Happy Birthday Gramma Rose!

My maternal grandmother turned 91 today. She was born in 1917, which seems like an impossible age away. You might as well be talking about the 1800s. She lived on a farm and rode a horse and buggy to church every Sunday, which was in the one-room school. She remembers when the Model-Ts came out, which for me is like hearing that you were there when Jack the Ripper was stalking the streets of London and how you had to take your mercury pills to calm your vapors.

She said they were amazed by the radio and she felt the need to tell us that there were no pictures, just sound. She didn't say it like it was better, just matter-of-factly. Like, you kids probably didn't know this because of the Internet, but there was a time before television! Right, the Dark Ages. But she's a sweet old lady, so it was just one more odd, funny thing to come out of her mouth. She talked about the first telephone the family got, at the prompting of my sister. As a side note, I don't really know why people tend to talk about how much phones have changed over the years, disproportionately more than any other technology. We're not constantly pointing out how different cash registers are, or restaurants. I think those examples came up because we went to a restaurant afterwards. Anyway.

That was only a little of what we talked about. Mostly, she wanted to talk about death and not being a good enough person. I mean, we touched on how great her kids turned out, and the amazing travels she's had in her life, what she really wanted to talk about was how much she wanted to be with her dead husband and how much better that's going to be.

And everyone, even me, said, yes, that'll be nice, won't it, when it happens. That was a lot going on in one sentence, but we basically were saying a) yes, you're going to die soon and b) that there's an afterlife where the soul of your dead loved ones will be waiting for you and it's like the most perfect retirement home EVER. Of the ones that said, "Yes, that'll be the bestest, huh?" I was the only one who was thinking, "except for b)." My wife thought the same thing, but she wasn't going to lie to a woman who she just met a year or so ago, so she just looked happy for her and was nice.

I understand the need to feel a purpose in your life, and I understand the pressures of going along with how you were raised. So, I can't flick my white-haired nonogenarian gramma shit for doing the best that she could, in difficult times.

What I don't get are my parents and my siblings. I love them, I even like them, but I do not understand them because they DO believe in b). And they really don't get me, either. They love me and like me a whole lot, but I'm kind of a mystery to them. The things we don't see the same are pretty fundamental assumptions of ourselves.

My family loves to have verbal scraps about things, and we love to talk religion, politics, and morality and we love to do it all the time. It makes for a weird Thanksgiving, but I do enjoy debating the existence of God.

The discussions get heated, and people play dirty, but there's a genuine joy of scrapping, of getting your point across the face of your opponent and getting a laugh, too. It's pretty overwhelming, if you're not used to it. I am, and I have been doing research all my life on the topic of God. Not that you haven't, but I've seen your library.

For the faint of heart, I must point out that my grandmother's 91st birthday was not one of those occasions, but my sister said something that normally would have triggered a rapid escalation. Here's how it went down: we were talking about different places my family's lived through the years and out of nowhere, my sister says, "Oh yeah, and what about that house where I saw Jesus?" and our heads snapped in her direction.

I said, "Jesus?"

"Well, Jesus or an angel."

"Orrrrr ... ?"

"Orrrrr what? It was my imagination?"

"Well, maybe ..."

"Okay, well, it wasn't my imagination, because I've thought of that and here's what happened. I would go to bed each night in this one house and for a while there I would wake up and there would be a demon there trying to get in me" and she gestured with her hands that it was trying to float into her chest area, where I understand it's easiest for demons to enter. Probably has something to do with the soul. But I'm interrupting her. "and I would freak out and run to my parent's room ... I mean our parents ... I mean Mom and Dad ..." and she sort of loses her train of thought for a second as she remembers once again that we have the same parents.

"And I would run into their room and the demon would stop and go away. This kept happening and I was told it was all in my head, go to bed, there are no monsters, but then we went to church and there was a guy there who said our house was haunted by a demon and it was because there was an old well there and that's where the demon lived.

"And our house was new, like two or three years old, so Mom and Dad are like, 'No, there's no old well,' but he draws out the layout of our house and it's exactly right and tells us to look for the old well, and there it was and then the demon got destroyed," which to my mind always gets glossed over when she tells this story, "So, I slept all through the night and I woke up the next morning and it felt like Christmas, and I wanted to be with Mom and Dad but I didn't want to wake them so that made it feel even MORE like Christmas, but I went up to their room and in front of the door was an angel.

"And I know it wasn't my imagination because I had never seen an angel like this, I always thought of angels as chubby babies, but here was this guy and he was big and there was a light around him and he said the demon was gone. And he was, and that's how I know it wasn't my imagination."

Well, for my family, that's the equivalent of that old saw about how Uncle Jimmy once got his pants caught in the tree and was attacked by squirrels. There's a lot of nodding as if to say I know it's weird, but it really happened.

Except of course it didn't, not the way they're talking about. The man that described our house was older, had lived and been involved in the community for some time and it's not unreasonable for him to know that there was an old well where our house was. It's also not unreasonable to assume that if my parents were in a new house, knowing that they were poor at the time (and it was no secret, especially at the church that my family was poor), that the house would be built by a developer who produced a lot of houses with a standard plan. Perhaps the man didn't even know he was doing it, but he was drawing on this subconscious knowledge to produce this "answer". There is an old well in that location, this is where it is according to your layout, if you have a demon it's going to be here.

That subconscious thing is an amazing thing, though. It really makes me aware of how we should better know our minds and discover what we can do when we don't know we can't. But when that happens to a religious person, they don't get to take any credit for it, it comes from God. I've heard people say some pretty cracked out things and attribute it to some Almighty Telepath, but when it's a really cool insight, something that person would normally never produce consciously, that's when it pisses me off. Those moments are to be treasured and learned from, but if it comes from God, all you have left is "hey, wasn't that neat, when God told me that? Sure wish that happened more often ..."

I digress. The more plausible story, I think, is that a young girl had some pretty scary hallucinations, and then everyone got caught up in it. I do like the symmetry of the story, though, where an angel appears at the end (like a mirror of the demon at the beginning) to announce that the story's over. I mentally picture him dusting his hands off and then looking around, nodding, and then vanishing. Thanks for the help earlier, buddy, when there was a demon, remember? Sure you do, you just said it was gone.

Anyway, my family's full of these stories, so, growing up, I thought I was weird because I wasn't seeing demons and being filled with the wonder and glory of the presence of God. Then I thought it was because of sin. THEN I thought it was some secret, hidden sin that I didn't even know I was doing. And it was.

It was questioning.