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Edith pt. 1
Jul. 28th, 2005 01:20 amMy mom has this good friend, Abby. When Abby and Cliff got married, they decided to live as close to my parents as they could; it's a good neighborhood, and my parents are good people. They ended up one-and-a-half short blocks, across Fairview, and two houses away. Abby's first daughter, Meg, is a year-and-two-months younger than I am, to the day. When we were wee little things, I tried to do away with Meg on a regular basis, but this is according to people who tell puns and discuss embarrassing things at the dinner table, so I don't put much stock in these obvious fabrications (and neither should you).
So here's the first lesson: "my cousin" is always Meg, unless it is followed by a modifying name. "my younger cousin" is always Meg's younger sister, Fiona, unless the same. "Darth Mom" or "my other mom" is always Abby. So that's my cousin, my younger cousin, and their mom, who is also my other mom. Got it?
And my parents got married and immediately had a teenager, but that's another story.
Needless to say, Meg and I spent a great deal of time at each other's houses. I even had a toothbrush over there. By junior high, I was spending every Saturday night at Meg's, and going to church with Abby and Meg on Sunday mornings. Before you start cringing, though, "church" was the Mac-Groveland Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. We congregated at the Fellowship-of-Churches-slash-Native-American-Heritage-Center, immediately following the predominantly-black Baptist services, complete with little girls in pink dresses and lace gloves. What those poor people must have thought of us, I can only guess.
Even at its peak, there couldn't've been more than about 25 adult members, and a scant handful of kids. It should tell you something that, when the building was being renovated, we started meeting at the Highland Park Library. Not having a permanent minister, "church" always more closely resembled a book club than anything else. Our Sunday School classes were lessons in comparative religion and comparative arts-and-crafts. Jeff (a boy about our age) and Meg and I would sneak out back and play Star Trek while the adults socialized over coffee hour. Abby once brought crock-pot haggis to the pot luck. We had a midnight solstice festival, the kids snarked at each other over who got to light the chalice, and we all delighted in adding onomatopoea to "Morning has Broken."
Going away to Massachusetts for college obviously put rather a crimp in my church-going habits. I don't know if it's a difference between East Coast UU and Midwest UU, or just between our fellowship and everybody else's, but I have no interest in going to a church, no matter how democratic and affirming and "respectful of the interconnected web of existence of which we are all a part," if there are 250 people there. Zilch.
So I would go back to church when I was home, but by that point there weren't services in the summers, so it was down to a couple of chances a year. There were new faces, but it was the missing old faces that would jar me the most.
[ok, i can't type more of this out now. i've had a long day at work and need to sleep. stay tuned for Edith pt 2. or don't; suit yourself.]
the hedge abides.
So here's the first lesson: "my cousin" is always Meg, unless it is followed by a modifying name. "my younger cousin" is always Meg's younger sister, Fiona, unless the same. "Darth Mom" or "my other mom" is always Abby. So that's my cousin, my younger cousin, and their mom, who is also my other mom. Got it?
And my parents got married and immediately had a teenager, but that's another story.
Needless to say, Meg and I spent a great deal of time at each other's houses. I even had a toothbrush over there. By junior high, I was spending every Saturday night at Meg's, and going to church with Abby and Meg on Sunday mornings. Before you start cringing, though, "church" was the Mac-Groveland Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. We congregated at the Fellowship-of-Churches-slash-Native-American-Heritage-Center, immediately following the predominantly-black Baptist services, complete with little girls in pink dresses and lace gloves. What those poor people must have thought of us, I can only guess.
Even at its peak, there couldn't've been more than about 25 adult members, and a scant handful of kids. It should tell you something that, when the building was being renovated, we started meeting at the Highland Park Library. Not having a permanent minister, "church" always more closely resembled a book club than anything else. Our Sunday School classes were lessons in comparative religion and comparative arts-and-crafts. Jeff (a boy about our age) and Meg and I would sneak out back and play Star Trek while the adults socialized over coffee hour. Abby once brought crock-pot haggis to the pot luck. We had a midnight solstice festival, the kids snarked at each other over who got to light the chalice, and we all delighted in adding onomatopoea to "Morning has Broken."
Going away to Massachusetts for college obviously put rather a crimp in my church-going habits. I don't know if it's a difference between East Coast UU and Midwest UU, or just between our fellowship and everybody else's, but I have no interest in going to a church, no matter how democratic and affirming and "respectful of the interconnected web of existence of which we are all a part," if there are 250 people there. Zilch.
So I would go back to church when I was home, but by that point there weren't services in the summers, so it was down to a couple of chances a year. There were new faces, but it was the missing old faces that would jar me the most.
[ok, i can't type more of this out now. i've had a long day at work and need to sleep. stay tuned for Edith pt 2. or don't; suit yourself.]
the hedge abides.
