Catholic Rituals

In order to make my First Holy Communion, I had had to make my first confession. Not knowing what a sin was, I asked the nuns what to say. Remember all the times you’ve yelled at your parents, told a lie, gotten angry, cursed, thought bad thoughts, forgotten to say your daily prayers, and forgotten to go to Sunday Mass, I was told. And so I made up a list of “sins” to tell the priest. He seemed satisfied and told me to say two Hail Marr’s and an Act of Contrition. And so I did. Easy peasy!

 Growing up in our devout Catholic household, we took our religious rituals seriously. I recall making my First Holy Communion—when a person first receives the body and blood of Christ (a thin wafer of bread dipped in red wine)—before which I had to have been baptized and made my first confession: I don’t remember the former, I was only a month old, but I vividly recall the latter, made a few days before I making my First Communion. I especially remembering having to make up some sins to tell the priest. I was barely seven.

For my Communion, everything I wore had to be new—and white for purity—including underwear, long stockings, patent leather shoes, a dress with three tiers of lace on the skirt, a veil from head to knee, and a prayer book. I felt more like a 20-year-old bride than a seven-year-old sacramental recipient.

After that, I had to dress up every year for Easter Sunday. Each year I got a whole new set of clothes: E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g had to be brand new. Being on welfare, I don’t know how Mom afforded it. Good thing I was an only child.

            Mom and I would take the subway down to 14th street to shop at Klein’s Department Store. We didn’t leave until we had bought my whole Easter trousseau—underpants, bra and slip; blouse and skirt or a dress; a topper, straw bonnet and white gloves; white socks and patent leather shoes; purse and handkerchief. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g had to match.

In case you aren’t old enough to recall: a “slip” was an thin undergarment that women wore over their bras and underpants, so their underwear wouldn’t show through their outer clothes; there were whole slips and half-slips, depending upon the sheerness of what you were going to wear. Then there were “toppers”—three-quarter length jackets, narrow at the shoulder, flared at the hip, heavier than a suit jacket but lighter than a coat—to complete the outfit. My mother contented herself with a new straw hat, new shoes, and a pair of gloves.

On the way home, to celebrate our purchases, we stopped at Woolworth’s and shared their lunch special: tuna salad on a roll and an apple dumpling with caramel sauce. We got home exhausted but satisfied. We sat down and slowly unpacked what we had bought and carefully hung them in the closet or put them in a drawer. Under no circumstances could we wear any of them until Easter Sunday.

Easter Sunday started with going to Church in the morning, so Mom and I could show off our Easter finery. Walking up the avenue for the ten blocks to the church, arriving at church at the last minute so everyone could see us enter, and then taking the same route back again home, was the closest I ever got to being in an Easter Parade.

Church was followed by a noon-day dinner fit for a king: celery stuffed with cream cheese and pimentos, ritz crackers topped with Velveeta, followed by a roasted leg of lamb, with thin slices of garlic popping up all over it, surrounded by mounds of roasted potatoes, onions and carrots, and a side dish of green mint Jello. Dessert was homemade apple pie with Breyer’s vanilla ice cream, and a choice of Lipton Tea or Sanka Coffee. Not until the Easter meal was over was I allowed to change into more comfortable clothes and play outdoors until dusk. I wore my new clothes to church every Sunday between Easter and Memorial Day, after which I switched to lighter and cooler clothes for summer church-going.

Between Easter and Memorial Day, came Spring Cleaning, an annual ritual that, for my mother, came close to being of a religious nature. “I love to clean,” Mom said, emphatically, “the dirtier the better.” With Spic and Span in hand, she tackled the kitchen and bathroom; then came the bedroom with new bed linens, a summer blanket and a chenille bedspread. Last was her favorite, the living room. Up came the winter rug and down went summer rug, lighter in weight and color. Down came the winter drapes and up went the summer drapes, sheer whites that could blow in the windows that could now be opened. The furniture—a comfy couch, two matching end tables with oriental lamps , two easy chairs, a long ornate table that was opened for holiday meals—changed places from one side of the room to the other, so that the summer arrangement of furniture became an exact mirror image of the winter arrangement. The windows got washed, the floors got waxed, and the couch got done over with chintz slipcovers. It was all done by Memorial Day and stayed in place until Labor Day, at which time the process was reversed. And so it went, year after year after year.

My mother died in 1994, 20 years ago but, every spring, I still think of what my mother used to do. I hope she isn’t watching; she wouldn’t approve. Instead of spring cleaning, I do slow cleaning, a little bit at a time. The furniture, curtains and rugs all stay in place, all year long, and the windows keep begging to be washed. Given the cost of a window washer, l cheat by cleaning just the lower half of the window; since the upper half is covered by a wooden blind, the dirt doesn’t show and no one is the wiser. I divide the cleaning tasks into manageable chunks: the bathroom one day, the vacuuming on another, the kitchen counters every day, the laundry every other week. And so on, until the rotation starts all over again.

But doing it little by little never gives me the feeling that the house is clean. Parts of it are, but parts of it aren’t. That’s probably what might propelled my mother to clean so vigorously. When I started working full time, I decided to hire someone to clean the apartment and enjoy the pure pleasure of having the whole apartment clean at one time. There’s nothing like it. It feels like Spring Cleaning—all year long!

As far as Easter goes, there’s little resemblance today to the Easters of my youth. This year, like many others before it, I planned to roast a chicken with all the trimmings and have Christine, Steve and the kids join us for dinner. No church, no new clothes, no lamb, just us. But this year life got in the way. Steve’s father died and they all went up to Syracuse for the funeral. Richard and I went to the Broadway Fair, an annual community event on Broadway right outside our building, then came home and, feeling too tired to cook the chicken, I ordered in our favorite dishes from the Chinese restaurant—Sweet and Sour Chicken for Richard, and Pork Moo Shu for me.  We ate on small tables in front of the TV wearing our sweatshirts and jeans—a far cry from the clothing I had to wear at the Easter dinners of my youth.

            Mom would not have approved but maybe, given the circumstances, she might have understood. It’s a moot point, but the day suited us just fine.