“When Big Momma made the world, she didn’t mess around.”

I got the best birthday present this year: Big Momma Makes the World, by Phyllis Root, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury.

Then she looked at the light and she looked at the dark
and she looked at that little baby looking at the light and the dark, smiling and cooing,
and Big Momma said, “That’s good. That’s real good.”

Last night I read Big Momma aloud to Kevin as he made dinner, and in between the lines, I marveled that such a book - a creation myth starring a big momma with a baby on her hip who don’t mess around - hadn’t been published sooner.

Because in a way, the Christian creation story is why, at the tender age of twelve, I became a feminist.

It was my first Catholic Sunday service. I remember the priest up at the pulpit talking, then doing his communion routine. His outfit, his choreography, his attitude set him apart from the rest of us, the rabble in the pews.

I don’t remember the finer details of his sermon, just that it was something about how since God the Father went to all the trouble of creating the world, we should just shut up, give thanks, and do what we’re told. After the service, the priest stood smirking faintly in the doorway as the congregation filed past him.

I’d been to church before, but for some reason this time it seemed strange to me that grown adults would willingly gather to hear some guy they barely know lecture them about how to be “good.” Even stranger was how people treated this guy like he was better than they were, though as far as I could tell, he was just a man in a dress. Folks seemed sheepish around him, deferential, but I couldn’t figure out why.

So I did what I discovered later is quite frowned upon by the church: I went in search of information and found the priest had no clothes.

Throughout the next several weeks of research, I discovered that part of the reason for the deferential treatment was because the priest had a weenie, and according to the Bible, those with weenies are better than those without. It’s God the Father, ya know, and there are lots of stories in his book that explain how women are second-class citizens because he created them that way, although their inherently “sinful” nature helps.

Ah well - a story’s just a story. Right?

Would that that were so. Because although there is not one tiny shred of evidence that the stories in the Bible were written by a divine, supernatural entity - rather than just some guys with parchment, Oedipal tendencies and too much time - at some point somebody told us they were true. And not just true, but God hisself’s actual “Word.”

And we bought it! I realized with amazement. Hook line and sinker.

But what really worked my tits was that it wasn’t just the men who bought it (and why wouldn’t they?) but the women as well. We even gave the thumbs-up to the Father-who-created-the-universe story - the ultimate attempt by men to deny their if not unimportant, essentially side-kick role in the creation of life.

I smacked my youthful forehead. What were we thinking? Something had to be done.

Thus from the womb of religious disillusionment was born that Uppity Rib: terrorizing the patriarchy since roughly 1980.

So now you see why, twenty-seven years later, I am so delighted by my birthday present. This generation of little girls doesn’t have to wait for some stultifying church service to annoy them into feminism. They can be led there gently and easily, from the comfort of their mothers’ arms. Growing up with Big Momma, their own goodness and power will seem as natural as the light and the dark.

And that’s good. That’s real good.

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