Pulvis es et pulvis reverteris

(From the Latin: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”) For those who follow the Christian faith, today is Ash Wednesday, a holy and solemn day marking the beginning of Lent: seven weeks of prayer, fasting, and acts of charity leading up to Easter, the sacred week that commemorates the martyrdom and resurrection of Christ. Realizing what day, it was stirred a vivid memory from when I was about seven years old, visiting my grandmother Carmen in San Salvador. My grandma was a deeply devout Roman Catholic. She loved attending her local parish in her neighborhood, but during special celebrations she would visit an old church in the center of the city. The Church of the Calvary, rebuilt in the 1920s in a striking Gothic style, rose from the ashes of the original 1660 structure that had been destroyed by a massive fire and devastating earthquakes that nearly leveled the city. To many, it was majestic. To me, it was terrifying. I dreaded going there because of a statue of Saint Lucy, Lucia of Syracuse, an early Christian martyr and patron saint of light, the blind, and those suffering from eye ailments. She symbolizes the light of faith during the darkness of winter. According to legend, her eyes were removed, either by her own hand or by her persecutors, to deter an unwanted suitor, yet they were miraculously restored. The statue in that church showed Saint Lucy holding a small plate… and on it lay a pair of loose eyes. Those lifeless eyes haunted me. Just looking at them gave me nightmares. I hated entering that church because I was so frightened of that image. But my grandma didn’t seem to notice, or perhaps she didn’t mind. Every time she went to the market, she would enter through the same side door, the one right beside the statue. And every single time, I tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid looking at it. That particular Ash Wednesday, while I was staying with her, she instructed me to kneel beside her to receive the symbol of the day: the priest tracing a cross of wet ashes on our foreheads. But my mind was far from the solemn meaning of repentance and mortality. Instead of reflecting on faith, I was anxiously thinking about that statue. I was scared. Completely distracted. Shortly after the ceremony, we returned to her house. I felt uncomfortable, almost irritated, by the dark cross on my forehead. And then I did something that, at that time, usually caused tension between my grandmother and me. I announced, boldly and without hesitation, “I’m going to take a shower.” She looked at me, surprised. The fact that I wasn’t arguing about bathing was shocking, and, I imagine, delightful, to her. In my defense, it wasn’t that I disliked showering. It was that in my grandmother’s house there was no warm water. The water that came out of the shower was icy cold. At my parents’ home, water was pumped from a well into a tank above ground, where it was naturally heated by the sun. Bathing there felt pleasant. At Grandma’s house, it felt like punishment. A few minutes later, I stepped out of the bathroom. The ashes were gone. My grandmother saw me and shouted, “What did you do, child?!” Her voice startled me. Confused, I replied, “What I told you I was going to do. I showered.” She looked at me with a gaze that perfectly embodied the expression, “If looks could kill…” She didn’t say another word. She didn’t need to. Her silence carried anger, disappointment, and deep disapproval. I had washed away the ashes. My grandmother was not someone who forgot, or forgave, easily. From that day on, and for several years afterward, every time I visited her, she took me to get a haircut in a style known as the “angry duckling”: a nearly shaved head with a tiny lock of hair left defiantly at the front. It was humiliating. After noticing the pattern, my dad once asked me, half amused and half concerned, “What did you do that my mom has it in for you?” Over time, though, our relationship softened. When I became a teenager and later a young adult, I was the only grandchild who would take her out, to smoke a cigarette and eat cheesecake. Those small rebellions became our shared rituals. Somehow, between laughter, smoke, and dessert, our relation became closer than ever. This Ash Wednesday, I remember the ashes, the cold water, the terrifying eyes of Saint Lucy… and my grandmother’s unforgettable stare.