TheBanyanTree: My Catholic Upbringing

[Monique Young]

	In high school it came as a great shock to me to discover that I was
Catholic. It was an accidental discovery. Several years earlier I'd begun
taking myself to a Methodist church because a friend of mine went to a
Methodist church and dragged me along, and so I kept going. No one else in
my family went to church or talked about anything like religion. Buncha
heathens. When we moved, I joined another Methodist church, by myself. So
that was the extent of my religious upbringing, just what I did by myself.
My family thought I was nuts, but they always did anyway.
	So then I had an injury at school one day. This should come as no
surprise, me being rather inept. It was during handball, which I loved and
played enthusiastically. So enthusiastically that I was not paying attention
and smacked the concrete wall with my hand rather hard. The school nurse,
upon seeing the size of my swollen hand, decided it was necessary to call my
parents, though I asked her not to. I always asked her not to notify my
parents because it would only get me in trouble. I learned my lessons well.
Anyway, so my father came, and took me to the hospital. This was a rare
opportunity for me because I grew up without much in the way of medical
care. It just cost money my parents would rather spend on household
furnishings and the like. At the hospital I was checking in, with my swollen
and painful hand, and they asked what religion. I was all ready to answer
"Methodist," since that was the only sort of church I'd ever been to, that I
knew of, when my father interjected, "Catholic." 
	I forgot about the pain in my hand, so confused was I. I was
Catholic? Why had no one ever told me this before? I had a clue there was
Catholicism in our past, obviously -- my father's family was from Spain and
Mexico, but I had no recollection of ever being to a Catholic church. Did
the act of saying one was Catholic make one Catholic? Was I genetically
Catholic? Did it not matter what church I'd been attending on my own since I
was 12? Would the Methodists mind if I'd been showing up at their church if
I was Catholic? Should they be notified? Might I be mistaken for a spy?
Should I find a Catholic church?
	There were way too many questions for me to answer all at once, and
I didn't have much time to deal with them because we were coming up on the
Christmas baking season, which we, as good Catholics, observed by filling
huge plastic garbage bags with cookies. When I say "we," I mean my
stepmother and I, she with her sprained ankle and me with my sprained hand.
It was a team effort, which meant that every day after school I'd come home
and bake dozens of cookies (six different varieties) and put them in the
garbage bags for storage, and then she'd parcel them out into pretty
Christmas packages and put tags on them saying, "From Dona," as if she'd
worked her little fingers to the bone making all the cookies I'd produced in
my spare time. (Christmas was a very giving time for me -- I was also in
charge of wrapping every single present my family gave anyone, excluding me,
so all through December my bedroom would be filled with piles of packages
with little post-its on them announcing who they were to, and in my spare
time, I'd wrap them neatly and prettily and wonder why my bedroom was the
storage room, but I digress.) Do you sense a theme here? 
	The cookies were universally acclaimed of course. I am a master
cookie chef, having learned from my stepmother, who could bake. Sometimes
we'd stand in the kitchen together, she with her sprained or broken ankle
propped on a chair, me with my hand heavily bandaged, and I'd give up
because one cannot possibly make butterballs with bandaged hands, and I'd
remove the bandage and roll the damn cookies until my hand ached so it would
keep me up all night, but good Catholics are not dissuaded from cookie
baking by a bit of pain, are we?
	My stepmother was most assuredly not Catholic however. She was
German. Well, besides that, I'm certain she knew nothing of Catholicism. She
was pretty ignorant of many things. I often had to explain to her what
things were. Like convents. Things we'd see in Mexico on our frequent forays
that were of Catholic origin that she knew nothing about.
	Anyway. I digress. No surprise, eh? It's 4:23 am and I'm wide awake,
so you get what you get.
	(When I say my stepmother's ankle was broken or sprained it's
because several times when we lived in the house on Golden Rose her ankle
was broken or sprained and I can't remember which time was which. Once when
she tripped going upstairs drunk. And I always associate the time the
carload of us, sans Dad, went through the garage doors -- open garage doors,
but we didn't go through the opening part, we went through the part between
the garage doors, which was most uncomfortable, as a time she broke her
ankle, but indeed, that time she'd accelerated instead of braked because of
an already injured ankle, at least that's how I remember it.)
	Back to my Catholicism experience. When I was 17, or 18, or
somewhere around there, a rather distant relative of mine decided he'd had
enough of this cruel world and took excessive amounts of valium or some
pills and alcohol, together. When I say "distant relative" I mean distant
only in terms of distance, not in relations, since he was a half-brother, my
father's second child and oldest son by his first wife, but I'd had the
misfortune of being acquainted with him only a couple of times -- he was not
a nice person. He, the distant brother, had been dropped off at the hospital
by his friends. He was 24 at the time. (I like to think it was his guilt
over the horrible things he'd done to his younger half-sister, but I'm
pretty sure that wasn't the case.) Before my dad could get to the hospital,
he had revived enough to be alert and got up and walked out, and disappeared
into the night. Even his wife didn't know where'd gotten himself to. A week
later, he was back in the hospital, still making the attempt, and this time
in a coma. He died. His mother, the good Catholic she was (I don't know how
good of a Catholic she was, I never even met her, only saw her once from a
distance, which was about as much attention as my oldest sister, the
Catholic's daughter, ever got from her either) insisted on a Catholic
funeral. Sure, it was a suicide, but they could claim it was misadventure,
as in, "Oops, did I really take those together? What was I thinking?" So
they got their Catholic funeral. My sister, who must have been an even
better Catholic than I was, because both her parents were Catholic, and my
stepmother, who was an even worse Catholic than I was, because I was at
least half Catholic, sat together, and we were all, for once, of the same
mind: How does this work, and what am I supposed to do? We followed along
with what the majority were doing (it had to be the majority, because
everyone else in our family was just as confused), and kneeled when they
kneeled, and got up when they got up, et cetera.
	I am really hoping my father does not plan on having a Catholic
funeral because I'm pretty certain that none of us would have any idea who
to even contact about that. 
	I do know some Lutherans however . . . 

	My stepmother, the good Catholic wannabe, offered my dead brother's
young wife, a girl none of us had ever met before, a place to stay. "You
could," she told her, after the funeral, "Come stay with us for a bit. I'm
sure this is a very hard time for you. We'd love to have you."
	The wife, having never met any of us before, seemed like a nice girl
(though she had married the evil brother, so what do I know), and was also
smart, because she declined my stepmother's kind offer.
	In the car, on the way home, my stepmother said, "I'm certainly glad
she said no. What would I have done with a strange girl like that in the
house? It's not like we knew her!"
	Indeed. She had enough problems with the strange girl who was
already in the house that she did know.

Monique