meanderings

i certainly do not claim divine revelation for my christmas stories. however, neither can i claim them completely of myself. they are a mystery. tiny slithers of my heart and life that come together, layer upon layer, in a story presented to my reluctant children. too raw and emotional a gift to ever be desired, but hard to refuse...

i believe that god's revelation is not limited to any one source. it is possible that god can be experienced through buddhism or hinduism or islam or any other religious tradition. but this is not what i know. what i know is that god has always been revealed to me through the life of jesus...


CHRISTMAS STORY - 2005


When did she first know? It was hard to say. Certainly not in the beginning. Not in those first precious moments of birth as her child lay wet and warm upon her breast, her dark eyes shining like stars in a clear night sky, her skin as fresh and smooth as honey, her hair in sheep’s wool tufts dark as raisins. It was not in the eyes that sought her mother’s face in those first moments of life, even before her tiny mouth sought the warm sustenance of her mother’s milk.
No. She never suspected then what was to come. Never knew how this child would break her heart in so many different ways. She only knew the joy of her daughter, a daughter who did not open her womb and was thus welcome. Two sons in three years of marriage had assured her value in a society that welcomed sons, tolerated daughters and ostracized any woman tragic enough to be barren. A daughter was not a tragedy when there were brothers. Even then, a son could be adopted by marriage. It was rare but not unknown. Only barrenness could not be forgiven. But barrenness now was a fate that would be better for her daughter than sons. A child with no husband would be as low as her daughter could go. It was an unwanted, but not impossible destiny.
With a heavy sigh, she reflected back upon those first signs, subtle and easily dismissed. A slight tremor in the small fingers around a bowl. A vacant stare and an unresponsive posture for longer than an act of daydreaming would warrant. These small disturbances progressing to strange mutterings and guttural sounds, brief in the beginning. Moving to ever longer and more violent convulsions and outbursts.
She never mentioned her fears. Telling of them would have made them real. Her daughter’s actions could surely be explained by fever or fatigue. Her husband would not want to be bothered with a woman’s worry.
By this time, there were two more sons and her daughter, Miriam, was entirely in her mother’s domain. Miriam’s contact with her father and brothers was minimal and pleasant. Miriam never lost her early beauty. She kept the brightness of her eyes and complexion and her curly dark hair. She made all those around her smile with her early, infectious laughter.
She had almost forgotten those smiles, the laughter that had once been her joy. They were in such a distant past.
What she could easily remember was THE DAY. The day that ripped a hole in her family that could never be repaired. The day that her husband’s eyes on her, once so warm and proud, went cold and angry and forever distant.
It had actually been a good morning. Miriam had spent a quiet time helping her with the morning bread. Her husband had left for the synagogue with her sons. Soon she would go with Miriam to the market for vegetables and meat. It was a rare time of relaxation and peace in what had become an increasingly difficult dilemma over Miriam’s strange behavior.
And then her youngest son returned, seeking some forgotten necessity, followed by his softly smiling and tolerant father. What was it that triggered what happened? Who knew? What did it matter? All she knew was that the harsh sound emanating from her daughter’s lips could not be ignored. The convulsive jerks that propelled Miriam across the room caused her youngest son to empty his bladder as he ran whimpering into his father’s arms. She ran instinctively to Miriam to wrestle her to the ground, attempting vainly to contain her flailing arms and legs, completely helpless to prevent her low pitched rumblings of incomprehensible clamor.
It was a long episode; and when Miriam was finally spent and motionless on the floor, she raised exhausted eyes to her son and husband. Her son’s head lay completely hidden in her husband’s neck. His father’s stunned, incensed eyes fixed hers in a vice of fear and shame. For here was sin, BIG and UGLY and PUBLIC. Blame spread a burning chasm between them as visible as the inert child at her feet. No child suffered like this without SIN. A parent’s sin. The theology of this was unquestionable. She felt completely exposed in the nakedness of her deceit. Their child was possessed of a demon and she had kept it secret.
Her guilt was a palpable presence in the room. It was a dark, heavy thing smothering the more immediate sobbing of her small son to whom she could not move to offer comfort. Her shame could be touched and named. It was sin and it would mark them forever. Without a word, her husband left the room as quickly and silently as she had left his heart.
Miriam stirred. Her eyes were indolent, her face slack and empty of any childishness. Miriam looked at her mother with what seemed a supernatural gleam of malevolence as the small dark head lifted itself from the floor. An immediate and consuming hatred bubbled beneath her breast and she grabbed the soft flesh of Miriam’s arm and jerked her to her feet. “You evil, wicked thing!” she screamed, spit escaping in small droplets onto Miriam’s face. “Beelzebub!” She shook her. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking her. She wanted to shake the demon from within her, wanted to shake away the look on her husband’s face.
Miriam’s eyes held a moment of alarm and fear. She had never treated Miriam with anything other than kindness after her fits, her fear too terrifying to give way to anger before today. But today all control was lost. Fear was a wild animal beneath her breast and her only thought was to destroy this demon that had taken over her daughter and destroyed her life. She was in pain and every instinct urged her to retaliate.
The moment of alarm left Miriam’s eyes to be replaced by a manic flash and an insane laughter that became a shrieking mass of convulsions. Her anger left. All that remained was a hopelessness that tingled through her body and buzzed her fingertips. It was over. It was almost relief. The tension that had permeated her from her first awareness was gone; but with its passage, she was gripped with an overwhelming sense of loneliness and sorrow. She held the trembling body of her child and waited.
The rabbi had come. Her husband’s shame would not prevent him from doing what was right under the law. He had always been scrupulous in his observance of the law. Others credited his devotion to his extreme good fortune of four sons. Those who had envied him before would be the first to gloat over his denigration now. His, and her, humiliation, was completed as the rabbi tried vainly to call the demon out of her daughter’s frail body. It was futile.
The rabbi’s manner was formal. Who would have suspected their family of such sin? His glance in her direction spoke of his suspicion as to who was to be blamed. He spoke kindly to her husband and to their sons. He would return, he said. Perhaps another would be successful where he had failed. They would not. Miriam’s episodes would become worse, not better.
Four years had passed, an eternity. There were no more sons. She was little more than a servant in her own house. Her sons moved closer to their father when they shared the same room with her. They were polite and distant. Gone were the days when there would be treasures brought to her lap. There were no more adventures to be whispered into her ears as she cuddled her youngest by the fire. No one in their house touched another. She watched her son grow quiet and morose, withdrawing into himself, a solemn old man in the body of a cherub.
She watched, and she hated. She hated her husband with his cold formality and his self-righteousness, priding himself on allowing both her and Miriam to remain under his care. She hated the rabbis who passed in and out of their house, each one attempting to prove his worth by ridding the house of its unwelcome guest. She even hated her daughter, as she seemed to be possessed of more and more evil each day, each repulsive behavior being supplanted by an even more reprehensible one.
Most of all, she hated herself, with an all encompassing hate that was the more powerful for its helplessness. What was her sin that had caused this vicious attack? What was there within her that was so vile that God had sent this demon to demand such awful revenge? And yes, she hated God. Hated him with a passion that was a burning nausea in the deepest part of her. Hated the God that would punish her for a sin she didn’t understand. Hated the God that would punish her children in his lust for retribution. Hated a God that made her a woman and powerless. Hated the God that let her give birth to a daughter. Hated the God that could provoke such hate.
Hate was the bitter taste in her mouth each morning as she awoke and the final bile in her throat that she swallowed before sleep. She had no more kindness to offer this demon possessed daughter. She had only her duty. A duty that gave her no pleasure but filled her days between the emptiness of night.
It was just such a duty that would carry her today to the water’s edge. Where would she find Miriam today and in what condition? A vision of Miriam’s body bloated and discolored rose unbidden into her mind. Would drowning be a release from her torment? Why did Miriam’s convulsions never toss her into the water when most of her nights were spent there now?
As the demons within Miriam became stronger, it became harder and harder for her mother to restrain her, to keep her from her wild ramblings and incoherent screaming through the town and the wilderness around the lake. Her own strength was no match for Miriam’s when the demons were upon her, and there was no one else who would touch her. Miriam would make anyone who did so unclean.
Her husband would leave any room that Miriam occupied, as would their sons. But Miriam seldom occupied any place anymore. As her child’s body moved towards womanhood, the demons had grown more powerful. It was the best she could do to get Miriam to take food between her episodes of possession. Her hair could seldom be combed and fell in wild spirals around her face. The people of the town knew to avoid her. The fishermen by the lake made fun of her, and worse.
Too often now when she searched for Miriam, she would find her by the water, her clothes disheveled or missing, the evidence of abuse apparent on her bruised, youthful skin. She knew to always bring a cloak to cover her child’s nakedness and shame, to coax her home through the stares of the townspeople, to attempt to wash and feed her before the demons struck again.
She knew she should begin her search, but her weariness was like a pile of winter cloaks holding her down, making any movement an effort of will. One day, soon perhaps, she would find Miriam’s lifeless body and it would be over. It would be the end of Miriam’s suffering but not of hers. Her guilt would survive. It would endure as long as she did. Her life seemed a long road with endless miles of shame and grief. She wished to end her own journey at the water’s edge.
But she wouldn’t. As long as Miriam had need of her, she would take the cloak and search for her daughter. And even if her search ended with Miriam’s dead body, could she leave the sight of her sons? No longer could she touch them or hold them, her embrace no longer a comfort to them. But could she ever leave the sight of her children? Could she ever leave them to their pain to alleviate hers?
She could not.
And so she lifted a body wracked by grief and guilt to its feet and made her slow way to the water.
There was a strange crowd there. A boat anchored at the edge of the shallow water. There were lots of men but no indication of nets or fishing tools or a heavy catch to be salted and preserved. There were women at a fire by the beach cooking fish and bread, but they were not the usual women seen in the late night or early morning with the rough talking fishermen. These were no fishermen’s whores. These were mothers and women of substance. She recognized at least one finely woven cloak of Magdelen cloth, its rich color and soft weave for which their town was famous evident in the early morning sun. The women were laughing and talking together as they fixed what would be a large meal. She watched them as a starving woman, not for their food but for their conversation and their easy laughter.
She was wistfully watching their camaraderie when she heard Miriam. Sometimes the demons were still upon her in the morning and this was one of those times. Miriam came shrieking down the water line directing herself toward a single man. He turned to her and she fell in a spasmotic fit onto the sand. He spoke something too distant for her to hear and Miriam became quiet. A few moments later, Miriam convulsed again. Again, the man spoke to her and her trembling ceased.
This happened three more times as the crowd of men and some of the women began to move towards them. She moved closer to, wanting to see what this stranger was doing to her daughter. She ran when the crowd began to block her view and she saw him bend down before Miriam and touch her hair as he spoke again. His words were too low for her to hear but the shock of his hand on Miriam’s head drew an amazed gasp from her. But the crowd was unmoved. Did he somehow not understand what he had done? No one could touch her daughter. No rabbi in his attempts to remove the demons had ever gotten even close to Miriam. And yet, these people seemed to accept this from this man as if it were a normal thing, something natural and expected. Who was this man?
When he had spoken the last time, Miriam had calmed again and had lifted her face to his. Her eyes attempted to focus on him, but they grew wild again and retreated into the back of her head leaving the blood-lined whites bulging out and a low rumble beginning in her throat. The man reached forward then, gently placing his hands to hold back her hair. He cupped her face in them.
The roaring in Miriam’s ears subsided, the fire in her body left her and was replaced by the warmth of a blanket heated by the hearth. A cloud lifted from her sight and she began to focus on a man who knelt before her, the wind softly blowing his hair against his face. He had the kindest eyes she had ever seen. His hands on her cheeks were the rough, calloused hands of a working man. They felt like her father’s. A memory came to her then of her father holding her face in just such a manner and saying to her, “I have the prettiest daughter in Magdela!” It brought a glow to her heart and tears to her eyes.
The man smiled then, and she thought of her mother’s smile. Her mother used to look at her in that same way as she played with her handmade doll. Her mother would look at her and smile, touch the curly hairs around her forehead and smile again. And Miriam would know that she was loved. This strange man had her mother’s smile.
“You are free,” he said simply.
And she was. She could feel it. Her body was her own. Her mind held her own thoughts and her own memories. Tears that had been drops became a stream.
“How do I thank you?” she began, but he just smiled again and turned to the women, motioning them to see to her needs.
A warm, soft cloak was placed on her shoulders. The men began to move away, talking among themselves at what they had witnessed. Another woman brought a small cloth to wash her face. Still another brought her a small piece of bread dipped in fish oil.
“Are you her mother?” she heard one of the women ask, causing her to be aware for the first time of her mother kneeling in tears at the edge of the crowd. She barely recognized the women who whispered that she was. She was a worn and much older woman than the mother of Miriam’s memory. Her mother kept bobbing her ascent and kept repeating in a sobbing whisper, “She is my daughter. She is my daughter.”
“And he is my son,” the woman gestured at the stranger who had freed Miriam from her demons. “I will care for her as my own,” she promised as Miriam’s mother collapsed, released from her own demons by the woman's words.