Religious Education

            My cousin Jan was the sixth of seven children in a devoutly Catholic family.  They went to church every Sunday, attended Catholic schools, and did their best to follow the time-honored teachings of the church.  I was envious of the ritualistic conviction with which they did these things, and of the usually-cheerful chaos of a large family.  Jan, I thought, was envious of my apparent life of leisure, free from the restrictions against which she chafed.

            I loved to visit their huge—to me—stone house in Upper Darby.  From the end of their block you could look down the hill to the Philadelphia skyline, just a short trolley ride away.  Their street was shaded by a canopy of ancient trees, and life inside their home felt as solid as the stone with which it was built.

I usually visited on Friday nights, but the year that I was 10 years old, I stayed overnight on a Saturday.  Saturday was bath night and ice cream night.  Jan and I shared the bathtub with some difficulty, as we were both getting long-legged, and I marveled at the angry red line that ran from her shoulder to the base of her spine.  It was made redder with mercurochrome, making it look like the lips of a drunken woman who has recently re-applied her lipstick with less than perfect accuracy.  The injury was a cat scratch, the worst cat scratch I had ever seen.  The previous Saturday night, her younger sister had thought it would be funny—or a pleasant revenge for big-sisterly arrogances—to put the cat into the bathtub with Jan.  The cat had thought otherwise.  The cat had assessed the situation immediately, honing in on the obvious solution: use that girl, there, as a ladder.

It worked just fine.  He did not see what all the fuss was about.  There was screaming and howling and thrashing about, and he made for the gap between the door and the door frame.  By the time Jan’s mother reached the top of the stairs to see which of her daughters had murdered the other, the cat was in brother Daniel’s room, licking the guilt off his paws.   Looking at Jan’s back in the tub gave me occasion to reconsider my wish to have siblings.

On Sunday morning, everyone went to church, because not going to church was a sin. I did own a dress, although it was not exactly subtle and humble.  This was the mid-70's, after all.  It was emerald green polyester, with a wide elastic band of yellow and red stripes around the waist.  We had breakfast: a bowl of Fruity Pebbles cereal and a glass of Tang to drink. I read the explanation of the origins of Tang—supposedly created for the astronauts of NASA—on the bottle while we ate, and felt very space-age.  Neither of these food products were available at my house.

            Ten or fifteen minutes into the service at St. Lawrence's Church, I noticed that everything was starting to sound blurred, somehow.  My vision developed cracks in it, as if the whole world were an ancient, yellowed stained-glass window.  I said something to Jan’s mother about not feeling very well, and she ushered me outside.  No sooner did we get out the door but the Tang and the Fruity Pebbles were immediately dispatched into the shrubbery by forces beyond my control.  I stood, weaving, looking at the colorful result, and Jan volunteered the information that it was a sin to eat before Mass, too. 

            Thank you very much for withholding this vital information. Now you tell me!  In retrospect, I think that rule was about communion, which I did not take because even though I had been baptized Catholic—my mother thought it was all bullshit, but just in case she was wrong, she figured I shouldn't have to suffer for all eternity—I had not done the whole communion training and rehearsal thing.  Still, on this morning I thought that maybe the Blessed Mother didn’t have anything better to do than check her clipboard periodically and punish eaters of unauthorized breakfast cereals.  Or the Holy Ghost. Really, what were his responsibilities, anyway?  It all seemed very unclear. 

            So despite my yearning for union with the unseen, my wish to be enveloped in unconditional love and feel the true path of righteousness under my Converse high-tops, I did not return to a Catholic church for quite some time.