Memories Monday --The Meeting

 

 

Even though I am what Barbara Pym would call a “holy fowl” and we have an Episcopal priest in the family, the prospect of a conference with a Catholic priest was almost as scary as being questioned by a homicide detective.  But at least he couldn’t put me in jail.

I’d hoped for a progressive young priest, maybe even one all the girls fell in love with, a Father Whatawaste.  But this guy was old enough to be Father Whatawaste’s father or maybe even his grandfather. He looked like Barry Fitzgerald, but without the twinkle in his eye.

“So young lady,” he said to Cilla, “why do you want to become a Catholic?”

Veronica must have prepped her, because she said, “To learn about God and Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mother.”

“Are you willing to work very hard and make sacrifices?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And what do you think your faith will help you become?”

Cilla looked puzzled.  He looked impatient.  “A mother? Or a nurse?  Or a nun, perhaps?”

“I’m not sure.  But maybe a movie star or a veterinarian or a priest.”  Father Barry looked surprised, but he recovered quickly and put on his stern face, which would have scared me when I was six.  At my age, it just made me clutch my purse.

“Women can’t be priests.  You’ll have to choose something else.” 

Not being Catholic, Cilla didn’t realize that you don’t disagree with a priest.  “But my Aunt Kate is a priest!”

Father Barryfitzgerald glared at me.  “Your sister, I suppose.”  (Obviously, as a male, Ed could not have such a thing as a sister who was a priest.)

“Oh, no,” Cilla clarified.  “She’s not really my aunt.  We just call her that.  She’s my grandma’s friend.”

His eyes narrowed.  “Does she live with her?”

“Oh, no; Aunt Kate has to live in the rectory.  That’s what we call the priest’s house.  And my grandma says that since she’s paying her own mortgage, she’s not going to live in that mausoleum.  I guess we call it a mausoleum, too.”

Father Barryfitzgerald didn’t miss a beat.  “Well, your Aunt Kate is going to Hell and she’ll take your grandmother with her.”

 Ed looked like he was ready to deck him and I wanted to walk out as quickly as possible, but Cilla was too fast for us.

“No she’s not!  You’re a very bad man.  I don’t want to be a priest and I don’t want your old First Communion!” She ran out of the office, with Ed and me trailing along.

“She’s right,” I called back.

I sat in the back seat with Cilla, expecting her to cry all the way home, but she was too busy listening to Ed rant about that SOB and that GD organization, mainly because he didn’t use the initials.

When we told Betsey and Josh what happened, they high-fived Cilla and wanted to call Father Barryfitzgerald and add their thoughts.

I sat them down and gave them a talk about disagreeing respectfully with others, even if they were wrong, but my heart wasn’t in it

Memories Monday -- We're Marching to Zion with a Stopoff in Rome

I’ve always prided myself on the fact that “We’ll have to think about it” doesn’t mean “no”.  Sometimes, though, it is a stalling tactic when I’m hoping the kids will forget about whatever it is they’re asking for, when I know I’ll say yes.  I think it worked once.

But when I told Cilla that we would have to think about her joining the Catholic Church, I was really stalling to give myself time to get used to the idea.  If she really wanted to do it, I knew I’d have to let her.

We decided that she would attend the services (“Mass”, as she called it) and go to religious instruction classes on Wednesday nights.  Then, after a year, if she still wanted to, she could do First Communion.  I could tell that she wanted to ask about the party but was afraid that might make me change my mind.  “And we’ll have the party.  But the money presents will go in your college fund.”

Cilla squealed with joy and rushed off to call Veronica and her grandparents.

I confessed to Karen that I felt a little bit guilty “only thinking about the party and presents,” which I’m sure the children are warned about.  Was I not being respectful of the Catholic Church and not remembering that “It’s all one God?”

She said I was probably angry about the whole thing and had issues about Cilla, “the baby”, getting older and being so independent and that I shouldn’t be surprised if I got pregnant again.

“Good one,” I said.

Anyway, I called the church and Cilla, Ed, and I have appointment to talk to a priest.  Ed fussed that they would probably want a retainer fee on top of Cilla’s bringing an offering every week and something for the classes.

I said maybe we’d make it up with the presents.  “ Short term, maybe,” he said, “but probably not net.”

 

Boo Ho Ho! (Not to mention gobble gobble.)

 

Well, here it is the beginning of November and Christmas Madness has started already.  The Hallmark Channel is showing Christmas movies every day, Christmas candy is out next to the last reduced price candy corn at the drug stores, and on Facebook, people are sharing pictures of Santa with a countdown of shopping days.  Sometimes their comment is “Mwahaha.”

I had the girls over on Saturday night, and, just to be ironic, I served eggnog and fruitcake.   The fruitcake had brandy in it and I had a bottle of rum so everyone could do it themselves with the eggnog.  As a nod to Thanksgiving I got pumpkin spice eggnog as well as the regular kind.  Fortunately, the kids think eggnog and fruitcake are yucky.

“This is probably the last chance I’ll get to relax,” Nikki said.  “I’m doing Thanksgiving, since Helmut’s invited some German friends for ‘a real American feast.’” (She said the last with a German accent.)  “I was afraid my mother would get mad, since we usually go to her house, so I had to invite her and my father.  Fortunately, my sister has to go to her mother-in-law’s.  It’s not that I don’t want them, but still . . . I was thinking I wouldn’t have to get too fancy, since the Germans wouldn’t know the difference, but if my mother is there, she will.”    

“Did Helmut ask you first?”

“He said,”(in a German accent) ‘If you wouldn’t mind Liebchen.’ “ 

“How can you say no to him when he’s so charming and has that cute accent?”

Nikki snorted.

Karen has really gone Methodist, so she is now Assistant Director of the Church Christmas pageant.  “They tell me it’ll be fun.  Now Tom has even more opportunities to tell me how awful organized religion is.”

‘What do you say to that?”

“I tell him he should be glad that I have some organization in my life.”

“I’m doing Christmas, but Missy offered to do Thanksgiving at her house.  I mean my father’s.  I don’t know what the kids will say or what I should tell them.”

“They know what’s going on.  They could probably tell you.”

“Maybe they think she sleeps in the guest room.”

Nikki rolled her eyes and Karen sighed.

“Well, maybe Cilla does.”

“Just hope she doesn’t ask in the middle of dinner.  You don’t want to be spitting cranberry sauce all over the tablecloth.  You can’t get the stains out.”

I wondered if I should have a talk with the children about the situation.  I really didn’t have the courage to bring it up.

“I still don’t know how I’m going to handle Christmas Eve when they’re coming to watch the kids while we go to the midnight service.  My father always slept over.”

“Maybe Missy will be divorced by then and they can get married.”

“Good one,” I said and had another eggnog.

 

 

Memories Monday -- A Party, Presents, and a Veil!

Cilla and Veronica are all charged up about Veronica’s sister’s First Holy Communion.  She gets to wear a “beauty-full” white dress and a veil, they’ll have a party afterwards, and she’ll get presents!

All the Unitarians have is a naming ceremony, which, of course, you don’t have to do (because whatever Supreme Being(s) there is (are) forbid that you’d have to do anything regarding religion, spirituality or whatever reason you are a Unitarian.)  My parents didn’t have me done because my father said it was “foolishness imitating foolishness.”

There have been seemingly endless “rehearsals.”  Veronica invited Cilla to go with her.

“Watch out you don’t get hit with a yardstick” Ed cautioned her.  “Nuns have been known to do that.”

“Oh, Daddy, not anymore.  Veronica’s mom told me.”

Nobody got hit with a yardstick or even yelled at.  Veronica’s mother introduced Cilla to the nun in charge, who had said, “Maybe next year, you can make your First Communion.”

“Oh, Mommy, can I?   Please, please, please!”

“We have to give it serious thought,” I said.  When I was ten years old, I had promised myself that I wouldn’t be one of those mothers who said “We’ll see.”  “This is a very big decision.  We’ll have to pray about it.”

“She just wants the presents,” Josh sneered.

“That’s not nice.”  I pounced on the teachable moment.  “Never criticize anyone’s religious ideas.  It’s all right to ask questions if you’re curious, but you have to be respectful.  And anyway, you just get money that your parents put in your college fund and things like Bibles and rosaries.”

Ed was passing by.  He shook his head.  “Charlie, you may be on the Altar Guild, but you are a still a recovering Unitarian.”  I was too worn out from dealing with Cilla to ask him what he meant.

 

Boo! 2

When I was a child, Halloween was my favorite holiday.  I loved dressing up and going outside in the dark.  The weather was usually just turning nippy by October, but somehow it was always warm enough on Halloween that we didn’t have to wear coats over our costumes.
My mother had never liked dressing up.  Even as a child she couldn’t see the point of pretending to be something you weren’t.  But she liked the candy, so she always went trick or treating.  She’d usually wear Aunt Pooh’s costume from the year before.

  My grandmother loved to make costumes.  When the kids were quite young,  she decided to dress them as the Three Little Pigs.  She got my grandfather to stay home and hand out the candy and she made herself a wolf costume.  She enjoyed it so much that the next year she decided to do Little Red Riding Hood.  Aunt Pooh was the woodsman, my mother was Little Red Riding Hood, and my Uncle Hank was the grandmother. “You should have seen your mother.  She was five years old and she kept saying ‘This is really dumb’ and rolling her eyes, just like a teenager.  My mother finally told her that she could stay home, but she wouldn’t get any candy and she wouldn’t let me or Hank give her any of ours. Not that she really had to worry about that.  So she went.  Poor Louie.”

This year, Betsey decided she wanted to be a cat.  “A sexy cat?” Josh wanted to know, “Or just a regular one?”

“Or a slutty cat?”  Cilla piped up.

I didn’t know what to say.  But Betsey saved me.  “Don’t be such a moron.  That’s gross!”

Then Josh wanted to know the difference between a sexy cat and a slutty cat.

“Nobody is going to be a sexy or slutty anything.” 

“Veronica and I are going be nuns,” Cilla said.  “But just regular ones.  Veronica’s mom is making the outfits for us.”

“That’s a lot of work for her,” I said.  I didn’t want Cilla to get any more ideas about converting.   “I know!  Why don’t you go as a priest?”  That was an easy costume – black pants, black sweater over a white turtleneck and a cross.  “You can wear makeup.” 

“But she already started it!”   I could feel the “please, please, please” coming.  I didn’t have the energy for it.

“All right.  But you know, there are Episcopalian nuns.”

“Ok.  I’ll be one of them.  Are they sexy or slutty or anything?”

“Certainly not.”

Josh decided to be a zombie again.  Just a regular one, he assured me.

 

 

Memories Monday -- Boo!

 
When my mother was a child, she had lived in a suburb that was really The Country.  There were cornfields on two sides of her house.  She and her friends would go into the fields, pick corn, shell it, and on the nights before Halloween, go out without adults, sneak up to windows of houses, throw the corn, and run away.  (It was animal corn, so it was hard, like the decorative Indian corn you see in stores, although in the summer, when it was soft, she and her friends would eat it.)  The bolder ones would ring the doorbell.  The kids love this story and would have loved to try it, but fortunately there aren’t any cornfields around.

In our town, Trick or Treat night is always the Friday or Saturday before Halloween, so the kids won’t be kept up too late on a school night.  This makes Halloween rather anti-climactic, but I always make a Halloween dinner, which we eat by candlelight; pumpkin soup from the intellectual deli and grilled cheese sandwiches imprinted with a jack-o-lantern. (I got the stamp in a set, with stamps of a smiley face,  Santa, an Easter egg, and a turkey.)  We have tomato juice to drink, since it looks like blood.

Karen asked me if I wanted to come over and try to contact Margaret with a Ouija board.  I said we always watch scary movies together, and why didn’t they come over here.  Maybe it makes me a wuss, but after The Exorcist, which gave me nightmares as a child, I’m afraid of Ouijas.  I asked Karen if they were going to have pea soup.

I would have told Karen that it would probably be more worthwhile to say a prayer for Margaret on All Saints’ Day, but I didn’t want to be an obnoxious churchlady.

Pulp Nonfiction

“So,” I said to Karen and Nikki “Betsey had her friend Becky overnight last Saturday and the next morning, I asked if she wanted orange juice with lots of pulp or no pulp.”

“You get both kinds?”  Karen was incredulous. 

“Well, Cilla and I like it with pulp, but nobody else does. We tried some with ‘some pulp’, but then nobody was happy.”

“Nobody ever is when you compromise,” Nikki said.  “You have to make a commitment, especially with things you feel strongly about.”

“What kind did she want?”

“Lots of pulp, and of course Betsey had to say how yucky it was, and I had to remind her that everyone is entitled to their own preferences.”

“Not at my house when I was a kid,” Karen muttered.  “My mother refused to buy chunky peanut butter.  Fortunately, Tom and the boys like it.”

“If they didn’t, would you buy smooth for them?”

Karen looked surprised, as if she had never thought this could be an option.

“I guess so, but wouldn’t it be spoiling them?”

“Well, not if Tom liked it too.”

“We always used Hellman’s Mayonnaise,” I said, “and Janet always used Miracle Whip.  It’s no wonder people say she can’t cook.  Anyway, when we got married, we bought both.  I think that’s when I really felt independent.  My mother probably would have made herself use Miracle Whip.”

“Unless she hid a little jar of Hellman’s in the back of the fridge and snuck spoonfuls of it once in a while.”

 “But anyway,” I said, getting back to my story, “Becky told her mother about it and about the mayonnaise and her mother called me and said that I was spoiling the children.  I told her that it gave them practice making choices.”

“What did she say?”

“That there are limits.”

“Did she mention the jelly, too?”  We have about eight kinds of jelly in the refrigerator: strawberry, raspberry with seeds, raspberry without seeds, grape, blueberry, peach, pineapple, and marmalade.  And we’ll probably have more after the Christmas Bazaar at church.

“Dear, God, the jelly!”  Karen looked up to heaven and laughed.  “I’m never going to let the boys look in your refrigerator”

“So what did you say?”  Nikki got us back on track.

“I thanked her for her input and told her what an angel Becky had been.  Then I said I had to go because Ed needed me for something.”

“Did he?” 

“Well, he might have.”

“I’m sorry I only have one kind of wine, tonight.” Karen said. 

Nikki snorted.  “It’s lucky we don’t need to learn how to make choices.”