by Todd C. Smith
In the early seventies, my formative pre-pubescent years, coming from a divorced family was still an oddity, at least in my neighborhood. My brother and I lived with my mom, seeing our dad only on those every-other-weekend things. Unless my parents were fighting, and then dad would just pull up to the house in his supposed-babe magnet, a Dodge Challenger, burning out after exchanging a few choice words with Mom. My Mom was also going through an expressive period, celebrating her new found freedom with her single girlfriends from work, usually in bars, something she never would have done before the divorce. Throughout this turbulent period, that my brother and I had both longed for but also were not prepared for, my grandmother became a continual source of strength and morality. We'd once thought the people we had considered our parents would provide us with this.
Most evenings Mom would be getting ready to go out with her friends after work and somehow, all of a sudden, Grandma would be there. As Mom was getting dressed Grandma mumbled an ongoing, under-the- breath, narration, "In all my years I never would have dreamed that my little Carol Ann would ever lower her self to hang out in those kind of clothes with those worthless jezebel bar flies." Don't get me wrong, Grandma was sweet and loving to everyone, but she was literally heart sick by the new liberated daughter she didn't understand and hadn't known she had.
My mom, agitated by my Grandmother's rantings, would calmly reply, "Oh Mother, get off it! I need some fun after all those wasted years spent with that asshole. I'm fine. Stop worrying, GOD!"
Upon her exit my Grandmother would break into tears, asking why Mom had not got into the church, how come she hadn't given herself to the Lord. She would grab my brother's hand, and my hand, still crying, and start praying to Jesus that her little girl, our mother, would come to her senses and let Christ into her heart. She would become so worked up that her forehead would drip with sweat and tears as she prayed and cried loudly, occasionally jerking our arms upright in her thrust to praise Jesus. Within minutes she would crescendo into the Holy Ghost's language, into a hysterical trance, eyes closed, head faced upright, speaking in tongues fast and furiously. She would ramble out an almost hypnotic mantra that she appeared to have no control over. Finally collapsing to the ground breathless and still teary eyed she would slowly pull it back together again, completely drained of energy.
My brother and I were usually really freaked out by the whole thing, almost scared, except for the fact it was Grandma. As time went on, and this became more frequent, we would sometimes start laughing and not be able to stop (something my brother and I do very well). Strangely enough that usually pulled her out of her trance, and quite frankly, sort of ticked her off. After speaking in tongues I would ask her what she said and she would tell me she didn't know, that it was the Holy Spirit speaking through her. I believed her. As scary as all of this sounds to a stranger, I would have to say that I loved her more than anyone I've ever known on this planet, even if I was completely unmoved by "the Holy Spirit".
Towards the end of her life, sick with heart disease and high blood pressure, she became more and more pre-occupied with the Lord. Before, it had come out when she was really upset with my mother and felt the need for reassurance from her Jesus. But later I felt as if I didn't know her anymore. Everything she did and said somehow was tied into Jesus Christ. Then one night, when she normally would have been brought to tears by my mother's antics, precipitating one of her speaking-in-tongues sessions, she calmly looked at me and said, "I'm with Jesus. See, the oils of Jesus are starting to cover my body." I had never heard this one before, much less heard of the "Oils of Jesus." I looked over at her, and without really being able to comprehend it, watched her sit there like a glistening golden angel. She held her hands out to me and said, "Look at the oils of Jesus cover my hand." I stared in utter shock, scared for her life as her hands glittered, covered in sparkling gold flakes.
