinced
that Catholic parents
fight in order
to gain another sacrament--
a little known one
between marriage and death.
Halfway through the
homily,
my mother,
with none of the grace
of guardian angels,
reached around my father
and pulled me between them.
I've been in this position before
when misbehaving or playing too loud,
but the pew beneath me
had never been so hot.
II.
"I must've loved
him once,"
my mother confesses,
"but that was long ago
when Tradition, still alive,
would shuffle into my room
hairpins in her palms
asking me to help her pull
her grey years into a bun.
She had hair as long as life.
Then it was my turn,
and your grandmother
would comb the childhood
out of my hair,
braiding in the belief
that a man would come
and give me everything
with love.
She promised
that the burning lemons
I used to wash
as poor women had to
under our arms
on our breasts
would no longer be perfume."
III.
"She lived in a
bright-colored
poverty like mine,"
my father remembers.
"I understood her then.
Her house had pink
and blue pastel walls
with white ceilings,
cracks all through them.
The nailed-down linoleum
floor had a flower print
before the red
of the petals
wore off
into the soles
of her shoes.
We used to say the colors
of the poor were as wrong
as war, but I joined the army
anyway--the only thing to do
to try and get out.
You work harder
when you have a family.
Your mother was
so much more
than pretty then."
IV.
Riding home
in our car
my parents
sit as far
from each other
as possible.
I really believe
they could live
without each other,
but I remember
only Protestants
can afford to do that.
At home,
I realize
my parents
don't have a prayer
the distance
between them
falling
somewhere
within a catechism
of living
for which the Church
has no answers
and God and I
don't understand.
Stanford, 1991
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