This is a true story.
My mother came from Italy.
I was the first in the family born in America.
My family is pretty much entirely Catholic.
Not me.
No.
Even though I write about Catholic stuff quite a bit. Never. No.
I am surrounded by them.
My kids are Buddhists. I am not making that up. Both of them. They have official Buddhist beads and certificates, and shit like that.
That proves it!
I have a godson in the Catholic church. I had to get special clearance, a full body probe, and a microscopic chip that produces searing pain implanted in my brain in order for the Catholic church to grant permission for me to be his godfather.
Because I am not one of them.
But there is a document!
I have kind of exiled myself from the past. Since I have four books out, though, people I have been lost to have found me. It is a remarkable thing.
It's not like I have been hiding or anything. You don't really need to hide when you are invisible.
The last time I saw my godson, he and his mother were moving somewhere far away. He was a baby.
I thought about the kid every day. Seriously. If the chip in my head ever went off, it would have been a sign from the Catholic church that I had to assume the responsibility of nurturing the kid's spiritual development.
Good thing he made it without me!
I could have singlehandedly initiated the collapse of one of the world's great religious movements.
Nobody would want that to happen.
His mom found me about a year ago, maybe more than that, because of Facebook.
I talked to the kid yesterday on the phone.
The kid is not so much a kid anymore. He is a fully-grown man.
It was nice to hear him articulate speech, as opposed to gurgling saliva and throwing up steaming baby formula on me.
I have a lot of questions about history for him.
As an exile, I am fascinated by history.
I will let you know.
5 comments:
I went to Catholic school until fifth grade. It was called Saint Anne's, and it was on Queen Anne Hill. There were a lot of Annes involved in my spiritual development. I'm a Jewish Buddhist Rastafarian now.
I guess almost everyone coming from a European family was raised Catholic. And I have not met anyone with a sain mind who didn't rebel against it.
Glad to see you reconnected.
Cheers
Ex-Catholic here, which is not really true. I was never Catholic, my parents were and I was never confirmed (by my own volition). Whew.
I am intrigued by this all - perhaps a bit too much.
My parents were Radical Catholics who did civil rights work and then kind of ended up kicked out. I grew up with Highly Modified catholic Sensibilities.
They are buddhists now.
I like hagiography, though.
Saints and their attributes inform my writing life in unexpected and often disturbing ways.
Rock on, St. Fridisweid.
I renounced what Catholicism I had a few years after I baptized my son. It happened like this: June 1992. In a second wave of Catholic guilt, I am entertaining the idea of sending my son through the step change rituals associated with Catholicism: Communion, Confession, Confirmation.
My first wave of Catholic guilt came shortly after my son’s birth, the ‘Christening’. Still glowing from the miracle of birth, somehow I credited someone else for pulling this off, instead of who rightfully deserved the credit, me. I co-created, carried, nourished and pushed him into the world. Well, actually, he deserves a lot of credit for this part. I simply needed to allow him to do what he wanted to do. I originally thought that his foray into the great wide open was the after effect of having eaten a bad chili dog. Once I realized I was in labor, I needed to get out of his way.
Everything is ritualistic in the Catholic church. My grandparents are actually my Godparents. When I inform my family that I am breaking tradition and picking someone from the outside to be the chosen one, I think I am going to be ousted--and at the time would not have minded. When one thinks of what the concept of ‘Godparent’ represents, all religion aside, simply put it is someone with whom you entrust the concept of spirituality.
It is looking for something interesting for my son to do over the summer that has me returning to the Catholic church. They are offering a week long ‘camp’ that sounds interesting. He enjoys the watermelon eating. I think there may be something to this, so I decide to attend mass again, after having been absent for, well, since the baptism. Sitting in the pew listening to mass, a physiological reaction starts to occur in my body. My skin gets really hot, and the blood rushes through my veins. I get panicky, like I do at parades and circuses, and like that time I was in Africa canoeing on the Zambezi and see a big horn come up through the water. When it comes time for Communion, we bolt out the back door.
I realize I am having a textbook fight or flight response. I resolve at this moment to teach my son about every religion on the planet. We spend many hours reading about history and discussing tolerance and diversity and acceptance.
He becomes an amazing musician who writes about pain and suffering, life. He is bright and well-rounded and has the most incredible friends. My work is done.
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