So, it' sunny and beautiful and the cubicle walls are closing in. I have a lot to do before I leave for Europe in 16 days. Today, my focus is to get this "work" thing out of my way and then ride my bike. A long leisurely ride home tonight. Cannot wait. I don't have much more to say about it, so I thought I'd post a story (on of my favorites) that I heard read by the author herself on NPR. Her name is Hollis Gillespie and after hearing her read this story I sent her an email, and she actually responded and sent the story via email to me. I wanted to share it with anyone who might be interested. No, it has nothing to do with bikes, but it's still good. Be well all! Reb
Your Soul
by
Hollis Gillespie
My mother, besides being a missile scientist and a minor kleptomaniac, was also an atheist, which might explain why, when I was seven years old, I had a crush on Satan. Not that I knew who he was, mind you, I just based everything on a picture I saw in the Children's Bible, which I had gotten my hands on at a friend's house. In it Satan was this handsome man with hair as black as octopus ink styled like Lyle Wagoner's.
When my mother came home from work that day I told her I wanted to marry Satan when I grew up. She looked at me gravely, then said, "Kid, whatever you do, don't get married."
My affections for Satan soon fizzled on their own, as my mother had figured. Then came a very brief period during which she allowed my two sisters and me to go to church. I suppose she thought it was a good way to get us out of the house for a day. A church bus came by and collected us along with the rest of the neighborhood kids every Sunday. During the service, I always approached the podium when the preacher called forth sinners from the audience who wanted their souls saved.
One day a lady usher stopped me in the aisle as I made my weekly pilgrimage. "You were saved last week, sweetie, and the week before that," she said, leading me back to my seat, ". . . and the week before that." But it doesn't take," I protested.
The preacher called home to complain about my behavior, and it was this that prompted my mother to call a stop to church. The bus still pulled up outside our apartment building every Sunday and honked, but my mother waved it away. I worried that I would go to hell, but my mother brushed it off.
"What bigger hell is there than a heaven full of people like that?" my mother asked, indicating the departing bus with her lit Salem cigarette. "And your soul, by the way, is fine."
My mother never wavered from her stand on religion. She would throw herself between her children and any aggressively approaching street prophets during family outings along the esplanade. "Stay back!" she'd hiss, stopping them in their tracks, their propaganda moistening in their palms, and they stayed back. Instead of the afterlife, she believed in the *only* life, as in, "This is the only life you get, don't wreck it." She died young. Her life considerably less wrecked than it could have been. Before the cancer caused her to lapse into a coma, she told me her biggest regret in life.
When she was a little girl, she wrote "bicycle" on her Christmas list, knowing her parents could not afford to buy her one. Christmas came and went with no bicycle, but still she continued to write "bicycle" at the end of her mother's grocery list every week for months. "I wish I hadn't done that," she said with soft penitence, her eyes round and sad. And that was it, there was no other moment of looming regret, no fearful doubts about her stand on religion. There was just this one sweet repentance, and then she was unconscious.
I suppose I should have prayed then, but I didn't know how, so in the end I simply lay down next to her on the bed and stroked her hair. "I love you, Mom," I said. "And your soul, by the way, is fine."
