before the cups

Before the teacups, but long after the kitchen table, there were others who had come. In a moment of great need I had learned the woman's secret. I always had mommy, but my grandmas were few and far. It never seemed important that I didn’t have them around me until one night my prayers didn’t feel appropriate for god, at least not my god. But oh how I needed to pray – and we all do you know. So I did it. I invoked them. I asked them for help as surely as if they too had been on the cross – and they loved it. The pure scandal of it made them laugh.

First I went to Nanny. I salvaged all the tidbits I knew about her, and the few memories I had of her late in life and feasted on them. Sometimes I confused her with her mother, of whom I knew only one story; but knowing that at some point we are the reason our ancestors have existed, I thought it acceptable to combine the two women. They were so daring that I knew they’d come to my aide. Nanny, in particular, I knew to be a survivor. She may have insisted on being tidy, but she also drank Budweiser with her lobster and had been a working girl in a big city. She had come into money at times and then seen it go, she had known love, and then heartbreak, and then a hardworking love. And there was evidence her life was charmed. If she could keep having coffee with her husband, despite his cancerous death, then she could surely coach me through the things I couldn’t tell god.

But as time went on I remembered my other grandmothers: precious immigrants who must’ve loved me dearly, women with strange aloof husbands and secret recipes, one who was a flea market of tackiness in life, but who I figured became the very best version of herself in death – just as I hope to, since eternity is so dang long. Some I had hardly known, some I weren’t sure were dead or alive and some weren’t even mine. Once I prayed to a friend’s grandmother just because she had taught me when in Vegas to pin money inside my bra. And because she had loved her grandchildren with outrageous generosity – I hoped she would love me too now that I needed her.

The grandmothers began appearing at the same time I was surrounded by Latin American Catholics. At first I hardly noticed the Catholics and the fading memory of the division of church and state. Besides, in Bolivia, the saying goes that in the mines they worship the devil, in the fields, Pachamama and in the church, well god of course. But I did find it curious that in my Lutheran confirmation course, we had been taught about Catholicism as our forefather, fellow biblical adherers (more or less) and only seemed to distinguish “them” from “us”, with regards to the papacy and confession. But in Latin America I had learned that most Catholics were self-professed polytheists. Saint worshipers. Often seeing Christ’s primary role as being the child of Virgin Mary. It gradually made sense that all of the bible’s characters and all of the church’s as well, would be included in the story. Had they too not cared about the Community of Faith? Had they not lived and died for it as well? And its no surprise that the Virgin appears to people all over Latin America as she really is everywhere: every park, apartment complex, bus, and household as her painted, framed or carved.

They’re lucky. I don’t have pictures of my grandmas. So when I found a one-dollar bracelet covered in icons of Mary, I could feel my insides grinning with mischief. I didn’t have to be jealous of the Catholics. If they could have a mother-god so could I. I had my grandmothers and I could have Mary too. Though, I’ve never prayed to her because I hardly know her. We had never met in my protestant upbringing. But sometimes I stare at her, sure she wants to wipe off that matronly face. I ask her if she knows my grandmothers. She says she does.