当你的妈妈可以在体育从她的位置w during the early service, early enough that the sun barely fills the sky with its weak straw, but row after row in the auditorium is flush with folks who want to be home before the football game gets underway or hate the slower pace the later service takes but still got to get their god on before starting a new week: when she can rise and tip down the aisle, three-inch heels pointing a warning at hell through the plush mauve carpet, smile and nod at preacher, who is sitting on the pulpit's little throne with his bible beneath his palm, a man thick-chested and stout-bellied with moral authority, whose face gleams with crushing benevolent power: when she can give him a pleasant nod, and circle around behind the microphone standing like a thin silver trophy between the heavenly floral arrangements, give a firm tug to the hem of her suit jacket, and lean over the dimpled nob, the ribbons encircling the crown of her broad-brimmed hat quivering with each breath, the crisp white paper in her hands held out at arm's length from her customary squint, her eyes scooting back and forth, between this document and the village of worshipers fanning themselves and waiting on her voice: when she can stand there and coo, good morning, praise the lord and introduce her reading as a poem by my daughter, a quick look at your beaming father, then take your words between her lightly pinked lips and raise each one to the light, before god and these witnesses, enunciating like she learned to recite from the fourth- grade primer in her schoolhouse's single room, sending sound through the vowels like a bell: when she can do this, can rise and walk, and smile and read and have the church say amen - then you can safely declare: it is clean.