I came to Catholicism as a child. It was a case of my mother made me. We came to the Motor City from Yazoo City, Mississippi when I was four. My oldest sister left behind her Catholic school and my family the local Baptist church. When we got to Detroit my mother trekked us to a local Baptist Church and decided it was not like she remembered.
She explained to me that the congregants were too loud; they didn’t just sing, they were jumping and whooping and making merry like Christmas in the middle of July. She actually said she could have handled that. She could not, would not live with a service lasting two hours.
I don’t actually remember the preaching or the singing. I remember the pews. I remember kneeling in the pew, climbing on my mother and dangling my legs over the edge. I remember being bored. My mother didn’t stop me or even look my way. She laid the blame on the less than kid friendly service.
My next religious memory took me inside the vestibule of the local Catholic Church. It was a beautiful place with a huge fountain tucked inside the building but outside the main area. It was my parents baptismal. I saw my aunt and uncle stand up with them and I experienced my first Catholic mystery. Why do middle age converts need godparents? Six months later I wondered why I needed godparents, friends of my parents in town for the occasion that I never saw again whose names I didn’t know.
We went over as a family, my parents first with my uncle and aunt standing up with them. In a way I got to see them married again, this time to a religion, a faith they would carry until their deaths. My mother loved mass. She could leave her midnight shift at the hospital and make the early morning service on Sunday and be out in less than an hour. She could praise God, cook three meals and still have time for sleep before getting ready for work again. Catholicism suited her lifestyle.
My sisters and I had been dragged into this conversion. We were also dragged into Catholic schools. It worked out as we came through the sixties in Detroit without getting caught up in all the pitfalls. We survived the streets, and the bad boys and the drugs. But we didn’t come out the other side as Catholics in spite of my mother’s prayers. But, we are women of faith. We are women who believe in something greater than ourselves. We don’t have to believe in one religion as greater than another. We believe in God.