Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Home and Religion
Red Sky at Morning

Red Sky at Morning

Last updated on: January 13, 2024 at 2:48 am by Mary Pezzulo

0 Comments

Red Sky at Morning 2024-01-13T02:48:04-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A red sky at sunrise with a flock of geese flying by

image via Pixabay

It was morning, but it didn’t look like it yet.

Adrienne woke me, asking for a ride to school.

Usually, she prefers to get up by herself at five and take the earliest bus to have breakfast with her friends when the cafeteria opens for the day. Michael has been staying up all night some nights, to do laundry at the 24-hour laundromat and see her off to school, then making my coffee, then coming to bed after she’s left. I’ve been having my usual January insomnia that only breaks just before she wakes up. But Michael doesn’t drive, so when she misses the bus, she wakes me.

This time I’d only gotten to sleep at two or three in the morning. I found her leaning over me with a cup of coffee at six. By seven I was outside, scraping the frost off Serendipity.

I could just see the shale cliffs of West Virginia from where Serendipity was parked. The LaBelle neighborhood of Steubenville is on top of one shale cliff, overlooking downtown, and downtown overlooks the Ohio river. West Virginia is the cliff that rises on the river’s eastern side. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the lowest of the clouds above the cliff were candy red.

“Red sky at morning, sailor take warning,” I repeated to myself automatically, but it didn’t feel like a warning.

By the time I’d driven five minutes to the middle school, the red was covering half the sky: a brilliant shade that didn’t look real. Nothing in nature is that color. That’s the color of food that rots your teeth. It’s a color you find in gumball machines and arcades. It’s a delectable color that inhabits the jar of Jolly Ranchers one of my teachers used to entice us into good behavior with, a long long time ago when I was much younger than Adrienne is now. There were yellow and green candies that I hated, orange that I didn’t mind, purple that might as well have been medicine, and dark red that tasted all right. But the very best candy was the vibrant, nearly incandescent pinkish red.

When I was just a little older, I had my breakdown and my first manifestation of severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. Nobody knew about high-masking autistic girls and women in the mid 1990s. I was just an extremely fidgety and hypersensitive girl who panicked at nothing and wouldn’t stop reading books to attend to her work. When I could not cope with school anymore, the prissy principal said some cross things to my mother, and the whole family was taken out of the parochial school system to homeschool. I loved homeschooling. It was my salvation. I could fidget and read books all day. My family banded together with other homeschooling families to form a co-op and pooled our resources for tutors and field trips.

I do not have a relationship with my family anymore. My mother tried to make up for her own trauma, being raised in a giant Irish Catholic family so lax and inattentive that they barely even knew where their children were at any given time, by being impossibly controlling of me and verbally abusing me whenever I stepped out of line. She found solace and a sense of safety in the most toxic cultlike religious practice and past that toxicity on to me. We don’t speak to each other now.

When I had a daughter, I wanted to save her in the same way I had been saved. I wanted to keep her away from conventional schooling so she wouldn’t be traumatized. I homeschooled her from Kindergarten all the way through fifth grade. It started out fine, but she was miserable the past two years. We have no community here. We don’t have a co-op or even a circle of homeschooler friends anymore. I gave up and put her in school, where she’s thriving.

You can’t save your child by the exact same means you yourself found safety, because your child is a different person than you.

I wish more people realized that.

After I dropped Adrienne off, I was too restless to go home. I wanted to stay out, but no stores were open and I didn’t have any money anyway. I went for a drive.

I drove west, spiraling up and down through the more affluent neighborhoods further from the cliff’s edge. The roads there squiggle their way up out of the valley, toward the hospital, towards Wintersville, towards Cadiz– eventually home to Columbus, though it doesn’t feel like home right now.

Somehow, in the past year, Appalachia became home. I’ve been living in Appalachia for eighteen years, but it hasn’t been home until now.

The red candy spread and dissipated, going from luscious red to sickly yellow to steel gray. Gray is the usual color of the sky here, and I don’t mind it as much as I used to. The sun was a barely perceptible morsel of yellow in a sea of gray foam. Something in me died and rose again. I was sad, but I was also happy.

It was morning.

I have always wanted it to be morning.

I have always wanted to know that the dark times are over and a new life has finally begun. I thought that was true so many times, and it hasn’t been.

There is still so much more that needs to change.

But I think it’s finally beginning to get better.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, visit our donate page.

Home and Religion

Family, Parenting and Religion

Previous Post

January 11, 2024

Introducing the 31 Categories of Catholic Saint

Next Post

January 14, 2024 What it Means to be A Communion of Saints

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"You're talking about supercessionism, the idea that Christians "replace" the covenant that the Jewish people ..."

Alex

Yes, the Old Testament is About ..."

"Oh I'm sure it did."

Mary

A Televised Execution is a Moral, ..."

"For what its worth, it seems like the whole thing originated from Pete Hegsith speaking ..."

Evil-Striker

A Televised Execution is a Moral, ..."

"You may be right. A war and its aftermath are different than day-to-day governance. Still, ..."

Mary

On Traditionalist Bullies, and the Death ..."

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Abuse Advent America American Christianity angel angels Annunciation Appalachia apparition apparition chaser apparition chasers apparition culture art art review babies baby baby Jesus Bad Lip Reading bad statue contest bath beauty Bible story blog blogkeeping blood book review Brandon Sanderson breastfeeding bus Catholic catholic conspiracy alarmism Catholic Oppositional Disorder Charismatic Renewal Charlie the Cat chastity Christ Christian idenitity Christianity and Judaism Chronic Illness clean clothing COD piece comedy compassion conscience conspiracy theory conversion cop-on-black violence Crucifixion cry of the poor culture Daesh Daily Saints death death penalty devotional diaconate diaper diapers dirty disability Donald Trump Dorothy Day dream drugs Eastern Catholicism Eastern Christianity education election election update Elsewhere on Patheos empathy environment Fear feminism film review fish flashback fluffy buns food Franciscan University of Steubenville Friendship Room fun Gabriel gardening gospel hair-splitting Heaven hell heresy Hillary Clinton history Holly the Witch Holy Spirit holy war Homeschooling homosexuality horror human dignity humor Icon idol immigrants infection inter-religious dialogue Interpretation of Scripture Islam Jesus Jihad Joseph joy laity and lay vocations lamb dinner laundry lent lgbtq literature love manners Mary Medicine and Science Meditation mercy mess milk misogyny Missouri monasticism monster motherhood mourn with those mourn movies movis music mystery nature neurodiversity New Pro-Life Movement news nonsense nostalgia O antiphons obituary objectification Ohio Valley Ordinary Time ordination Ordo Amoris parable paradox Passover peanut butter personal beliefs pets philosophy Planet Charismatic poetry politics polls poop Pope Francis Pope Leo power in the Church prayer prayer request prayers preferential option for non-violence president presidential election priest primary private revelation pro-life prophecy Public face of Catholicism Pure Flix Q and A race racism random rape rape. sexuality reader's request Reckoners refugee religious trauma ressurrection Right to life Saints saints and celebrations same-sex same-sex marriage satire scandal secular feasts seder Seven Joys Seven Last Words sex sexual ethics sexuality silencing six months skid row slavery social justice Speculative fiction spiritual abuse spoon stain story suffering suffrage suffragette Sunday Gospel temple Tenebrae Responsories Terror the exorcist The Friendship Room The New Pro-Life Movement Things I Learned on the Internet tin cup traffic true story tv review Uncategorized USCCB vice and temptation violence Virtue virtue and vice war Way of the Cross whimsy whole life women's ordination work of mercy Year A

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does Paul say in Philemon he would have liked to keep Onesimus to do?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Preach the word Help him while he is in chains for the gospel Serve in the church Care for the poor