::BLESSINGS::

There was a period, not sure how long, during my growing up when I remember being blessed. I’m not talking about blessings abounding, though looking back I’m able to see that some did. I’m talking about the ritual of Good Night.

After pajamas on, teeth brushed, I was summoned to stand before my mother. She rested her hands, softened  and smelling of Jergens lotion and tobacco, on my head.

“I bless you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” she droned. Her breath carried the DNA of Brown Derby beer.

There were no kisses. No hugs. Just a blessing.

Then one night, after the blessing, I posed a timid question.

“Aren’t we supposed to kiss and hug, or something?”

“You got a blessing. Go to bed.”

So I guess, when thinking about “being blessed,”  this memory peaks up to remind me that those blessings did happen.

Regardless of what she’d been smoking, or drinking, the blessing was its own thing. A spiritual lifeline thrown to a little girl by a mother who knew no other way to tell her she was loved.

Every night, for as long as it lasted, I grabbed that line and held on for dear life.

That lifeline became a lifeboat, one that has carried me from stark childhood to rocky marriage to the open sea of tender possibilities. I know now that sometimes a brokenhearted love lies hidden in the coldest blessing, aching to be thrown a line of its own.