November 3, 2013Drive-In Church
My mother wakes early every Sunday, pulls on black
hose even in June, and drives forty minutes to put on
a choir robe and sing in a crowd for a crowd. Such is
the nature of her faith. Mine was held for too many
years thrashing under water, burbling, silent-screaming
for air. My faith may be, however, growing toward that
church in Daytona Beach, where you don’t even have to
get out your car and therefore your pajamas, just tool
right up with your ciggies on the dash and a 12-pack
of Krispy Kremes, reggae on the tape deck. Where you
can snooze mid-sermon, curl up with a blanket and
nobody’d see. With only your license plate showing,
you’d still get credit for going. That’s what I mean, it’s all
about the redeemer card for me, where 999 church visits
means a trip to heaven is free. My mother says, It’s not
for God you go, for you. But I’m still that teen in black
eyeliner and dress, scowling in the back pew, stinking
of last night’s beer, wondering what’s in it for me. Which
doesn’t add up, if my mother’s to be believed. Here’s what
I think. One day I’ll die and maybe it’ll be true, my mother
wearing wings, drinking martinis, laughing in the golden
sun beyond a big locked gate, and I’ll be staring in, feeling
sorry and alone, yet knowing I’m exactly where I’m meant
to be. And my mother says, How is that unlike now and
how you’ve felt your whole life? Maybe if you’d go to
church, you’d feel different. And I say, Doesn’t someone
have to be the crazy, the heathen? What if everyone went
to church? She sighs, Oh if I know God, He’d just find
another way to up the ante. To which I think, the next
time I go looking in the paper for drive-in times, it’ll be
to see what film’s playing. But she knows I’m listening.
from #39 - Spring 2013