I grew up in a Catholic family, attending a Catholic school and, naturally, Catholic Church at every opportunity that my family felt was necessary. Sundays were a given. The picture above is our actual church in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. My brothers were Altar Boys and I wore a hat.
Easter was a nightmare for a child. Holy Days of Obligation, Ash Wednesday leading into Lent, which led into all kinds of legalities about what I could and could not eat, drink and do. When Good Friday finally arrived we attended church to commemorate the crucifixion, which was a solemn affair, including heavy incense blasting through the air. There is your second-hand smoke.
The next day, Saturday, my parents eased up and we could have fun again, eat normally and as adults, we could have a drink.
Easter Sunday was considered a day of celebration, and was traditionally the most attended Mass by Catholics everywhere. The church was always packed and the service went on forever. There was the reading of this guy to the whatevers, and that guy to the whoevers, and the Gospel, which was incredibly long and boring. Then the Priest got to preach his sermon and because he had a massive audience that didn’t dare move a muscle, he could drone on for as long as he wanted; and he did.
As Catholic kids, everyone else was referred to as a Protestant. We didn’t know anything about Lutheran, Judaism, or any other religions. Everyone was just grouped into the catch-all of Protestant. When I finally found out about all of the other specific religions, I ask my mother why we weren’t taught about that stuff when we were kids. She said that we weren’t supposed to know about anything but Catholicism. Seems there was some concern that we might flee and join up with someone else. So what did they have in mind? Me as a 10 year old calling from the back seat of our 64 Pontiac to be dropped off at the Synagogue while the rest of the family went on to Sunday Mass? Uh-Huh.
On Saturday nights, we Catholics had to have our baths for Sunday Church, so after supper we weren’t allowed to go outside again. That totally sucked because a lot of our friends in the neighborhood were these scurvy Protestants and there was always something excellent going on. But Saturday night we’d be sitting in our pyjamas, wet hair, eating potato chips, sun shining in the window, and I swear the kids outside yelled louder and screamed higher because they knew that we were being held hostage inside, all clean and stuff. And whatever they were doing that was SO MUCH FUN always happened right in front of our house too. You couldn’t miss it. So the three of us sat there, listening, crunching on chips, enduring the agony of staying in.
Another part of being a Catholic was the confession of your sins each week so that you could reset your soul and try to be a better person and not sin again. Tragically, most of us would show up in the confessional every Saturday afternoon with a heap of sins to unload so our souls would be scrubbed clean and white and ready for the next full week of debauchery. It got to be a routine. As a child, I didn’t have a focused concept of the sinning I was doing but I did know that I wanted to stay out of Hell. It sounded like a bad place with that nasty, smelly Devil making us do stuff that was hard, in the heat, and being pretty mean about it all.
My mom apparently cared a great deal about my soul too because every Saturday she would write out, in her steno pad, the sins that I had committed, rip out the page with the flourish of someone who knows all, and hand it to me to take into the confessional. I always hated that because I felt that I could be in charge of my own sins. Besides, the first one she always wrote was Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother. What she really meant was Mother. And it didn’t end there. At the end of the line it would say X9. Is that so? Well, you might have missed a couple, Clara, because when I was walking to school the other day I was singing Step on a Crack, Break Your Mother’s Back and I stepped on 2 cracks. So that would bring my total up to 11 I’m thinkin’ (Don’t bother fanning your face – I was 10 – I was just a kid).
Then we would get to Thou Shalt Not Lie X7. Really? Who’s lying right now? 7? First of all, Clara, I don’t lie. 8. Secondly, how do you even know when I’m lying? It’s not like I’m obvious about it. When I said I didn’t cut Tim’s hair even though I had the scissors in my hand, I explained that I was doing something else with them. 9. It. Was. Not. Me. 10.
Then, Thou Shalt Not Swear X12. Bullshit – that’s not even a real sin. 13. How in the hell can you put that number in there when I’m at school all day? 14.
When we were younger, my mom thought that we could do the Stations of the Cross together as a family. These are solemn paintings posted on the side walls of churches and the object is to stand in front of each one and say a prayer. So in theory, a family of 5 moving from station to station praying quietly is a vision for all to behold. Two little boys and a girl staying in the family unit for the entire process? Never going to happen. We maybe prayed at two as a family and then somebody pinched somebody else, someone grabbed a book from a pew, someone else ducked into a confessional because the priest wasn’t there, and so forth. It was like herding ants. Clara was ferocious when it came to the family’s performance in church but this was too much for even us kids. Whatever punishment loomed was too blurry and too far away to deter any of us from the Tom Foolery undertaken at the Stations of the Cross. Before long, we were no longer expected to attend.
The actual Church service, called mass, could last for an hour and nothing was more boring than all the preaching coming from that altar. We sat in our pew as a family unit, Dad, Mom, Marty, Judy and Tim, like a choir in order of height and age. Women had to wear something on their heads in church back then. I don’t know why – maybe to hide their dark roots. They had little doily things at the back of the church you could borrow to toss over your hair if you didn’t have anything.
Clara was prepared and she got me this ridiculous hat that was stiff, round, white with a brim of navy and a ribbon down the back. It also had an elastic that went under the chin. If there was going to be trouble in our pew, it was one of my brothers pulling the elastic down and letting it snap back up under my jaw, where the really sensitive skin is. The pain was off the charts for how much that hurt. My mom was the type of person who cut right to the chase. Whoever was screaming was the troublemaker and that was where the blows landed. It would have been unheard of to scream out loud in Church after an elastic incident because the ultimate loser would be ME. Therefore I had to hold in my pain and anger, my feelings of unfairness, my pain for my fellow sisters of my gender, all victims to their own smelly brothers. I could not cry aloud to protest the idiot who came up with the hat in the first place, the moron who designed the elastic, the fool who made the rule about the head-covering for women and my parents for not stopping after two children.
But every now and again, when it got to be too much, fists and pinches would fly and Clara would reach over and start grabbing children, sometimes not even her own, until everyone settled down. She was never all that interested to get to the bottom of things. She didn’t bring her steno pad to take investigative notes and she never interviewed any witnesses. I felt betrayed and alone as the victim with no voice and this happened enough times that to this day, I will not wear a hat.
Our Catholic School, St. Agnes, was a looming structure that looked like an Asylum. Quite a few of our teachers were nuns who wore the old time traditional habits where the only part of their body you could see were their hands and their face. That was plenty for me. They had wooden beaded belts made to look like rosaries with a large wooden cross hanging to the side. When you are 10, the cross looks life size. When a nun is walking down the aisle of desks, the cross looks anything but holy. Depending on the nun, it looked like a weapon of mass destruction.
The school was directly beside our massive church, St. Joseph’s, which was great for ushering us sheep to and from mass and celebrations. It was exciting to get out of school for any reason, even church related. We knew that there were no shenanigans on the walk over, but it was still freedom and that was good.
Recess at old St. Agnes was around 10:30 am. I lived for it. I breathed for it. It is the reason I learned to tell time. However, St. Joseph’s hosted funerals in the morning too, and a lot of them ran at 10:00 am. This was a sticky problem for us because if the hearse left the front of the church and drove by the school, we had to stop what we were doing in the playground and bow our heads out of respect until the entire funeral procession had driven by.
When I came screaming out the door at 10:30, armed with a football or whatever, I would glance at the street in front of St. Joseph’s to see if there were any cars parked there. If there were, then I had to get busy playing in case the funeral was a short mass, and the cortege left between 10:30 and 10:45.
There were quite a few factors at play here – the funeral vs recess thing was a moving machine. Was it a high mass? Then it would last an hour and we were solid. Did the deceased have lots of friends? Then communion was going to take time and even a shorter mass could last beyond 10:45. Recess, you are mine.
But if he was a regular guy, short mass and everyone came in their own car, I could end up standing in the playground with my head bowed for a good 10 minutes while cars pulled out and joined the procession. This was a huge hit to my young, undeveloped psyche and could easily be responsible for some of my behaviour to this day.
All the girls at St. Agnes wore uniforms. The boys did not. It was a man’s world. I wore leotards. Now they call them tights. Mine were white. For the first 5 minutes. They always got dirty because I enjoyed a good puddle and if I could run, I ran.
I wanted to look cool when I was a kid, and I decided that there was only one way for that to happen. I have a high forehead. I got this from my dad. He was tall, never gained a pound no matter what he ate and I got his high forehead. Genetics aren’t mysterious – they are evil and full of betrayal. I believed that my coolness could be reflected in the length of my bangs. If I could grow my bangs long and they would sort of hang in my eyes, I would be worshiped from afar by all.
Clara was my personal hairdresser in those days and when I told her I wanted long bangs to hang in my face she agreed that she could do that for me. She would trim a bit, tell me it was crooked and she would have to trim some more. After a couple of these spiels, I would get worried and say that maybe my bangs were getting too short. NO, NO, THEY’RE FINE. JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE HERE TO STRAIGHTEN THEM OUT. I’VE ALMOST GOT IT.
She finished up with her ‘good scissors’ and if my computer skills are any good, my photo will be posted here – the great cut of the 60’s where my bangs clearly skirted my eyebrows and I was finally cool.
So between attending Catholic School, Catholic Church, confession, bath night, and all of the other glories that came along with being that family, it turned out that it really wasn’t so bad. My brothers have raised Catholic children so they held up their end on the recruitment drive.
Bru and I didn’t have kids so we are still going to Hell, but now my last name is Cole and I get to stand by Ted Bundy. Which is fine. I have some questions for him.