Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of death.

I'm not sure how or why I got onto Barnes and Noble's e-mailing list. I haven't bothered to get myself off of it because sometimes they send me good coupons, but I happen to live in a city with lots of library options, so I very rarely buy books, especially ones I haven't read, which I realize might sound weird and might take all the fun out of reading for people, but for so many years of my life, I had books taking up space on a countless number of shelves, books I never read or intended to read, books I attempted to read and hated, so I've decided that I will not spend any money on a book that I'm not sure I will love (holy run-on sentence, Batman). Therefore, most of the time, I get a book out of the library, take it for a test spin, and then, if it tugs at my heartstrings and makes me catch my breath, I go out and spend the money on it so that it may rest peacefully on my bookshelf not wasting space but serving a purpose. Although, chances are, it may sit there the entirety of my life never having its binding broken open, because I rarely read books twice.

At any rate, shortly after I spent that long weekend at home with my mother while my husband was on a father-son trip, I got an email from Barnes and Noble that caught my eye. My mom and I had just seen "Eat Pray Love" in the theater, which I loved (but mostly for the part where they're describing how Italians talk with their hands because it was SO TRUE), and the subject of the email was "Powerful and Uplifting: A Mother-Daughter 'Eat Pray Love'." So quite unlike myself but driven by curiosity due to current events, I actually opened the B&N email to find a book recommendation for "Traveling with Pomegranates" by Sue Monk Kidd, who some of you may know through her unmistakable novel-turned-movie "The Secret Life of Bees." I am unfamiliar with that work, only know of it by the trailers I've seen during commercial breaks on television, so the fact that she had penned that particular piece was really of no interest to me. What caught my attention, however, was that not only was it a memoir, but it was a shared memoir, alternating essays written by herself with essays written by her daughter.

Naturally, I looked it up on my city's library catalog to see if this was something I could borrow first to see if it was even worth my time. And I found it currently in stock sitting on the shelf waiting for me. And then my husband came home from work and asked if I wanted to go to the library to look for instructional books on how to lay hardwood floors, which he plans on doing in our new house. It was like it was meant to be.

And it was meant to be. The book, while I still have a third of it yet to read, has been such a delight and I plan on buying myself a copy, as well as a copy for my mother and mother-in-law, because I feel it is just too good not to share. I mean, it takes place in Greece and France, had oodles of Greek mythology in it, and I feel it has a rather accurate representation of my current relationship with my mother and is relevant to the periods we are both in in our lives.

But what I seem to like most is the constant presence of the Virgin Mary and what Mary means to these women and all women in general.

I've never been very religious. I've tried to be religious many times in my life, and sometimes I've tried harder than others. I still want to be religious, but haven't quite come to terms with how to do that yet. But I've always felt a connection to Mary. I've always found her to be the most interesting character in all of Christianity, and yet I feel like she is constantly overlooked. Which is perhaps why I like her even more. It's like her and I have a little secret that no one has quite caught onto yet.

I know it all started when my grandma died. I was only five at the time. But ever since then, I've always associated my grandma with Mary. I guess I thought they would get along very well in heaven. Everyone always said my grandmother was a saint. So I guess this was my way of making her one. Besides, I was five. What I knew about death and heaven was so very limited (not that I've learned all that much about it since then). I knew who Mary and Joseph and Jesus were, I knew they were in heaven, and now I knew my grandmother was in heaven. So I suppose it was only natural that I put them all in the same clique up there.

Of course, too, there was the song that they played at her funeral. I don't remember anything about the funeral. I don't remember anything about her sickness or her death. I sometimes think I do remember, but I'm pretty sure it's just the stories that people have told me that I remember and not the actual events themselves. But there is this song that is very common in Catholic churches, especially in the spring, called "Hail Mary, Gentle Woman" that was played at my grandmother's funeral. It's a terribly sad, but beautiful song. My brother hates it... he says the harmony is annoying. I think he either hates it because he's not a woman and doesn't have a connection to Mary or he hates it because he remembers it being played at the funeral (him being 9 at the time and fully capable of remembering) and it makes him sad. And while I myself don't remember it being played at the funeral, what I remember is that every time it is played in a Catholic church to this day, my mother (and aunts, if they are there, too) break down into sobs. And now that I'm old enough to be the kind of sentimental where I cry at happy endings of movies and sappy songs on the radio, I am usually sobbing in the church pew right along with them.

Still, it wasn't until I spent some time in Italy that my infatuation with Mary was brought more to the forefront. As Catholicism is the official religion of the country, Mary is everywhere. She's in the churches, in the museums, but even just on the street corners and painted on apartment walls. I would say the point in my life where I respected religion the most was when I was living in Italy. And perhaps it was when I was the most spiritual.

Because I was "studying" in Italy (technically, I had already graduated, so the classes I didn't care about so much as the whole being in Italy thing), our group went to every single museum in Florence and saw COUNTLESS paintings of the Virgin to the point where they all started to look the same and frankly were starting to get a little boring. But when we got into the Uffizi, I saw a new portrait of Mary that I couldn't take my eyes off of. It was called "Madonna of the Chair." I've posted it at the top of the entry, but I'm not too techy with this whole blog thing yet, so I couldn't get it to go where I wanted it to go. But you can click on it and make it bigger.

ANYWAY, I just thought Mary looked so HUMAN in it. So many other paintings she's depicted as a saint or as royalty, which she is and deserves to be depicted that way, but she was also human, and I think it's the human aspect of her that makes her so appealing. I mean, the woman gave birth in a field, people, with a man she wasn't even married to. I'm married, and my husband is capable of a lot of things, but I don't think I'd let him birth my baby in the middle of g.d. field. And she raised the SON OF GOD. Like, she had to put him in time-outs when he acted up and had to protect him and take care of him. And she had God to answer to if she didn't do her mothering job right. But this painting, it doesn't feel like a painting of Mary and Jesus. It feels like a painting of a mother with her son. She's got a loving, protective grip on him. She seems to know she's gonna have to let go of him, but you can tell she doesn't want to. And all the while, she seems to be giving a look to those watching her that says, "You mess with my baby, you mess with me."

Later in the trip, our leader/instructor took us to an artisan shop to show us that things are still handmade in Italy and that generations of families stay in the same business, and I found that exact picture buried in a pile of plaques, outlined in beautiful gold paint, handcrafted in that very shop. Now I don't know how popular this image is in Italy. But the Uffizi is just ONE museum in Florence and it alone has thousands of paintings in it. What are the chances I would that painting in an artisan shop down some isolated alley? Like it was meant to be.

My mother took a tour group over to Italy the year after I had lived there. I couldn't afford to go with her, which broke my heart. She asked if she could bring anything back for me. I said the only thing I wanted (besides nutella gelato) was a necklace with Mary on it. And in an artisan shop that sounded much like the one I found my Madonna of the Chair in, she found the perfect, most absolutely beautiful Mary cameo and she bought it for me. I still wear it all the time over three years later.

I wear it as a reminder of what I want to be. I don't want to be the next Mother of Christ. I can't be the next virgin mother. That ship has sailed. But Mary, despite being saint royalty, was once a very human woman, a hard-working woman, a proud woman, a woman who did what she had to do without complaint. And from what I've heard about my grandmother, she was a lot like that, too. If I can be half the woman my grandmother was, I would consider my life a success.

Gentle mother, peaceful dove, teach us wisdom, teach us love.

Sometimes I worry that this book is going to be an epic failure, that no one is going to want to read 200 pages about death and grieving, that no one will care about my life or my grandfather's life. But "Traveling with Pomegranates" isn't all happy-happy. In fact, it's mostly not. And yet I can't seem to put it down. After all, death and grieving is a big part of what makes us human, no?