Home, At the Church, On Christmas Eve

Nicole Wasylak

It is moments such as that one where I feel overwhelmed by both joy and sorrow, like some coin that’s spinning so fast it cannot decipher where one side ends and the other begins. They bleed into one another and share the edges of skin that are both warm yet shivering, just like the hot sweat which cools you beyond comfort. So many contradictions in such a simple world. I wondered how I would ever fully comprehend them. If they might one day stop making me spin so much.

In the hometown that felt as foreign as it did familiar, I peeled myself away from the snowflakes dancing before the yellow streetlamp, finding myself walking down that old winding path that was the only thing shoveled free of snow. I’m sure they had laid salt down before the little storm had blown in. The edges were too perfect, as though carved from the hand of a clay master.

I walked along it, following the winding pattern that seemed to be tracing cursive into the earth. I wondered what the words were. Wondered if they were welcoming or if they were warning.

I began to approach the wide double doors, the ones that were as extravagant as they were heavy, and it made me wonder what other structures had doors like this, but I came up blank. This building was crafted in a way where everything from its doors to its windows were quintessential, and if they were put on any other building, it would look both tacky and blasphemous, and I wondered how an institution could be so smart yet so foolish at the same time.

The stained windows were glowing tonight. In fact, besides the streetlights and the occasional yellow Christmas tree twinkling in little ranch houses, these lights were the only ones to really stand out on this strip of street. Like two pairs of technicolor eyes, they watched me quietly as I began to climb the steep stairs, squinting their hoods at me as if trying to decipher if I was a familiar or not. The church grew quiet with regard, or maybe God told it that I had not been inside in a long time, for when my hand reached for the heavy iron handle, a gust of wind swept through, barely missing me under the great stone building. I turned around, regarding whatever layer of reality my eyes weren’t crafted to see, bowing my head slightly. It was as though I was both venerating its presence as well as reminding it that not even I knew what my own intentions were.

I’ll admit it. I struggled to fully open the door. I wasn’t weak, but there seemed to be a part of me that was reminded that I also was not strong. I was humbled by the weight of such a door, and wondered if that, too, was purposeful, a small test of will for those who entered, one that said: Either help yourself or be helped. I was never one to need much help past a certain age.

I guess that’s why I had never really entered this building past my communion. I probably couldn’t get those double doors open by myself at the age of nine, and I sure wasn’t going to allow anyone else to open them for me.

So that’s what I’ll explain to God when I see him. I’ll tell him that I didn’t want anyone else opening that door for me, because He made me stubborn in His image, and since I couldn’t open them by myself, I was willing to wait until my twenties to do so.

So many things hit you at once in a church.

For me, it’s always the smell. It pushes from the inside of itself like gas in a balloon, overfilling the yawning space until it presses against the windows and doors like bodies on a train car. Upon my opening the door, the incense flew out, not unlike someone puffing out a hit of smoke.

Frankincense and myrrh. The defining scents of the Catholic Church. It was hard to associate it with anything other than the feeling of being watched. Whether it was by your mother’s eye or God’s watchful one, church was never a place where one didn’t feel observed or dare I even say it, scorned. I guess that was part of the point, getting children to behave because they knew their parents would smite them if they didn’t. Likewise, the parents would do so because God had promised them a soft seat in heaven if they did.

Do we ever really shed the skin of our childhood? Let it pool at our ankles and crispen with decay as a newer, wiser layer takes its place? Or do we just morph it? Allow it to stretch over places that were always solidified and always going to remain so?

They always felt so infallible to me.

You get older and the veil of their omniscience thins as much as their hair and skin do.

They shed their unerring facades as you grow, and what lies underneath is far too sensitive to be the sinew of a parent. They become bare, naked, childlike in some disconcerting way; it’s as uncomfortable as it is pitiful. It turns your entire perspective towards them on its head. And because that was the only relationship you could fully depend on since the moment you were born, it results in changes that can never be reversed.

It’s blameless.

So why does it feel almost unforgivable?

But this is the place for that, isn’t it?

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive  you.

I’m not sure who said that. Maybe it was in that little book that’s always tucked in the back of the pews like a secret note. Maybe my dad assured me one day after he read it himself somewhere. Or, maybe God whispered it in those dreams he never appeared to me in.

Wherever it came from, I wasn’t so faithful toward its meaning. The ease with which such a profound thing is described confounded me.

In my twenty-two years, I have at least learned that forgiveness has never been, and never will be, simplistic. And even though the cathedral ceilings stretched their fingers toward God and the seats were gilded with brass and the crucifix was more grandiose than any real human, the secret about a place like this was that it was built to view everything from the opposite approach: simplistically. You show up, hang up your coat, toss a dollar into that brown wicker collect basket, chant a few psalms, and go back home to all of the wrong things you think can be forgiven for over a piece of bread and a sip of watery wine.

Sometimes I hoped God couldn’t hear my thoughts. Other times I wished he was real just so he could.

I let the heavy door close behind me. Despite how cumbersome it was, it didn't make much noise at all. It whispered as it shut, and I turned around and stared at it, knitting my eyebrows together, wondering what humorless thing it might have said.

I hung my coat on the large oak rack. There was only one other jacket dangling from it, like the last limp leaf on a tree at the end of autumn.

I turned my head toward the direction of the altar, the nave stretching out before me like the eminent neck of a superior.

Still, there was something oddly placating about being in the heart of the church alone. For one, it was saturated with warmth, causing my cheeks and fingers to flush and tingle as blood rushed back into them. I peeled the wool hat off my head in reverence or instinct, or maybe it was just that my scalp was beginning to itch. I clutched it to my chest awkwardly, mimicking the way that  respectable people do it in movies or at ball games, letting my eyes roam around the rest of the interior.

The cathedral steepled its great limestone hands over my head, and I immediately felt smaller than I already did. It made sense. I could never imagine God wanting us to feel large.

I could sense the mouth of space around me, the empty echoes it left around my ears, and I couldn’t help but feel as if I was on the inside of some monstrous seashell.

I took a few steps forward.

Click. Click. Click.

The pews were strewn with cedar garland, speckled with little winter berries and dusted with silver glitter, hanging about elegantly as it scalloped along the backs of wooden seats. It was eerily quiet, my steps too pronounced, and I winced with every one I took, as if I didn’t want God to know I was there; like a teenager sneaking back into her house, I was desperate not to let my Father’s reposeful body awaken and see that I had returned.

I looked straight ahead, allowing my gaze to settle on the hearth that was the altar, all of those votive candles blinking at me like red eyes staring from a darkened brush. They flickered rapidly, and I imagined if I could hear them, they would sound like dozens of little butterfly wings beating out of sync.

Most of them were lit despite two candles, and it was obvious only because they were both at opposite ends of the altar, the blank left and right shoulders of a great body of votives.

I looked to the stained glass windows behind the altar, noting how since it was dark out, nothing shone inward, no profusion of color and light that leaked into the walls. Instead, the light was shining outward, onto the cemetery I knew to be just outside that wall.

Still, that angel looked out at me, each hand on the shoulder of a small girl and a small boy, staring lovingly at the little girl.

The children—they looked trusting. Safe. They looked...well...holy. As for the angel?

She was pensive. At peace. Her face was only so detailed, but from what I could glean, she was mostly presentative.

Look at them. At us. Glorious. Crafted.

I made it to the front. Stood at the base of the altar. I tried to catch Jesus’s eyes where he lay on the wooden crucifix, but they were closed, his head tilted to the side as if he couldn’t even look at me.

Was he disappointed that I had left?

 And now I was back, and for what?

I felt like an estranged daughter who only called her Father now that she was in desperate need of his aid.

I walked up the steps, getting closer and closer, until I was standing at the altar, wiggling in my prickly skin, unable to discern where I should place my sweaty palms.

I opted for my sides. They were the most innocent spots I could think of.

The candles swayed with my gentle movement and breath. I felt like I was approaching a baby animal. Careful not to disturb them, I stood still as a leaf without wind, waiting for a sign to continue.

I had been up there plenty of times. I had fractions of shattered memories that were all being tugged on at different points, and I was unsure as to how to connect them.

My mother’s hand clutching mine, holding a long match to the candle, whispering below her breath as if casting a spell.

It was hard to imagine her in that lens again. Tall, present, all-knowing. Like she had the incantation for a good life and one day the church would teach it to me, too. That I would never have to worry because my lips would one day follow the movement of His word.

I grabbed a match. Lit it in some stranger's candle. Was that what I was supposed to do? What if the residue of their prayer somehow made it onto my match?

I chose the candle all the way to the right. Closed my eyes, letting my wish wash over me like I was below a shooting star.

I imagined my mother’s face. And then my father’s. Saw them blinking at me as I walked into my house, saw them with that shiny sheath of skin on, their eyes bright, their hair thick,

smiles shielding glittering teeth. I saw them inching toward me with lowered palms and long arms, with loud voices that could scare a monster away, with money and gifts that made my room as full as my belly at night.

I saw myself, open-armed, walls removed, trust in my eyes. I saw what it would be like to come home to that surety again, what it would feel like if I allowed it to exist once more.

I tried so hard. But the more I imagined it, the more I came up blank when the image felt devoid of satisfaction, almost like trying to remember a fading dream.

I opened my eyes. It felt like forcing on a shoe that no longer fit.

I lit the candle, watching as that flame was minute at first, only a pale blue eye staring at me before it swelled into a taller, yellow flame.

I thought of their eyes, but this time, they were watching me from afar; I was miles and miles away, looking out over some cliff in God knows what state, sighing with ease. I wiped the image more clearly in my mind, made its edges sharper, more defined, and suddenly, I could see everything. Could feel everything. It existed so far out of these walls and it made sense. It made more sense.

I turned around, walking with my head bowed; my steps quickened, taking up less time, somehow creating less noise.

I chose the pew my family always used to sit in. Only four rows beyond the altar. Not too close, but not far either. Their humility and their pride was always at odds, it seemed.

I placed my hands on the wooden pew in front of me, gripping onto it as I sat, allowing my legs a reprieve from their long journey. I let my shoulders droop to my sides, allowed my hands to find my lap, and just sat for a moment.

I took a few deep breaths, letting the piety fade and the familiarity wash over me. I began to let the memories collect, and could recall the priest and his rounded cheeks, the way he would splay his hands out before him as he preached, deeming the space with his holy power, delegated to him by the Almighty Great One. I recalled how he always referred to the kids as “fuzzies” and how our parents would always glance at us when he would mention something about disobedient children.

I remembered the gatherings on Easter, how we would all go back to someone’s house and shovel devilled eggs and different kinds of meats into our mouths until we fell asleep on random couches and somehow woke back up in our beds the next morning.

But mostly, I recalled the way that I never understood why everyone I called blood was always so at ease in a setting such as this one. They gained something from showing up and praying and  congregating that I always assumed I would obtain somewhere down the line. But as the line grew further and further, it seemed that I was simply going in the other direction. My distance became more than a thought; it had only begun that way, until it grew into something more viscous, and by that point, I was already gone.

I saw myself through their eyes when I returned to them—all of their eyes, and I imagined it was how Jesus’s disciples felt when they saw him rise from his tomb.

They, too, knew that he couldn’t stay.