Sweet Sticky Thing

I woke up this morning thinking of my grandmother in church and how far her hand of guidance has added to my understanding of the world. Perhaps the best thing she ever did for me was take me to the church, where I would develop a love of ritual and metaphors (a preacher's best friend). I can see the blue walls of Unity Baptist church as if I'd just applied a fresh coat of paint myself. I can smell the fried chicken being prepared in the fellowship hall, the aroma twisting and shouting its way up the stairs, making it so that if you were sitting in just the right part of the sanctuary, you would get a slight hint of the smell. About this time, the Rev Dr. Valmon D. Stotts would say his fourth, "I'm almost done," as my stomach growled. All of this is so fresh in my mind because it was a ritual. In some ways, Sunday was like a stageplay where slight changes were made every week, but enough stayed the same that you could lock it in deep. The memories from those days are like cave drawings in my mind. I could still feel my grandmother's lap under my head when I was a very little girl; I would sleep so hard during service that I'd sweat, so she always put a cloth between me and her dress. One of the more vivid memories, which is full sensory for me, is searching the bottom of my grandmother's purse for a piece of hard candy (likely a peppermint). In the summer, this was a particularly daunting task because the candy, having lived in the dark reaches of my grandmother's purse long enough to slightly taste of White Diamonds, was almost always melting and very sticky.

Unwrapping the plastic from the melting sugar would leave you with very sticky fingers, something I hate to this day. You'd try to lick your finger; kids are truly walking mold spores, but you could never fully resolve the stickiness with a mouth full of sugar. If you have sensory issues, you will understand how something even as small as slightly sticky fingers can sit on your skin and in your brain in a particularly unpleasant way. You try to ignore it, but with every move of those fingers, there is the stickiness, overpowering the joy of the candy for a split second. It didn't matter in the long run because the sweet treat holding me over until dinner (and the second service) was worth the irritation. The deal with grandma's purse is you can have the treat, but you will have to sacrifice your nerves and be a bit sticky for a while. That seemed like a fair trade for eight-year-old me, so I dealt with the stickiness a fair trade for the treat. Eventually, the doors of the church would open, and I'd head to the bathroom to wash off the candy residue and follow that chicken smell to its location.

You must wonder why I took up so much of your time recalling Sundays spent in church and peppermints. Blame the state of the world, specifically the state of human engagement in said world. Most days, my mind just wants to daydream about what was or what could be. For the collective, the present is not the dream I'd pray for. As a human race, many of us are living in this off-tilt world, which seems to grow more complicated by the day, only wanting the candy without the sticky. If the warm church purses of a Detroit August taught me anything, the stickiness would come, but on the global scale, it seems to unfairly stay with a few while the rest of us enjoy the sugar without the unpleastness. This is particularly true for those of us living removed from conflict, war, and genocide. Those who can order everything they want and have it show up in minutes or, at worst, days, but don't have to live next to the oceans of landfills that amass as we grow tired of our latest unnecessary trinket. Those with access to peace, water, and a place to call home. This is not a sermon. It's a confession.

Many of us never have to touch actual stickiness, the kind that traps you and seems impossible to wash away, and in many cases, it won't. Those are the people I spend alot of my Sundays these days quietly reflecting on, learning from, and adjusting my own life where I can so that they can one day taste the sweetness, unmelted, just pure delight.

All those days spent inside the moth-scented pews of Unity Baptist Church taught me more than I could imagine, and every now and again, I wake up, and those days come rushing back to me, ready to teach me all over again. From the pulpit to the bottom of my grandmother's purse, the messages of balance were all around me, waiting for me to see them more clearly and apply them in service to my neighbors--my global community. Learning how to live in a way that considers others as a daily living ritual is my most persistent hope for myself. May we all have enough of the sweet to balance the sticky.

May my grandmother's hand remain a guide.

Essay 6

Sweet Sticky Thing