She was desperate to be good. An A- was a disappointment, a harsh word's echoes didn't quit. Her standards were impossible, but she met them, and the times she didn't were deep disappointments. Success was survival. Approval was survival. Whose approval? God's? Her parents? Her church's? Despite living every moment subservient to it, they never quite gave it. Perhaps God did, but how could she have known? And so she did two things. She found someone who did accept her. He wasn't burdened with religious requirement, and his acceptance was a relief, even if she failed to see the danger in the flip side of the coin, of lawlessness. Next, she went in search of God. Because despite the convoluted image given her, she saw goodness, and wanted sense. She found truth, and she found God. And found the whole point of this Jesus they told her about was that she didn't have to jump through their hoops, recite their formulas, look just so, or behave just so. She could stop berating herself. You're better than this, do better, be good, be perfect...all faded. She locked the door, stepped into a field of possibility, running her fingers through its grasses, plucked the purple flower, and walked toward grace.
The problem lies in which bedroom, as my childhood was filled with arranging and rearranging. Never quite settled, never anything quite totally mine. I suppose my first room was the guest bedroom. Two single beds, first door on the right of the hallway, with the tiniest of walk-in closets, and, of course, the doorway to the attic at its outermost edge. A shared space with nothing that belonged to me except my body and the clothes I stored in my grandparent's spare dressers. The little closet, still full of clothes that hung on my grandparents bodies some days. I would sit in that closet and take in deep breaths. It wasn't that it smelled good or bad, just that it smelled. I didn't think then of it as the smell of the elderly, I thought of it as the smell of home. I wonder now, would I recognize that scent on my grandmother's body today? At night the blank walls lurched with dark, reaching shadows. While daytime frolics with the Ouji board were invigoration, the night he...
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