"God Loves You," reads a colorful #2 pencil assigned to your desk. You're maybe seven years old, sitting in a stuffy classroom in a catholic school nearby you go to once a week. Hardly a Monday night goes by when you go without complaint or protest. Your mom thinks you're lazy. You've done this with T-ball, and you'll do this with guitar lessons. But this feels different. You learn to feel shame. You lie to your brother, and when the teacher leads your class into the chapel, you have to reveal this grave sin to a man wearing robes that don't look soft and an expression that feigns hospitality. He'll tell you to ask forgiveness from a man in the sky. For now, you wonder when someone will realize the cosmic clerical error that must have brought you to this room because if the man in the sky could read your thoughts, then he'd know that you know that he hates you, or at least then everybody would be on the same page about the fact that the pencil isn't for you.

 

Third grade. You're living in an apartment until your sister graduates high school, and you move three states away. You're with two of your siblings, being talked at by your eccentric Aunt and stoic Irish grandmother who speaks like each phrase is the shortest homily ever delivered. Her most recent is, "you kids shouldn't be worrying about these things." Your eight-year-old voice feels older as you reply that it's "hard not to worry when you see your mom cry." It hits home with your Aunt, who repeats it. Your grandmother doesn't reply. It's the first time you've seen tears stain your mom's face. John told her he wants to be a priest. You probably wonder why you still go to that stuffy classroom with felt mangers and dusty bibles if she's crying. No one ever tells you why she's crying. You'll put the pieces together when you're older. She wanted a certain life for her first kid, and your typical Catholic priest doesn't moonlight as a constitutional lawyer with a wife, a farmhouse, and 2.5 kids. Then again, your typical college freshman doesn't come back from his fall semester more devout.

 

Soon enough, it'll be your turn to come back from college with a confession. The truth will stain her cheek again and everything you thought might save you when you were young, all the hard work and good grades and lies you told to stiff men with stiff robes won't matter; she'll still tell you who you are, and say anything but your name as you grieve the youth you wasted falling at her feet. And who could blame her? She wanted a certain life for her last kid.