Explanations

I know why I developed an early and unhealthy interest in the gruesome lives of the saints: it was in the usual way, under the wimpled auspices of ancient nuns. They whose mission in life was to teach uniformed & runny-nosed urchins the delights of martyrdom. That much is clear and obvious, if slightly pathetic.

But why is my delightful granddaughter, a Brooklynite of distinctly un-Catholic parentage and upbringing, so intrigued by the beheadings, defenestrations, stonings, and grillings of the early Christian saints? Surely she did not learn of such things from me, as I forbear to mention Diocletian in the presence of anyone under the age of 85.

But there it is. Leda is fascinated with saints in paintings.
CSB and I took her to the Brooklyn Museum last weekend. What with a death in the family, and school, and inclement weather, we hadn’t seen her in quite a while, and grandparental withdrawal symptoms were setting in. So we hustled to Brooklyn, scooped up Leda and took her off for some culture. I imagined she would be drawn to Egyptian mummies, Pacific totems and Keith Haring. Not for the first time, I was dead wrong.
There we were in the 3rd floor Beaux Arts Gallery, an arcade of paintings encircling an empty indoor courtyard, beckoning a six-year-old with the toes of an combination African dancer, rock climber, and sloth. Yet it was off-limits.

I was making my way from Anna Ramirez Dressed in Black to the Madonna of Humility, when Leda insisted I join her in front of a French 15th century altarpiece featuring Saints Cosmas and Damien getting beheaded. How could she have known my fondness for these twin doctors of early Christianity? (For their goodness and knowledge, for their famous proto-transplantation of a leg – with angelic surgical assistants, and for their survival of numerous forms of attempted martyrdom before finally succumbing.) Could she have known that their twin skulls reside in not one but two churches? For a total of four skulls?

Why is that man chopping people’s heads off?
The ones with halos are Cosmas and Damien and their brothers, and the Roman emperor hated them.

Why did he hate them?
Because they were Christians. Because they were good doctors who helped people and didn’t charge any money.
But why are they just standing there waiting to get their heads chopped off? Why don’t they run away?
Good question. Because they want their heads chopped off? To get it over with? Maybe they were really held down or forced in some way, but the painter didn’t want to show us that stuff.
Next on the wall was a predella featuring the Stoning of St Stephen, the protomartyr. This is problematical is many ways.
Leda looks hard at a hallowed man in a bare landscape surrounded by half a dozen men in colored tights tossing small objects.
What are they doing?
I am sorry to say the people are throwing stones at St Stephen, they’re stoning him.
But why?
It was a way the authorities killed people back then, when they didn’t like their religion.
But all those pebbles aren’t going to kill him.
I think they really threw bigger stones, and yes, sooner or later it killed him. It’s not a nice way to die though.
I know a nice way to die.
What’s that?
The way Buelo died, because he was old.
I don’t have to answer this. Because she is absolutely right.
Last in this hagiographic lineup is Saint Lawrence, patron saint of chefs and roasters, on account of his gruesome death.
What are they doing to him?
To Saint Lawrence? They’re grilling him. It was a kind of martyrdom.
Why would they want to do that? Who would want to?
I guess because it was painful. It was the Romans. They didn’t like the Christians because the Christians had one god, and the Romans had many.
They couldn’t share?
No, sharing was not an option.

It may not appear that way to you, but I actually thought I was doing pretty well, answering the unanswerable. Until we got to Purgatory. There simply is no way to explain purgatory to anyone with a rational mind.



Who are the ones in white?
They must be the souls St Lawrence is liberating from purgatory.
What is Purgatory?
It’s a place where the church said you would go if you weren’t good enough for heaven, but weren’t bad enough for hell.
This gives her pause, as it would anyone.
How bad do you have to be for hell?
Pretty bad I think. You have to kill someone or be terribly mean. But we don’t believe in hell anymore. Maybe some people still do, but you don’t need to worry, there is no hell.
Is there a purgatory?
There definitely is no purgatory.
What are the devils doing?
Writhing in pain because they’re trapped in fire. But you really don’t have to worry. Priests invented hell so they could scare people into doing what they told them. It really doesn’t exist.
But killing people is still bad.
It is very bad.

I think there is no way to reflect on a conversational opening like this with an inquisitive six-year-old, and not feel that a great opportunity was missed. There was my moment to explain the human need for scapegoats, the irrationality of persecution, and the historical context of Christian saints. Instead I wracked my brain to explain purgatory in such as way as to ensure she would not have nightmares.

Whither procrastination?

I know I promised piping and vibrating, tooting and quacking, but they will have to wait. Procrastinating is something a honeybee would never do; she would never even consider it. If a honeybee needs to communicate with the queen, she doesn’t wait until the right time, she heads straight for the queen, presses her body against her and vibrates. If a virgin queen bee needs to express her intention to mortally sting any other contenders for queen bee status in the hive, she does not hesitate, her very life is at stake; she will emit that high-pitched piping sound – A-flat or G-sharp - called quacking. This is to be distinguished from tooting, which is the sound made by mated queen bees, usually soon after they are newly released into a hive.

But I am not a honeybee and procrastination seems to be in my DNA. Or maybe not. For all their myriad weirdness and quirkiness and idiosyncrasies the Aged P’s don’t seem to procrastinate. (I will not use the word FLAW since I know they will read this and never let it be said that I recognize any actual flaws in the parental units.),
So how did I come by this trait? And whom can I blame?

Instead of delving into piping and tooting, I set up my new office here at Purchase, because there are few things I enjoy more than fondling what I still think of as school supplies. And it is a well-known fact that any writer worth her pen nibs can spend all the available time sharpening pencils and labeling folders and aligning pads on the desk at right angles, and in this way avoid the dreaded task of actually writing something. Blank walls also beckon. Today for instance I tacked a poster of Fra Angelico’s The Decapitation of Saints Cosmas and Damian onto the wall. I’ve had this poster for at least five years; I know this because the dates of the Far Angelico exhibit at the Met are printed right there: 2005-2006. I bought the poster not entirely because I morbidly enjoy paintings of handsome young men splayed on the ground as their heads depart their bodies, spilling out their life’s blood and staining the ground red. I bought it because I found it so appealing that the saints in question had intact halos even as they were being beheaded, and then the removed heads rolled away with their golden halos attached and perfectly positioned. I should also mention that I have always been fond of the twins, Cosmas and Damian, third century doctors who performed the first – perhaps only – transplant of a leg. The good leg belonged to a just deceased Ethiopian, and they attached it to the stub of a patient who had lost his own leg. The resulting bi-colored limb was a popular subject for painters. You may find it equally miraculous that the skulls of Cosmas and Damian reside in both Munich and Madrid.
Also adorning my new office are a collection of feathers, large black and white feathers from the gulls of Georgian Bay, and smaller striped feathers from the Silver-laced Wyandottes of our chicken coop.

I would have done all this sooner, the thumbtacks and the filing, but – on another level of procrastination – this morning we were packing up jars of honey for Let it Bee’s first foray into high-end marketing: a selection of five honeys (early and late Manhattan, Hastings, Rye and Bedford), two of our own lip balms and one hand cream, crafted by your truly. CSB made elegant wooden boxes and the honeys and balms are nestled in the finest wood shavings you can buy. Not unlike the wood shavings that cover the floor and line the nesting boxes of our very pampered chickens.