Dogwood

   My mom died a few years back.
 
   If there’s a heaven, she’s there, for sure. That would be on account of her having a perfect score on the Catholic get-into-heaven SATs: an 800 in altruism, and an 800 in self-deprecation.
 
   If there’s no heaven, or if it’s different from what the church promised, my mom must be seriously deflated. Scams are the worst.

*          *          *

   Today is Easter. Well, in the West, anyway. Easter’s not until next Sunday for the Eastern Orthodox crew.
 
   My mom loved Easter. More than all the other Christian holidays, I think.
 
   When I first learned that Easter was, in fact, an astronomical holiday, I mentioned it to my mom. I was probably college-aged. “According to the church, Easter’s the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox – isn’t that funny?” I said, leaning on the church to break it to her gently.
 
   “That doesn’t sound right,” my mom replied. “Easter is the third day after Christ was crucified. You know, it’s the day He was Resurrected.”
 
   To my mom’s credit, she was curious enough to ask her priest about it a few days later, and he confirmed the voodoo version having to do with the moon and the equinox.
 
   “You know, Father Mariano said that Easter is indeed on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox,” my mom reported back to me. “But that just happens to be on the exact same day as the Resurrection!”
 
   My mom had sorted it out.

*          *          *

   Certain things get me to thinking about my mom. Little reminders.
 
   Hummingbirds, for instance. My mom adored hummingbirds. I think, because they’re so small and busy.
 
   Whenever she saw one, she’d say, “Hummingbirds’ hearts beat a thousand times a second. Isn’t that amazing?”
 
   I never bothered to correct her. It brought her too much joy to imagine a tiny heart beating that fast all the time. I probably shouldn’t have told her the Easter bit about the moon, for the same reason. But a card laid is a card played.
 
   Dogwoods are another thing.
 
   Whenever the dogwood trees bloom in the early Spring, I can’t help but think about my mom. She always had lots to say about dogwoods.
 
   “Look how beautiful they are!” my mom would exclaim with delight. “You know the reason why dogwoods always bloom at Easter?” she would ask, rhetorically. Then in response to her own question, she would answer: “That’s because Jesus’s cross was made from the wood from a dogwood tree.”
 
   And there was more.
 
   “Of course, dogwood trees can never get very big,” she would add in a serious tone. “They’re stunted. That’s God’s punishment for supplying the wood for the cross.”
 
   My mom was chock-full of this kind of stuff. I imagine she mostly picked it up from the parade of nuns that taught her back in her Catholic school days. Maybe it’s still being taught to kids somewhere today. Who knows?
 
   “See that cute little robin? Don’t you just love it?” my mom would ask, pointing to a robin hopping in the wet grass. “Robins have red breasts because the first robin tried to help Jesus. It flew up to Him when He was up on the cross, and pulled out some of the thorns from His crown. That poor little robin got Jesus’s blood on it, and ever since then robins have had red breasts.”
 
   There’s probably some esoteric wisdom in my mom’s folklore, but I’ve never been able to unpack it. The Christianity thing never really took root with me. I guess I have trouble finding guideposts amongst all the kooky contradictions.
 
   Human sacrifice: good or bad?

*          *          *

   I miss my mom, but not like you’d expect. I mean, it’s not a sentimental kind of missing. We just didn’t have that kind of relationship. Yes, there was a certain tenderness about her loving hummingbirds and dogwoods and robins with equal abandon. But hugging her was like hugging a ghost.
 
   I miss her because she was genuinely kind and gentle. And I always knew – although she would have disputed it – that her goodness came from within her. I mean, it wasn’t outsourced. And it certainly wasn’t taught to her by the Roman Catholic Church. It just sometimes got packaged that way.
 
   The dogwoods are in full bloom right now. I’m going to try my best to forget about the spooky cross business, and simply remember how their blooms made my mom so happy.
 
   – O.M. Kelsey