Looking for Mary

by Beverly Donofrio

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Praise for Looking for Mary

  “Surprisingly moving. Her sincerity and intensity of feeling are remarkably, palpably real. As she becomes more loving, forgiving, more grateful, more aware of her own blessings, it is impossible not to feel the same.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Tender and funny . . . reverent and ribald, harried and hopeful . . . a witty memoir of a troubled soul grappling with her failings and the deepest mysteries of salvation.”

  —The Denver Sunday Post

  “Candid, entertaining, and abundantly enlightening, Looking for Mary sizzles with the fervor of the seeker and the sought-after, and delivers between its covers a sweet and salty miracle.”

  —Elle

  “This chronicle does not read like an exercise in wish-fulfillment. It feels rather like the story of a woman who, after decades of seeking, found her mother, and through her, discovered herself.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “An incredibly honest account of one daughter-mother trying to make sense of the roles she has been given, the mistakes she has made, the heartaches she has felt.”

  —The Anniston Star

  “A tale of adventure, both outwardly, into the world, and inwardly, into the soul.”

  —Boston Herald

  “A full-bodied portrait of her inner struggle to achieve grace.”

  —Booklist

  “Deeply personal and wonderfully written, this book invites the reader to confront skeptical attitudes about religion, religious practices, and religious dogmas and step into the divine light.”

  —Library Journal

  “An irreverent, laugh-out-loud conversion story . . . quirky, convincing, and ultimately very moving.”

  —Ft. Worth Morning Star-Telegram

  PENGUIN COMPASS

  LOOKING FOR MARY

  Beverly Donofrio’s first book Riding in Cars with Boys, became a cult classic and is being made into a feature film by James L. Brooks. Looking for Mary began as a radio documentary for National Public Radio. Donofrio currently lives in Mexico.

  PENGUIN COMPASS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,

  Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in the United States of America by

  Viking Compass, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., 2000

  Published in Penguin Compass 2001

  Copyright © Beverly Donofrio, 2000

  All rights reserved

  Illustrations by Jorge Alberto Asato Espana

  eISBN : 978-1-101-19944-2

  1. Donofrio, Beverly 2. Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint.

  I. Title: Blessed Mother and me. II. Title.

  BX4705.D6146 A3 2000

  282’.092—dc21

  [B]

  00-036790

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is for Mary.

  And for my parents, Louise and

  Edward Donofrio.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was read by many people at different stages. Everyone offered invaluable encouragement and suggestions that influenced the final book. To all of you—Tony Cohan, Kristen Dehner, Trudy Dittmar, Jay Derrah, Robin Tewes, Jason Budrow, Denise Sirkot, Beatriz Bell, Ana Theil, Sue McKinney Ortega, Karen Gadbois, Tony Connor, Gina Hyams, Angela Matano, Linda Garrett, Paige Evans, Elizabeth Levy, Julie Rigby, Georgian Lussier, Mark Jacobson, Barbara Cavanagh, Heather Woodbury, Susan O’Meara, Jackie Austin, Julie Ansel—I am deeply grateful.

  I thank Jorge Alberto Asato Espana for his inspired illustrations.

  By being open to my idea to go looking for Mary four years ago, and by coaxing from me what I really felt about the Virgin Mary, David Isay changed my life. And Stacy Abrahamson helped him do it.

  Nancy Sawastynowicz cleaned my house, taught me to garden and gather seaweed and scallops and clams from the bay. Nancy Sawastynowicz loved me so much she turned my heart around.

  I must thank Jacki Lyden for dragging me to Ireland, and Amy Marcus for helping me drag Jacki to Knock; Alex Kotlowitz walked with me through the wax museum in Fatima; and Masako Takahashi helped me find “The Night That Never Sleeps,” a sublime Assumption of the Virgin fiesta in a tiny Mexican town.

  Renee Montagne gave me a warm home and friendship in LA, and Jim Brooks gave me an office with a view and a couch, and his reassuring laugh booming down the hall.

  Father Slavko Barbaric was an inspiration, and Father Bill Kiel a comfort.

  If Gail Hochman, my agent and angel, hadn’t been so loyal and indomitable, and taken by my Mary collection in Orient; if my first editor at Viking, Mindy Werner, hadn’t had faith in me; if my “special” editor, Beena Kamlani, hadn’t been so brilliant, insightful, and gently forthright; if my editor, Pam Dorman, hadn’t been so tireless and insistent; and if Susan Hans O’Connor hadn’t kept on top of things, this book might have been called Hearts and Daggers and never made it to print.

  Without my son, Jason, I would not be so rich and would have much less to share. And without my parents’ love and humor, their support and their good hearts, I would not have had the courage to write anything at all.

  Hail Mary, full of grace,

  The Lord is with thee.

  Blessed art thou among women

  And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

  Holy Mary, Mother of God,

  Pray for us sinners

  Now and at the hour of our death. Amen

  PROLOGUE

  ℑ am lying in bed shivering under the covers in a small Bosnian village where millions, maybe even billions, believe the Virgin Mary has been appearing for the past sixteen years. The recurring apparitions have become a magnet for believers from around the world. I, too, am here to see. I am on a silent fasting retreat with forty-nine zealous Catholics and haven’t spoken or eaten anything besides bread and tea for days with the hope that if we are hungry enough, we will fill with God. And now, I guess because those deprivations are not enough, the wind just blew out the lights, and I’m stunned by the appropriateness of the symbolism: I may be on a religious retreat, but I am left in the dark.

  I’ve come as a writer and have been going to chapel and lectures and church every day as part of the job, but I’ve also been praying to Mary, hundreds of Hail Marys, which is not part of the job. Then, to see how confession would feel, I made an appointment with the priest and have been lying in bed dreading what I will say. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned; it has been thirty-five years since my last confession. I have slept with more men than I care to remember; I’m a selfish daughter and lousy mother whose grown son was damaged by neglect; and my default reaction to disappointment is despair.” It seems impossible to act
ually say this.

  I slink farther down under the covers and hear the line of a hymn, “Do not be afraid, I am with you,” and break into tears. I weep when the wind screeching at the window wakes me in the middle of the night; I weep in the morning as I sit up in bed and stare at the rain dribbling down the glass; and I cry again in the little chapel where we meet for mass at noon every day when the lady with the doily on her head says, “For the poor and the lonely and the lost, let us pray.” As the tears fall, I know I did not come here only to write about the experience; I came because I want Mary to mother me and teach me mother things, like how to love.

  That evening I traipse through the gusting winds, praying on my rosary beads, then kneel in the village church with all the pilgrims. I wish and I hope and I pray for a little mustard seed of faith to move the mountain that is me out of the dark and into the light.

  If you told me a year ago that this person looking for Mary and paraphrasing Christ was me, I would have fallen off my chair laughing.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Six years before I landed in Bosnia, the Virgin Mary was no more than a dim memory, another fairy tale from my childhood as I sat in my rocker day after day, heartbroken over a man, but really over my life, which I thought of as pathetically impoverished. I was forty and alone and had just moved to a tiny village by the sea called Orient, where I knew nobody. I rocked and stared at the bay, which changed from midnight blue to battleship gray; then when I turned on the light I was horrified, and mesmerized, by my own reflection: my gray roots were an inch long (vanity hadn’t fled with the onslaught of depression, just the energy to keep up any semblance of a beauty regimen); the creases that ran from the sides of my nose to the sides of my mouth made me look like a puppet; my eyes were hollow and sad. The man I was mourning, Kip, had insisted he still loved me, but he was a coward and he was lying. It wasn’t only the physical that had repulsed him. It was the cold hard heart in the middle of me: too defended, too brittle, too pockmarked by life. There’d been no soft pillow of comfort for him to sink into. No motherliness in me.

  In the end, I’d been the one to leave, the way I’d left so many men, pridefully. Yet when I dropped Kip at Bradley International Airport, there’d been no pride left. I’d sobbed and gasped for breath. Kip’s face was shiny with tears, too; both of us crying for the sweet promise we had and the sweet promise we had broken. He walked around to my side of the car and kissed me through the window; our faces were slippery with tears. Then, as he slung his backpack onto his shoulder, I took one last look at the familiar tilt of his neck, the loveliness of his body as he walked away, and my heart cracked, not like an egg but like a dried-up riverbed.

  And so I rocked and I hugged myself as though the hypnotic rhythm, the pressure on my chest, would soothe away the hole of longing, coddle the ache in my heart, make me feel like a baby in the cradle of her mother’s arms. Then I shut off the light and drifted to bed without brushing my teeth, or washing my face, or looking in a mirror, or doing anything with my hands besides squeeze them between my knees.

  I’d been depressed before and was afraid if I didn’t end it some way, this dark night of the soul could stretch on for years. A walk off a dock with rocks in my pockets seemed a good idea; but instead, for the New Year, I plunged into therapy—again.

  “You have to learn to love yourself,” said my new therapist, Eileen.

  I needed to pay money to hear this? “And how do I do that?”

  “Sometimes people find another person who loves them unconditionally, and then, because they feel loved, they can love themselves.”

  I’d say I’d been looking for that about half of the days of my life—okay, maybe a third; writing took up a lot of my time. I figured Kip was as close as I was going to get, and he’d kicked me in the heart. “Don’t you have to love yourself before anyone’s going to love you?” I asked rhetorically.

  Eileen sidestepped the question. “Sometimes people find love through God.”

  “God?” Great—I’d signed on with an evangelist. “I hate God!” I almost yelled. “I grew up Catholic. Every time I stubbed my toe I had to figure out what I’d done wrong to deserve it. I spent five years in my first therapy trying to get rid of the guilt the Church put there. Oh, really.” I shuddered. “I would just love to try to be perfect and beat myself up every night before bed, not only for the things I did but for the things I didn’t do—and what I thought in my head. No thank you.”

  “A holy person,” she redefined. “Spirit, Buddha, whatever you want to call it. And you reach them through meditating. Meditation works.”

  I’d always meant to meditate. I’d done affirmations till I was blue in the face, and I did believe that if somehow you could be given the unconditional love you didn’t get when you really needed it, as a child, then you could heal. For me a holy person might be the only way, a last-ditch effort.

  And so I began to meditate. I started with five minutes and did guided meditations, encouraged by Eileen, who’d suggested I try to imagine a spirit or a holy person. Mary? I thought about her. But she was too removed and sterile, too far away up in the virginal Catholic clouds. I couldn’t sense her, or touch her. An embroidered Virgin of Guadalupe throw had, however, made it back with me from Mexico, where I’d lived with Kip. It was colorful with accents of gold and covered my computer like a good-luck charm. For a time, I pictured a young Persian-looking woman on a flying carpet who flew me around and bathed me in rivers. Eventually I settled on a little Buddha. I am a stone-cold statue abandoned in the woods and tangled in vines, and this little Buddha finds me there, loads me onto his cart, and wheels me into the sunshine in the middle of a beautiful garden. Then he begins chipping away the stone. First I feel the heat of the sun on my skin, then the breeze, which is fragrant with flowers. Very slowly I open my eyes, and the first thing I see is an emerald-green garden and, at its edge, purple flowers shaped like little trumpets, cascading to the ground.

  By the spring, I’d been doing this meditation for a few months and felt adventurous enough one Saturday morning to drag myself out of bed at seven, wash my face, drink a cup of coffee, then head out for yard sales with the local paper in hand. I had only the set of table and chairs I’d dragged around with me since my teenage marriage home, the rocker I’d been glued to, a desk, a bed, a bureau, and a small advance to write a novel I hadn’t even begun. So, I was really going on a furniture-scavenging excursion. My first stop was a contents-of-house sale, which usually means the owner has died. The place was a homely little aluminum-sided, post-Korean War affair, which I almost drove right by; but I made the decision to be open and not pass judgments. It was only seven-thirty and the sign said No Early Birds, but the husky little boy guarding the back door let me in. There were a few others already milling around the kitchen, whose cupboard contents had been piled onto the Formica table. I picked up a few shot glasses, because I had none, then walked into the living room.

  The furniture was fake colonial and identical to my parents’. I pressed my hand to my chest to protect my heart. Would my siblings and I sell my mother’s department-store dishes, my father’s woodworking tools, virtually none of which we’d want for ourselves? Would we stand guard as people snatched the crocheted afghan from their couch, then watch it disappear out the door?

  My parents were almost seventy; both of them smoked; and they were not in good health. Yet, with his chronically aching back, that fall my father had driven all the way from Connecticut to Vermont in his pickup truck to help me move. In New London we’d taken the ferry across Long Island Sound and had eaten grilled-cheese sandwiches, then strolled outside on the deck. My father’s thick silver hair rippled in the breeze as he jangled the change in his pocket and we leaned on the rail, gazing out over the sound. “I always liked the water,” he said.

  “Me, too. I always wanted to live by the sea one day, and now I will.”

  “Atta girl.”

  When my father and I pulled up to my spindly old rented Victo
rian in Orient, a village on the northeasternmost tip of Long Island, my son, Jason who’d come from New York City to help us, was sitting on the step waiting. Jason had graduated college and was living in our old apartment on Avenue A. He was always on time and absolutely dependable, a good boy who’d never given me a moment’s trouble. His hair, platinum and straight when he was a child, had been brown and wavy since high school. He was now twenty-three years old, over six feet tall, and, as a few of my younger women friends had let me know, a babe. My father and he patted each other’s shoulders as they shook hands; then Jason kissed me on the cheek, “Hey, Mama.”

  I cupped my hand to his face, then kissed him too. “Hey, Jase.”

  We unloaded my few pieces of furniture, my boxes of dishes and linens, and my thirty-two boxes of books. I made us ham-and-cheese sandwiches with mustard, which we ate at the table in my new kitchen, followed by slices of the apple-walnut cake my mother had sent. I looked at them gratefully, the two men in my life. There were no others. My father had brought his toolbox, just in case, and it was a good thing. The wood around the hinges on my cellar hatchway had rotted, so my father moved them a few inches farther apart. He removed a door I didn’t want between the kitchen and the dining room, and then at dusk I kissed them both goodbye in my driveway. “You take care now,” my father said.

  “Bye, Ma,” my son said, looking worried.

  This was the first time in my life I’d lived without my son or a man. The next morning, I’d headed for the rocker.