I am Catholic. Like really Catholic. We're talking 150% Hotel California, "You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave" Catholic. It's in my blood. It's in my cells. When we had the funeral for my mom, my brother who'd probably last been in that church either when he graduated 8th grade from St. Mel's, or when mom had asked him to go for her, was only sightly jesting that he would be struck by lightening upon crossing the threshold. And my mom would probably watch down from heaven laughing. But she never got to see my brother excitedly tell me about how he'd told his now partner of 10 years that he loved him. My brother learned from my dad, that the larger the gesture, the more appropriately large the scene should be made to acknowledge this act. So my brother found the chicest custom stationary he could, wrote a love note to Tom and had to sent to the travel agent of his upcoming trip to Norway. So that when Tom was on a cruise going through the fjords of Norway, he would be given a letter from my brother telling him that he was loved in a big and real way. How could mom even think of not celebrating her son's courage and spirit? Because she was raised in the pre Vatican Council II Catholic church. That tells its congregants that while they should love the sinner, they should hate their sins. And because the person that he was choosing to "sin" with happens to be another man, my brother lived in constant fear of losing the approval and good favor of the most cherished woman he had in his life. That is just W.R.O.N.G. Any way you friggin' slice it. As we walked out of the hospital the night we took her off the ventilator after a valiant 7 1/2 week fight with pneumonia, my brother with profound tears in his eyes, asks my best friend Krista, herself a mom of three boys, if mom's "knew". That he'd even have to ask that question breaks my heart in a way that I'll never have to worry about. He had gone through life, on a path of accepting then embracing who he really is as a person, and it was a process so potentially shameful that he couldn't share it with the most important person in his life. It that's what religion did, he'd have no part of it thank you very much. I don't blame him.
I, on the other hand, just sort of drifted away from the Catholic church in a haze of apathy and sloth. But when I was back in the church where I spent so much of my childhood for the funeral of my best friend's father the memories came flooding back. It was about the old school mates that also came to show respect for a very honorable, funny and caring man. It was also about being in a sanctuary where I learned, accepted and then eventually turned away from the tenants of organized religion. As a spiritual but not religious person, that building just held memories. Though I was paying attention to the Mass of Catholic burial for a man who chose to convert to Catholicism so late in life, I drifted between the psalms and my childhood. From the Gospel to my Confirmation. It was a rich trip down memory lane.
Now Sacramento is a pretty segregated county. It certainly was in 2000 when I originally went to my first OA meeting. One of the very largest OA meetings in Sacramento was held Saturday evenings at Temple B'nai Israel down over in the south part of the city. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. "We have Jewish people here in Sacramento?" I asked in what is now a painfully naive memory. Sure we do. We have communities of Jewish congregants who gather to pay to a God that doesn't necessarily worship in the same way as us Catholics, but still inspires devotion and piety equally to any devout Catholic I've ever met. I'm lucky to be dear friends with a woman named Hope. Such a GREAT name for someone who represented the fellowship of Overeaters Anonymous AND Judaism for me.
I will honestly admit that I have always been fascinated by yiddish. It's a great language. I think it started back when Mike Myers was doing this Linda Richmond skit on SNL. He'd dress up as the archetype of every Jewish mom out there, complete with the bouffant hair, press on nails, and hairy upper lip. He'd famish about an interaction so traumatic he'd get 'schpilkas in his ganeckta gazoink'. The audience and watchers at home thought it was hysterically funny stuff. It was a send-up that wasn't mean spirited but lovingly honest. He's said in interviews that it's an impersonation of the women who were friends with his mother-in-law when he'd married his now wife. That it's based in real-life to any degree shows how brave and loving Mike Myers was. It also showed a time when SNL was actually funny and not just painfully funny but lame impressions of our 45th President. But like the two houses of the US Congress working in a bipartisan fashion, I'm afraid those days are long gone.
So the longer I'm in OA, I become better friends with Hope and she'd always smile and laugh a bit when I'd try to "flex" my yiddish on her. I was young for being in OA, like 25 when I entered, so that a relatively young kid would know so much about yiddish was surprising to her I think. It was a source of giggles for us to be sure.
As I finally got abstinent in OA this December, Hope was still at zoom meetings being her fabulous self. Like any good born on the East Coast Californian, she knew the good meetings in NYC and Florida to hit to boost her recovery. I'd told her that I was helping to pull off a surprise for my BFF's mom with tickets for the whole family to go see the Globe Trotters when they came to Sacramento in January. She said I was a mensch doing a mitzvah. To non-yiddish speakers that means that I was a solid guy doing a good deed for another. I smiled and agreed. The surprise didn't go quite as planned, but my part in helping to make it a reality was still a noble effort.
So Hope texts me the other day saying that she was my honorary mohar (teacher). And I realized that this Catholic has a lot of mohar's in the 21 years she's been coming into and out of these rooms of recovery. Some of them were showing me what I wanted to have, for which I was not willing to do the work required to achieve it. Being in the rooms when I returned 20 years later I was touched by the love and genuine happiness I was welcomed back with. Watching some well intentioned shiksa (white girl) struggle in this fellowship for 20 years must have been painful and difficult to watch. And yet they still loved me. Still help out their arms for post-meeting hugs. Still kept coming back.
Part of being in recovery is realizing that you're always just a putz who needs a mohar to survive. While it requires a leveling of one's pride to even say those words, the payoff can be life-saving. Just like the Promises tell us, "We will know a new freedom and a new happiness". And I can say that on day 72nd day of "entire abstinence", that I truly do know a new freedom and happiness. I spent this evening laughing until my sides ached and I could barely breathe. It was because I was living a joyful, honest, authentic life.
If you are getting to also live such a joyfully crazy life, please be sure to thank you mohars. They're out there everywhere, finding one shouldn't be difficult.
Thanks for reading.
Shalom,
KathyK
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