The ritual thing to do

I refused to sign. You looked at me and asked, your head turned away (probably to keep me from seeing the tear slipping down your left cheek; you were driving and I was your passenger): “Where did I go wrong?”

I will tell you what my answer was a bit further on.

I am a bad daughter, I know. Or at least a daughter with a guilty conscience. I chose to tell the truth when I should have lied to you, maybe. What were the consequences of my choice not to sign the paper you had passed over to me while driving? What if I had signed it? You certainly didn’t have an ounce of meanness in you and I trusted you completely, although once you let me down, although I loved you too much to tell you that.

I believe in God and my country. That is the. problem, or was.

They couldn’t take your flag from you, those were your exact words. Guatemalan massacres, bodies dropped from helicopters not paid for by those countries. But your flag, you said, still looking away. But you didn’t know. How could you have known? You absolutely couldn’t accept the horror of deception. You trusted. Out of goodness or ignorance? Or belief in what was known to you?

Because of you, Mom, there was more church in my life than I needed or knew back then. It was simply what we did back then. Those who didn’t do it were essentially wrong or bad. Most likely both. Back then, I wasn’t bad. Almost every Sunday I showed up, although showed up wasn’t the right term. The best Sundays were those for remembrance, my favorites. Why wouldn’t they be, since those days our name was in the description of the worship service.

You had to remember all those who were no longer able to remember us, because their earthly existence was over, gone. You never forgot, however, and I admired the way you wore your pain, not on your face, so pretty, your nose perfect and your eyes so green nor on slumped shoulders, but on the petals of the white lilies with their sticky, messy yellow pollen - remembrance glue, I think. Always your mother, followed by your husband, then your father, your oldest daughter. If you could have afforded it and the altar had been bigger, you would have glued on thoughts of your long-gone sister, younger than you by five years, hers a very tragic death. Yet so long ago, was it worth remembering her with the price of yet another potted lily? I’m recalling now that altar with its ghostly white parade. I’m sorry, but I question the usefulness of that haunting cortège that saddened those attending the service. A plant for a person. After awhile, too many plants.

I must not have been a good daughter then, just as I am not good now. You know I never put a lily on the altar for you, on your birthday or at Christmas and Easter. It doesn’t matter that I can’t stand white lilies or any white flower in fact; I should have gotten one for you. However, after a certain point, I never returned.

The church was more than sticky lilies, though. I sang in the choir for a while, certain that I always sang out of tune with my wobbly alto voice. Before that, until I was twelve, there had been Sunday school upstairs for the younger ones (like me), during the sermon. (I never managed to calm my divergent brain into sitting still during the sermons, so going upstairs was necessary, plus I was proud people could see me ascending that Stairway to Heaven.)

Sunday school seemed like two hours, but was probably only twenty minutes. We learned the books of the Bible by heart, in order, both old and New Testaments. we wrote the books on little construction paper rectangles, punched a hole in one end, spit-glued a reinforcement around the hole, and mounted them on a stainless steel ring so we (1) wouldn’t lose them, and (2) could shuffle through to refresh our memories. I did enjoy learning to pronounce the bizarre names, though, being the language person that I am.

The church (it was Protestant, by the way) didn’t stop with the soft indoctrination on Sundays. I recall that off to the right of the worship area there was a big hall where they held great holiday bazaars, and there were community suppers. I’ve forgotten the menus, but probably they alternated between spaghetti and meatballs or beans and franks. They weren’t expensive, but they brought in money. I never knew what the money was used for. Maybe overseas missions, so necessary. Mom, I know you not only served the meals at those suppers, but you also worked long hours preparing items for sale. You were so kind, so generous. Back then we had family and community as big as the planet. Were they real?

We had religion in school, too. You know: the prayer after the Pledge of Allegiance. I can still recite the Pledge of Allegiance, but the prayer eludes me nowadays. That reminds me of learning to say a prayer every night at bedtime. My prayer was from a template for the bedtime ritual: “Now I lay me down to sleep…” Of course I personalized it with the names of all my close relatives, including a cousin I had a crush on. When Dad came to help me say my prayers, he added his own spin: “And God bless all the little Korean children who have no mommies and daddies and nothing to eat.” He was worried about children in a country he’d wanted to go to war against in order to save it. Like he had in the previous war. Hunger concerned him; he loved to eat, so it was only natural. For years I shed little girl tears for a country I knew to be plagued by starvation and lack of freedom. Then I forgot all about the little Korean children.

I was definitely a bad and selfish daughter.

I believe in God and my country. Mom, I tried to sign that, but couldn’t do it. I’m one of those people who failed, failed to understand how a lovely super being could allow so many bad things to happen in the world. I really did try, Mom, but no. Later on the country question became more pressing. Originally I didn’t link religion and national pride, but later, in Bogotá, I met a fellow who couldn’t walk by a church without throwing rocks at it. Mean, angry, wrong to throw rocks at an innocent church. This was my first time outside the US (Canada doesn’t count because it’s kind of part of us.

As the traveling continued, a new narrative emerged, one with history, greed, and mean people, many of them religious but needing to conquer. I balked at that. Mom, I was so bad, because I let you slip out of my little girl thoughts and moved away from you in most every way. I curse the day I grew up and began to see the world in the only way possible for me. The difference between us was vaster than an abyss, but you have left me your faith, which is all that I have of you. Trouble is, it’s not mine. Trouble is, wars have been fought in vain and I can see clearly now.

I believe in God and my country. The paper said that, right above the line for my signature. It said that was how I could be allowed into the sacrosanct realm of righteous wars and people who were honest and loyal. I qualified because I was the child of a veteran. I too could be inside the VFW, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, but I had the Faustian sense that it would make me a hypocrite. Mom, you taught trust and faith, honesty too, but by the time that paper with its dotted line reached me, I had to honor it with a soft I can’t.

No, I couldn’t, and you wondered where you had gone wrong. Maybe you got it right - so right that lying was betrayal of your lessons, Sunday school, the fun bazaars, everything. I followed the lesson perfectly, and I hurt you badly. Tell me, please tell me: would you have welcomed my signature, knowing it was a lie? You can keep your flag; I certainly don’t want it given what’s happening these days, but I am still so very sorry that I refused. It was your ritual, your wish for me to remember, not with lilies and their sticky interior with the scent of death.

However, I am a bad daughter and now all I can do is apologize while thinking of all the lilies I’ve never bought. I apologize for refusing your ritual and hope you can see why I had no choice.