Turin, Italy was a not a city that was never on my list of places to see but, as we fled Florence and moved north to escape the blistering heat of Italy’s epic heatwave, I found myself spending a night there.
The only thing I really knew about Turin was the Shroud of Turin-something that fascinated me as a child. I first learned of it from my mother. When I was growing-up, my father traveled often for work and my siblings and I would huddle around the kitchen table every night, eyes wide as our mother would tell us stories.
The stories ranged in topics from her childhood to family stories to bible stories. The religious stories were not anything we heard in Sunday school. They were fantastical, magical, and often dark stories. My mother got her penchant for telling these stories from her grandmother who used to tell her haunting stories, filled with religious symbolism. Like the little girl who put the consecrated Eucharist in her pocket to take home and, once there, pierced it with a pin and it bleed all over her white bedspread, leaving a blood stain that would reappear no matter how many times the bedspread was washed.
Remembering that story now, I see the symbolism and warning about keeping one’s virginity. The piercing, the white bedspread, the “stain” that can never be removed. It’s all so obvious now, but, as a child, it simply scared the daylight out of me.
And so, coming from that ancient form of storytelling, my mother told us about the Shroud of Turin. It was the burial cloth of Jesus, and it had his image, complete with all his crucifixion wounds, permanently transferred onto it. It was proof that Jesus lived and wasn’t just a prophet. He could perform miracles. I was at once overcome by my mother’s (and my) religious fervor. A fervor that I felt in the center of my body, a feeling that brought not only holiness but also fear.
The dinner table stories ended when we moved from Ohio to California when I was twelve. My mother went to work and there was rarely time for stories in the evenings. I turned to books for my stories.
By then, I was a ferocious reader and was gulping down children’s books at an alarming rate. In an attempt to not go bankrupt every time a Scholastic Books catalog came into the house, my mother opened her bookcase to me. It was then that the Shroud of Turin reappeared in my life.
This time, it was in the form of a book. It was a book discussing the questionable authenticity of the Shroud. The book’s cover was black with a photograph of the Shroud on it. When I saw it on the bookshelf, I got the same feeling in the pit of stomach that I had when my mother was telling us stories. I pulled it off the shelf and devoured it a few days. Reading it was a watershed moment, the beginning of a loss of innocence and long held beliefs.
I don’t remember the book specifically saying that the Shroud was a fake but it also didn’t say it was authentic. I was shocked. My mother’s storytelling, even my faith was suddenly in question.
Looking back now, it makes sense. I was on the brink of puberty, a time when you begin to question everything any authority says, a time when you start to become your own person. The mystery of The Shroud of Turin just happened to be the catalyst as I entered this stage of life.
Now, at age 53, I found myself in Turin. Once again on the cusp of major changes in my life. Menopause, empty nesting, and wondering who I am now are all bubbling beneath the surface. My beliefs about myself and my world shift daily. The miracle of the Shroud, for me, is that it seems to make an appearance in my life whenever I am in a place of transition. Perhaps that is miracle of enough.
Unfortunately, I was unable to see the Shroud. The actual artifact is rarely displayed, and the copy is only shown for brief periods of time each day and those times did not coincide with our travel schedule. Maybe it will reappear in my life again someday. I am guessing it will be when I am on the brink of yet another major life change. So, you see, I still believe in miracles. Do you?
Good writing Laura. What makes it resonate for male or female readers is the manner in which you threw caution to the winds, ala a latter-day Walt Whitman, and spilled your innermost feelings out on the pages, not knowing in each of us you’ve touched a piece of our private humanity This is the stuff of memorable story telling be it prose or poetry, fact or fiction, narrative or dialogue .
(An aside: recognizing this is an August eleventh draft, I did see some construction and word choice issues you might want to consider. I’ll do that when I get back on my PC.)