My White Supremacist Mom, The End

 

Seriously get this book!

 

“God.” She said defiantly.

 

Mom said that the reason the country was so far astray (besides, presumably, Socialism) was that we’re “no longer” a Christian nation. (I remember seeing this “One nation under God” idea in second-cousiny Facebook feeds before I blocked them, but the violence of the sentiment never truly hit me until I started writing this.) I wish I had said something coherent about the founders or the Liberty Bell or Catholicism under Hitler, but I did not. I wish I’d said that forcing everyone into the same religion was not only counter to the values of Christianity (well.) but part of the very definition of fascism.

 

So that was the conversation that finally propelled us out the door. On the way out, I told mom not to contact me, not to send cards or anything, a directive that she (vexingly and also sort of touchingly) has ignored. In the car, I horror-movie screamed. Back in the Nineties, I was in a housefire and the small comfort of that day was that I got the line “Screaming like a David Lynch movie” on the news. This wasn’t that, wasn’t any aesthetically tortured wail, it was full horror. It was a scream of a lifetime of religious oppression, of standing in front of police cars, of friends boxed into riots when the street-fires were starting. It was a scream for the then-200,000 dead and those who were vicious and scared and stupid enough to deny the loss. Because it was a scream, I’m embarrassed and ashamed, but I can’t actually think of a more rational response.

 

As Sweetie (Never, anymore, afraid of a panic) drove us down the country roads to my sister’s, I did that five senses thing to quell the panic: I see mailboxes, road, a sparrow, a yellow stripe, my purse. I hear the car, my voice, Sweetie’s voice, my breath. I can touch the door, my scarf, my jeans. I can smell coffee and peach-pear fizzy water. I can taste gum.

 

By some miracle of compartmentalization, a skill that has never come naturally to me, we spent a lovely day with the niece and nephews. Our regular comic shop was closed, but we did thoroughly enjoy our traditional thrift store run. I bought way too many random things.

 

By the time Sweetie and I were picking up road trip coffee in our nearby old hometown (SO many feelings of love and beauty and loss there) I was posting through my feelings and starting to make estrangement official. I told my sister, brother, and dad the next day that I would be avoiding all mom-related activities for the foreseeable future.

 

For now, it’s not so bad, except those nauseating prayer cards on which I need to remember to write “refused”. I run the family Zooms and the Liberal Cousins Side Convo has been great at keeping in touch. I’ll feel guilty adding extra logistics to the family routine, but I’ll figure it out as I go.

 

I’ve never understood how people with Trumpian relatives can feel safe around them, even pre-Covid. I don’t know how anyone avoids feeling the violence of their beliefs all the way in their bones. Do they think that the violence the seditionists marinate in won’t come for them? Do they interpret violent beliefs toward black and brown and queer bodies as somehow not a real threat?  Or are they just too scared to do something about it? At any rate, I’m glad of these miserable years of trying to do something about it, even when that something is only to try and get myself safe.