Tuesday: Mom called, to complicate a statement I’d made in Sunday’s post about Mom’s and Dad’s rationales for leaving the Catholic Church, in the 1960s. I decided to turn our conversation into an interview, which I edited for clarity.
Me: So I got some things wrong about why you left the Church?
Mom: You said our use of birth control led to our leaving the Church. That might have been true for Paul. He often said: “After that, things fell apart like a house of cards.” For him, the decision wasn’t complicated. His connection to the Church was theological, and when that stopped making sense, he stopped going.
For me, it was very different. It wasn’t just birth control. We had already practiced birth control for a few years [after having three children in three-and-a-half years of marriage; then came an almost three-year gap before they decided to have a fourth child: me]. And when you were born, the doctors asked me on the operating table if I wanted my tubes tied. Can you imagine? This was standard procedure for mothers at the time. But I hadn’t discussed it with Paul, so I said No. Later, when we discussed it, we knew we wanted no more children. But I had real difficulties taking the pill, so your father ended up getting his tubes tied.
But I went to church for years after that. You were still baptized. I was still going after we moved [from the S.F. Bay Area to Stockton, in the Central Valley, when I was 4 years old]. I had deep connections to the Church. It was such a part of my history. And I was more interested in the rituals and the singing and the people and the connections than I ever was in the theology.
I knew the prayers and the liturgy, of course. But mostly I loved the bigger picture. The rituals are quite dramatic: the incense is interesting, the candles are beautiful, the music is great. The Catholic Church has the ritual part down cold; the Protestants kept it bare bones, cut out all the crap. But I liked the crap. And I like many of the ideas, the ways the Church connects to society, helps the poor and the disadvantaged.
Most of all, I liked the people I met, the community I shared it all with. That was the big piece for me. For your father, it was a big part of his intellectual life, until it wasn’t. He never cared who he sat next to. For me it was sociological, personal. Most of my best friends and family were in the Church. It was much harder for me to give it up.
In Stockton we had a church in our neighborhood that was really conventional, so I took you kids to St. Mary’s, a Franciscan parish downtown. I liked St. Mary’s; there was a lot happening there politically. And I made good friends there. But even though I liked the social aspect, we were questioning a lot of things at the time. And after a while I just couldn't accept the belief system. I stopped going to communion; I didn’t believe in it. I couldn’t say those prayers; they stopped making sense to me. And if I didn’t believe, I couldn’t keep going.
Me: And you never went back until Dad started going again, late in his life.
Mom: That was a shock to me, when he decided to go back. I couldn’t believe it. I struggled with it until your sister told me, “Mother, you have to remember: he has dementia.” So I stopped sweating it. And I took him every Sunday, except when you kids would come home and take him.
But it was good for me to go back. The beginning of the mass was often very nice. The prayers were welcoming; the sections from the Old Testament were often from Isaiah, talking about the coming of the Savior — it’s quite beautiful. The readings were good; the gospel was fine; sometimes the sermons weren’t bad. But then would come the main part of mass, the Apostle’s Creed: “I believe in God, father almighty, creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” And I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t utter the words. I just don’t believe them. It was very hard to sit through.
Looking back, I’m glad I did it. But when your father went to a care home and I didn’t have to go any more, I felt wonderful about that, too. And now my connections to the Church are gone. I’ve never gone back out of curiosity. I don’t have any Catholic family or friends left.
Me: Why did you start going to your Catholic school so early? You were only 4 years old when you started first grade.
Mom: My father lost his job in 1934, in the midst of the Depression. He opened a grocery store, a business he didn’t really know anything about. Well, he’d been a People’s Baking Company salesman, so he knew how to sell. He knew he needed another job, so my mother ran the store and he got a job as a janitor at Highland Hospital. He’d wake up at 4 in the morning to buy fresh fruits and vegetables — that was what made our store stand out in the neighborhood. My mother couldn’t drive, so she couldn’t buy the fresh produce.
Since my mother was working every day, that’s why I went to school so early. I should have gone to the public school kindergarten, but my mother thought that was just play school. Plus it was only a half-day. So I walked with my sister Mary, who must have been in fourth grade, to St. Jarlath School. It wasn’t even in our parish, but they had a good school, so that’s where my parents sent us. We had to walk three miles, uphill both ways — you know how it was in the old days. Actually, it was a long walk for a little girl, but I managed.
St. Jarlath didn’t have a kindergarten so I sat with the first graders. But I did OK — a string of 90s and 95s, as I remember, not 100s but just fine. And then the next year, I didn’t need to take first grade again, so I just moved into second grade. I was always the shortest kid in my class; I always led the classes going into mass, because they lined us up by size. I always did fine academically. And I must have behaved well enough; I never got in trouble. Well, one nun noted on my report card that instead of looking at the blackboard, I looked out the window a lot. But I think I was just bored; I wanted to be outdoors, probably. Anyway, that’s why I ending up graduating from high school at 16. And I probably should have worked for a couple of years but I just went on to college.
All these decisions were based not on any grand plan but on circumstances of life. We just went from one thing to the next; we didn’t make decisions so much as circumstances dictated the decisions. I feel that about much of my childhood. It was never anyone’s fault. The Depression came; jobs were scarce; my dad opened the store, and we moved upstairs.
The store was in an all-white, all-Protestant neighborhood. We were the Catholic family; then across the street and down the next block was the Jewish family. I knew of African Americans in Oakland, but not in our neighborhood.
Our building was on a corner; I can’t remember the name of the street. It was a two-story house, with two bedrooms and one bathroom. I shared a bedroom with your Aunt Mary, who was five years older and famously tall. For a while we shared a double bed; no one had twin beds back then. Mary was not only tall, she was a flailer — she’d thrash and kick all night. I don’t know what was happening to her, but she’d move around constantly, take all the blankets with her. It was impossible. The room had a very large closet, so I asked if we could put a bed in the closet, and that’s where I slept. It had a very small window, and I loved it.
Then in 1936 or ’37 we moved to California Street, to a smaller grocery store with a smaller house connected to it. They converted a garage into the store. And my mother ran that, with my dad still going in the morning to get the fresh produce, until I was 10, when my father died of cancer. My mother couldn’t drive a car to pick up the produce, so she had to sell the store.
Me: We could talk all day, but I have to get going. Before I hang up: Did you read the comments below Sunday’s post? The one from my cousin about his father’s feelings about race?
Mom: I did; it was very interesting. One thing I’ll say: the McCormicks were really uncomfortable having any conversations about race. When Paul went to Selma in March 1965, that was a big deal. In fact, in some ways I should have gone — I was the one active in the Catholic Interracial Council. I started when I lived in San Francisco, before we were married; then I joined the Oakland group. It was a lay organization, not affiliated with any parish but connected to many churches in the area. Then I got busy with four children, so either Paul or I would go to the monthly meetings. The 1960s was an active time of interracial activities; there were always plenty of things to do. And when the idea came up of going to Selma to march with Martin Luther King [after two previous marches in support of black voting rights had ended in violence], the council asked Paul to go. He took a week’s vacation; the council paid for his ticket. He flew with a planeload of people from Bay Area churches and other volunteers, straight from Oakland to Alabama. And they marched for five days, from Selma to Montgomery — more than 25,000 people, protected by National Guard and federal agents.
And when he got home not one person in his family asked him about it. Maybe his brother Bernie, when he came up for his summer vacation in August — he might have asked him. But no one else said a word. They were just uncomfortable talking about race at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment