pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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WELL SAVE MY SOUL!

I am a contributing writer to our local independent newspaper and wrote an article about how strange it was to return to my grandmother's tiny farming community and her Southern Baptist church for her funeral.

Most of my family still lives in the most conservative state in the South, and that is where I returned with my "manly" haircut and nose ring and urban garb for this funeral.

Then I waxed poetic about the experience in the paper—delved into how strange it is, when you think about it, that otherwise sociable people in a community with little variation are stopped dead in their tracks by difference; questioned why those same women who get up early to cook food for a wake and hug strangers who visit their church and doted on you as a child are now leery of you and your um decision to deviate from their norm.

Now I don't know if it's this way in other rural communities but, in Southern Baptist ones, difference is considered dangerous and wrong, is something to be suspicious of and cured.

Conversion drives the Baptist faithful (whose newest plan, incidentally and according to my mother's mission magazines, is to convert the Mormons).

And try to convert me the community did. My grandmother's preacher—who stared at me with contempt when I stuck out my hand for a handshake—knew immediately that I was the granddaughter who had long worried my grandmother, the queer one, the one who left town as soon as I scraped together the resources to do so and rarely returned.

He told me that my grandmother died worried for my soul because she knew that I would burn in hell.

I drove home thinking about how odd the accident of family is, about how strange it is that I give leeway to people I would otherwise never endure simply because I am tied to them by blood or family connections and know that we will circle into and out of each others' lives for as long as we breathe. And I thought about the fact that our family tree includes all these details about my grandmother's five children, sixteen grandchildren, and eighteen great-grandchildren, but not a single word about the woman I had been partnered with for, at that point, six years, the person I considered my actual family. And I thought about the power of naming something—and of or choosing to record or name something.

Then I wrote about my cogitations in a public forum.

I don't feel that I was disrespectful of my family, but I did write about how strange it feels to always be Other when I'm in their midst—to notice the silence that follows even the most casual declaration about my life if the declaration includes a reference to my partner; to worry that, in my nieces and nephews eyes, I am not the whole and interesting person that I am but am instead their queer old-maid aunt, a stranger defined by whom I love; about how strange it is to not belong with the people I am bound to by blood and birth, and to have to, instead, form my own chosen family with people who never even knew me as a child.

The newspaper posted a few archival articles online and, well, I used the actual name of my grandmother's church—and that is how a parishioner discovered my article, which he then shared with the church and my family.

And now my truth telling has apparently, caused a scandal and prompted fury in many members of my family.

Now no one would accuse my aunt Becca of being a kind woman. She has never been able to sustain a relationship for more than a year or so and is, really, just a mean and bitter and bigoted old thing.

My most enduring memory of her is this: every Christmas Eve of my childhood, she passed out purple mimeographed sheets of revised carol lyrics for us to sing and then very carefully gathered these pages back up (which means that I have never managed to snag a copy, although I have tried).

See, the Christmas carols in the Baptist hymnal are just not Baptist enough for Aunt Becca, so she reworded them for the benefit of the souls of her nieces and nephews.

Here is the first verse of the only one that I can remember with certainty:

On the first day of Christmas my true lord came for me, but I was not reeeeeeeady....

Then we go on a merry holiday journey through Hell.

Aunt Becca sent me the following letter after reading my article, along with two heavily highlighted paperback books about the sin of homosexuality:

Dear Bird,
I did not get a chance to talk with you alone at Christmas and don't know if your mother told you or not, but a church member read your newspaper article and gave me a copy.

I was hurt, to say the least, that you would do this to us and to Mother's memory.

It was briefly discussed at Sunday evening's service (the last one I attended) that Beulah's gay granddaughter had written an article.

I am sorry that you feel the way you do, but I happen to love our community, our church, and our people.

I have become a Christian, and was librarian and on the flower committee. I placed many books in the library in Mother's memory, as she taught a class there for many years.

I'm not one to argue with anyone about religion—however, it is every Christian's duty to attempt to witness and save the souls of those they love.

There are some people I hope to never see in heaven, but you are not one of them. It grieves me and breaks my heart to think that those I love will not get there.

I'm even tempted to tear a page from my Bible and send it to you—please read 2 Timothy, chapters 2 and 3.

In Christian love,
Aunt Becca

Sigh.

LISTENING TO: Toad the Wet Sprocket, currently the song "Before You Were Born": Before you were born someone kicked in the door. You are not wanted here; get back where you belong....

READING: Paradise Garden: A Trip Through Howard Finster's Visionary World (Robert Peacock with Annibel Jenkins)

3:57 p.m. - 2005-03-06

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