My mother believes in the law of attraction. I believe God has all the coins to the juke box. We picnic in the demilitarized zone of mystery.
We have both cast our lot with the dancers. God sketched the women in our family with linguini legs and no torsos, and we are as rhythmic as sea cucumbers. But my mother and I pirouette on felt tip pens, her poetry and my prose coaxing the divine to the light-up floor.
My mother has the artist’s eye. She can rub her finger over any Wednesday and feel the substrate of miracle. It is flat to my clumsy touch. She caresses the bumps. She pets the ladybugs under the skin of the hours.
“There are no coincidences!” she insists, until I hear these words parading out my mouth. She adduces evidence that rides on my own hip. Five years ago, I decorated my insulin pump with a decal of a silver cat. Two years ago, that cat came into my life. Was my sticker a request?
My mother says we must pray thoughtfully because God pays attention. I say we are safe to babble, because God knows we don’t know what we’re talking about. We agree to meet in the meadow where we cannot mess up our lives.
My mother’s poems grip the long tail until truth gives up running. She outlines epiphanies so they will ring clear in many ears. I apologize to talent with enthusiasm. My writing is little more than yelling. I am a perennial newborn, half-dressed in whoops. I cannot believe I have been awarded a mother and a pen and a morning. I have to grip the kitchen table to keep from falling on my knees. I have not rolled out of the big palm. I will not get over this.
I order stickers for the “durable medical equipment” that keeps my capillaries from hissing into acid. I write a Christmas card to the mail carrier and inform him he is luminous. I gush because I am starry with pinpricks, asterisks in broad daylight.
My mother believes that our words, etched or wept, engage the gears. I do not want to believe I am that powerful. We agree that we are turning the same prism. We bear witness. We are court reporters. We agree never to say we “lose power” if the electricity fails.
–
Angela Townsend is the development director for a cat sanctuary. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, Paris Lit Up, Pleiades, and Terrain, among others. Angie has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 34 years and loves life affectionately.