Your body knows before you do
from Jan. 31, 2024, Feminism and Religion by Andrea Penner
Our interstate move of 325 miles due east on U.S. Highway 40, formerly Route 66, that iconic highway through the American Southwest, took us from one rental home to another. A month later, I sat in a graduate seminar, having received a coveted “yellow card.” By some stroke of magic, the professor had read my master’s thesis.
“I know your work,” he said, signing the over-enrollment waiver.
For the next several years, I studied, wrote, taught, ate, slept, and moved through marriage and motherhood (and one more rental)—all toward the goal of completing the PhD in English while my then-husband cycled through professional jobs and both of us recovered from eight years of cross-cultural Christian ministry.
My academic life, and increasingly my social life, revolved around the University of New Mexico campus and environs. As it happened, we attended a church that afforded convenient parking within walking distance of the Humanities building, a treasured blessing long after I stopped attending services. The last sermon I heard was Rev. Kathy preaching on the wedding at Cana, when Jesus turned water into wine:
What do we do with the signs we see? What are we seeing that we’re not seeing?
I received communion and participated in the comforting ritual exchange, Peace be with you…And also with you, both for the last time before devoting myself to studying for three comprehensive exams and diving into the depths of dissertation research. For years afterward, I deeply missed the act of someone granting me peace I couldn’t find within myself. The church had offered stale encouragement when we sought pastoral counsel about our dying marriage. The more-prayer, more-Bible, and more-faith formula wasn’t working. I appreciated the large bags of non-perishables left at our front door, but peanut butter and canned tuna could do little toward healing the family or completing the PhD.
A river of circumstances cascaded onto my shoulders and threatened to sweep my children into its fluvial current. To stay afloat, I would call my childhood friend, Mandy, and visit my therapist. Thus buoyed, I passed all three comp exams, but self-doubt had become a habit.
Anxiety worsened after the initial euphoria of our marital separation. Enough. I asked my therapist, “should I stay or go?” Instead of answering, she pointed to my bandaged right finger.
“Oh, this? Sharp knife, soapy water, and stitches. And my eyes felt gritty, like sand. The doctor gave me drops for scratched corneas and told me to stop reading!”
“What is your body telling you?”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t know. ‘Don’t self-sabotage’?”
“See, you do know. What else?”
“Slow down. Pay attention.”
A few days later, after taking both kids to school, I parked in our driveway and set out on foot, walking east along the concrete ditch and uphill on the arroyo trail toward Albuquerque’s mountains. Glancing at my watch, I picked up the pace. Keep going, Andrea. Walk away from the marriage and stay on the dissertation path. You can do this. You will finish.
Wildflowers shot out of cement cracks in scraggly outbursts of purple and orange. I identified them aloud with each step—NIGHT-shade, PEN-ste-mon—the same way I had committed facts to memory before taking exams. As I named them, PAINT-brush, GLOBE mallow, I thought about emerging and growing according to one’s nature. Even under duress.
After a mile, I headed back downhill toward the black escarpment of the city’s west mesa and the distant, dormant volcanoes. Mindful of the path, I noticed something brown and white nestled in an asphalt crevice. I stopped. My brain registered an instantaneous craving. Listen to your body.
I picked up the stale half-cigarette and held it close to my face, inhaling the scent of cured tobacco. I don’t smoke, but placed the stub safely in my pocket. At home, I found a book of matches next to bamboo skewers and birthday candles. Before I could talk myself out of it, I unlocked the back door and stepped outside onto the dusty, un-tidy patio. I took the stub out of my pocket and sat in the aluminum lounge chair, careful to avoid the ripped webbing.
Two unsuccessful strikes. A flame held to the cigarette. Bitter nicotine taste. Your body is telling you something. Lips tight around the speckled filter, I knew better than to inhale that first draw into my unpracticed lungs, so I released the smoke cloud through an open mouth.
Before my teenage Christian conversion, Mandy and I shared menthol cigarettes purloined from Mom’s purse or, when we had one, a joint. She’d go home and I’d do my homework until 5:30 pm when mom came home from work.
But life changed when Mom underwent her first neck surgery and my step-dad went to jail. I washed dishes, dusted the living room, and carried laundry to and from coin-operated machines. I fielded phone calls from bill collectors, made dinner. Mom and I were both tired. Those adolescent scenes triggered muscle memory.
Why smoke now? Should I stay or should I go?
I stubbed the cigarette into the sink and shredded it in the garbage disposal with hot, soapy water. After a quick shower, piece of toast, and second cup of coffee, I sat at the table with my books, pens, and sticky notes.
After dinner, homework, baths, pajamas, and snuggles, the kids settled into bed with books and dreams. Once they were asleep, I called Mandy. “I felt like I was back on that cinderblock wall!”
“Do you remember when we poked tobacco out of your step-dad’s unfiltered cigarettes and replaced it with dried rosemary from your Mom’s spices?”
I said, “God, we were desperate ninth graders!”
“But you’re not desperate now, just stressed. I get it—you’re the mom, you’re the grad student, but the next time you need a cigarette, honey, buy yourself a fresh pack!”
BIO
Andi Penner resides in New Mexico, where she reads and writes poetry, prose, and memoir. Her work appears in anthologies, literary magazines, and three self-published books. Once upon a time, she did full-time Christian ministry, but left the faith to find faith in herself—the subject of her memoir-in-progress.