Parting of the Red Sea

Fresh from the womb and cut from the vine, they dressed me in white and sprinkled holy water on my head. I imagine us fitting perfectly in that scenario. I imagine my big-haired older sister wrapping her little hand around my father’s finger, and my mother smiling wide as I coo. I equate my baptism with The Lion King; I am young Simba as the pastor lifts me above the congregation with outstretched arms. All the wild animals of Africa, or literally, the white-haired ladies and their liver-spotted husbands, roar in appreciation.

I was raised on red kool-aid that represented the Red Sea, Jesus’ blood, and Hebrew sacrifice. I was also raised on color-by-number Adam and Eve, which, depending on the publisher, sometimes depicted them with an apple tree and sometimes did not. Naturally, the former was favored, due to the magic marker color variety an apple tree brought. We frequented the “Jesus is your shepherd, and you are his sheep” lesson. Maybe it’s because kids are simple and cute and sheep are simple and cute and gluing cotton balls to construction paper is, in theory, simple and cute, but I now regard the texture of cotton balls with utter putrescence.

As for the years of puberty and the immense tension it created, church was my vice. As for the correlation between corndogs, mini-scooters, and Jesus, it’s still a mystery. Nonetheless, church was there. Church’s voice wasn’t cracking, and church wasn’t finding out cooties is a fake disease that boys don’t have. It was a sense of stability that pretending I was watching Disney instead of MTV when mom walked by didn’t provide.

It’s been sixteen years; sixteen years of becoming the Bible-memory prodigy, of Sunday school and Vacation Bible School, and of tithing ten percent of my measly allowance. I know when the petit blonde woman will choose to embellish the worship song and when she’ll refrain. I know when the sermon really gets to people, not by the copious amounts of amen’s from the ladies to my right, but when the chairs squeak as people get nervous. I know each pastor’s quirks and ticks and speech patterns. Mostly, I know that the vaguely acquainted women will pinch my face and tell me I’m pretty until the day they die. This truth, being that these people have some sort of unbeknownst love, leaves no room for my adolescent cynicism, and for that, I will be an eternal paradox of gratefulness and confusion.