Mary Thompson
My parents may have handed me my first book of saints. I may have picked it out myself at the visiting library on the church plaza. I could found it on our bookshelf, read and discarded by my older siblings, and finally now mine. Or maybe it was all of these. Our bookshelf had to have held more than one Children’s Book of Saints or My First Book of Saints, or something similar. It possibly had a puffy, plastic cover or was a thin, slim edition held together with staples, the Catholic version of a zine. It doesn’t matter really, how many we had, what they were called, they had all the same stories – abridged and somewhat sanitized stories of bloody martyrdom and hagiographies paired with daily Christian lessons, reasons why we should pray and celebrate feast days. What I do clearly remember is pouring over this book, these books. I loved the saints. They remain my favorite part of Catholicism. I loved the women that turned into men, into non-human or super human figures, who refused their fate through faith. I loved Joan of Arc. I imagined being her, dressed in armor, leading an army, being burnt at the stake, but not feeling a thing – the physicality of my body removed from me. I was a devout child, but I wasn’t always good. By the second grade, I told everyone I planned to become a nun. I was cursed with a temper, though. My father told me that he had a temper too. That it ran in the blood. That I would have to control it. To struggle is holy. I was named after the Virgin Mary, but she was too good for me. I could not imagine myself a mother. In my saint books I found another Mary, Saint Mary of the Desert. This Mary was young and bad. I now know she is Saint Mary of Egypt and she traded sexual favors for money. But at the time, the book was purposefully vague on the nature of her sins and all I knew was that she was so bad she couldn’t step foot within a church. Her wickedness stopped her; her impure soul created a barrier. In the car outside church, I asked my mother if there was any point of going in. I had sinned. I would no longer be allowed into heaven so Mass seemed entirely irrelevant. My mother explained Purgatory to me. To struggle is holy. Jesus doubted in the garden. Denied, Mary of the Desert wanted entrance. She prayed for forgiveness, promised a life of asceticism. She took up life in the desert, starved slowly to death. Removed herself from her body. Became a saint. Her discarded carcass did not decay. In the Southern California summer, I would wear my swimsuit around the house because we didn’t have a pool. I would lay on the cool tile floor of the kitchen with my arms outspread trying to find a little relief from the heat. I wondered if I could be like Mary of the Desert. I wanted to suffer so as not to be bad. To transform from something human into something more. To not decay or rot away. I knew I couldn’t. I was born at the wrong time. It was a foolish hope to want to be lost in something as ancient and holy as sainthood. Saint Mary of Egypt’s feast day is April 1. The patron saint of fools wanting to be pure.
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