A Mormon and Her Tarot

My first memory of tarot cards was a hushed secret I shared with my mom, Donna. The deck was tiny, what I now know is referred to as a mini-deck, but it was exactly the right size for my spider leg-thin 13-year-old fingers. I'm sure (almost) that she bought them in a novelty pack at Barnes and Noble during one of our every-other-weekend, divorced-kid outings.

She and my dad, Wes, divorced when I was four. I grew up with two different narratives of the divorce; two different types of adults; two different lenses through which to see the world. And that meant I had a muddy, clouded, shades-of-gray view of the world - a concept my ultra-Mormon step-mom, Jennifer, never understood. She still doesn't. And just like she has stayed the same, the canyon between both sides of myself stayed the same. It didn't grow, it didn't shrink, the two sides never met. It was just there - a separation.

As I progressed through elementary school, my dad was the Natural Born Hero in my book. He could do no wrong, say no wrong, be no wrong. And whatever he was, I wanted to be. I think my mother was always a little jealous of that attachment I had to him that required nothing and received all my heart. Not that I didn't love her, I did and do. But I was the quintessential Daddy's Girl, down to the dusty knees from a failed attempt at rock climbing and the insistence that I too liked the Violent Femmes, even at the age of 11.

And yet tarot cards were between me and my mom and some mysterious Universe that I was half-convinced hated me. At 13, I was not ugly-duckling-she'll-be-a-swan awkward. I was simply awkward. Brown hair that I couldn't seem to manage to flatten enough; glasses that betrayed my obviously flawed body; braces to echo the glasses; acne to seal my fate as a Non-Popular.

But tarot cards made me feel like a secret witch; like I had a secret power that no one could possibly know. But it was a secret because it was seen as a devil-worshipping Satanist priestcraft to my favorite hero.

Even as I write, my heart races and I can taste the familiar metallic bile of anxiety in the back of my throat.

Yet, as an adult, I am free to choose what I please. And I chose, of all things, tarot cards to help me remain aware. I'm not sure if it's the long history of mysticism or the forced introspection, but drawing a single card a day, studying its meaning, then drawing connections helps me to find some kind of peace I missed.

As a Mormon - or the preferred term "Latter-day Saint" - you are surrounded by expectation. From the moment you are cursed with a gender, an albatross is assigned and logged about what you should ideally turn out to be. As a girl, I was expected to graduate high school a virgin - pure as fresh snow and just as naive to the impact of the world - and then to go out on a quest for a worthy male, one who served his two-year sentence, returned "with honor" and would soon propose to impregnate you with a lasso around the finger.

After the White Wedding of your mothers' dreams, you would play the dutiful Jackie, keeping watch over another woman's son who would be woefully ill-prepared to handle the world in his own ways. You were to be fertile, fruitful, so the two of you could multiple and replenish the Earth like bunnies, despite both of your assumed virginities. And then, you would suddenly be the glowing Angel Mother none of us had and later the Holy Mother.

I did not follow the script and I suffered for it. But how could I have, given I had two directors at constant odds?

And now, I am a Mother. I am not an Angel (nor was I ever) and I am not perfect. And every day - perhaps to solidify the rebellion - I pull a tarot card. I focus. I know it's mainly psychology, the law of seeing-what-you-want-to-see and making-connections-where-there-were-none-before.

But I sit with each card. I write it down. I reflect. It calls to my mind - even on the days I feel that I too will fail as a mother - where I can improve, where I am excelling. For a blissful, stolen moment in my day of motherhood - usually during my baby's first nap because I still carry a shame with this habit - I am allowed to exist as me, myself, the All-Seeing I.