The first time I ate mangos in a taco in some funky Nantucket restaurant.
I kept saying, What are these? and Anne kept saying, Mangos! Where
have you been? Where have I been? How could I have missed mangos?
Why didn’t I tell Alice, Yes, of course. You’ll be fine? And why don’t I call
my mother? On Sunday she was afraid – her voice little and confused.
They don’t want me to go. Everyone’s turned against me. Who? Why?
She couldn’t say. And playing in the back of my head all week is Steely Dan:
Are you with me Dr. Wu? Dah ta dah dah shadows … Are you crazy?
Are you high? Or just an ordinary guy who has done all he can do?
It’s two weeks after Judgment Day and everyone is accounted for.
No one I know has risen. A small part of me is disappointed –
the part that loves math for the right answers, that wants things resolved
one way or the other. Alice got bad news today about her heart.
She wouldn’t go into details but a pacemaker won’t do and surgery is planned.
It’ll be fine, she says, but I know she’s just reassuring herself.
Meanwhile I mow the lawn, take Charlie for a walk, fill the car with gas
and eat blueberry mango pancakes for dinner. Maybe I have it wrong
and the judging and the ascending are two different days
– confused by those ornate medieval paintings of white-soled virgins
rising into purple sky, their feet dangling in the ether, robes pulled tight
against cold winds. Below naked sinners writhe and rue their sensual lives.
Just in case, my mother used to say, Just in case you’re wrong.
And I still wonder – I’d ask if she’d tell me –if she secretly baptized my children
in a citizen’s baptism out of a cup of juice or a toilet bowl so they wouldn’t suffer
if their parents were wrong. When my nephew Matt was eleven he announced
there was no Santa Claus. While we covered the ears of his young cousins,
he strutted the righteous strut – the man of the house, messenger of truth
– until Christmas Eve. I do believe, he said, figuring that if he didn’t,
Santa wouldn’t believe in him. So he recanted – just in case.
And those poor believers who poured all their savings into billboards
to spread the word? Probably high – like lottery ticket buyers – on possibility,
the brain pleasure zones lighting up CAT scans on dreams of winning.
But who am I to judge? Little miracles light up my cortex closer to home.
Head down to the dark soil, I dream of the tart surprise of mango, of pale feet
dangling from purple clouds, of eleven-year-old Matt crying I do believe! I do!
Originally appeared in Noise Medium