The Bridegroom Cometh

I pick up a string of garland and read the yellow tag attached to it.

“East entrance to living room.”

The cursive is a bit squiggly, like the ripple in water. Mom insists it wasn’t a stroke that weakened her writing hand and created a very slight droop on the right side of her face. She was merely in need of a good chiropractor.

Past the scrawl is an endearing trait about my mother. She uses north, south, east, and west while I and most women and a couple of guys prefer left, right, over there, and “next to that thing.”

When Mom was a kid, her dad’s side of the family conducted adult business in Cajun French. Now Mom speaks Weathervane in front of me. I need a compass or at the very least the current position of the sun to be of any use. What’s most impressive is that Mom can call a cardinal direction on the fly, sun or no sun. She orients herself by a rather large reference point that sits at the bottom of Mississippi: the ocean. Forever south. It sits like a loadstone in her brain.

Mom has mentioned several times how claustrophobic it was to live anywhere else besides the Gulf Coast. The 33,000-acre Ross Barnett reservoir in central Mississippi wasn’t big enough to suit her. It was merely a large, man-made bowl, and if you tried to find north by it, you’d go mad because it gave the impression of being everywhere.

By the time I’m done hanging garland, I’ve essentially given eyebrows to every door frame on the first floor of the house, around the east and south and southwest entrances into the living room, and also the three separate entrances into the foyer. Not only that, but I’ve hung them on both sides of each entrance. I tack up “south entrance to living room,” whip the stepladder in the other direction, and now I’m wrestling with “north entrance to kitchen.” When I descend the ladder and brush the fake pine needles off my sweater, believing myself to be finished, Dad gives my shoulder a loving squeeze. “Thanks, sweetie,” he says. “I’ll hang the rest of it.”

But now I need to leave. I’ve got to head home and start prepping for another week of school. At the first whiff of me gathering my things, Mom remembers that she has one last chore for me. Suddenly I’m hanging string lights on the fence that runs a complete square around the house. My leaving is another one of those unpleasantries that Mom would rather ignore.

Like the garland, the lights also have the yellow tags written in the same trembling hand.

“East fence starting at north side of gate.”

I’m draped in lights staring directly at the sun. I’m oaring my arms around trying to recall exactly where I am in respect to the Gulf of Mexico. Really, it seems like it’d make more sense to simply write, “From left of the gate (if you’re inside the fence) all the way down to the blackberry bush. If blackberry bush gone, run lights to bird house. If bird house no longer exists, stop when you are aligned with the window of Sara’s old bedroom. If bedroom also gone, lights are probably no longer necessary.”

When I finally finish and stack up the empty Rubbermaids and give the car keys a single spin around my finger, Mom calls to me from her armchair and says I should at least sit down for a bit and have a chat. She’s hardly had any time to talk with me, what with the hustle of Thanksgiving.

I go over to her chair and settle myself on the piece of furniture closest to her. The coffee table. “What would you like to chat about?” I ask.

“You do the talking. Tell us everything about yourself. Work, life, all that.”

“Well, I—”

“I just love that everyone was here this year. It means so much to me and your dad to be surrounded by family.” She reaches out and grabs my hand, pinching all my fingers together. “Children, grandchildren. And for our children to have such wonderful spouses.” Her voice turns breathy, wistful. She mutes the TV so it won’t kill the moment.

“Yes, all our spouses,” I joke. I, the single child. “Sorry mine was so quiet.”

Mom refuses to get any jokes I make about being single. Instead she releases my hand and points to the ceiling.

“Your husband is—” and she pauses. That rigid finger pierces through the ceiling, through my old bedroom. Past the roof to the wide and directionless sky. Anyone outside of our intimate circle would think this means my husband is dead.

“You’re the bride of the Lord,” she says, and I’ll admit I’m a bit thrown off by this. It’s a new approach. Usually she counters my single jokes with a nameless, faceless man “out there” or “coming in good time,” but now Mom’s deferring me to Jesus. I don’t know if she’s at last found peace or if this is her giving up all hope. If she has at long last consigned me to a nunnery, or, worse yet, if my singleness is like a stroke, too terrifying to acknowledge.

“And what an honor,” she says, taking up my hand again, “to have your life laid out like that.” She is smiling and there seems to be no sense of grief in her voice. And yet I can’t imagine her life-long desire for me dying so cleanly. She is in this particular moment impossible to read.

She loads me down with random little gifts and a plastic bag heavy with persimmons. Dad slips me gas money. Now we’re all acting normal again. It’s too cold to take the farewell party outside, so we make our goodbyes at the front door, which is wrapped casing-to-threshold in garland tagged quite simply “Interior front door.”

When I return for Christmas, the entire house will be a faux-conifer fever dream. All flat surfaces will be draped in plaid. So much plaid. And candles. In the foyer you will be assailed by apple pie, and then immediately upon entrance into the living room it’ll be sugar cookies. Right to the face.

As for the three wise men, they will be traveling true east along the mantle and angels will be trumpeting atop the entertainment center. All of this for the Savior’s birthday. Of all her children’s spouses, Jesus is Mom’s favorite.