Religious Experience

I had my first sip of coffee on the day of my First Holy Communion, in May of 1989. I spilled it, a splash of light brown liquid right smack on the bodice of my white dress. I’ve always been spill-prone, unfortunately, which is one of the tendencies inherited from my Mother, in addition to grudge-holding. She actually used the word “slop.” If something got on one of her blouses or sweaters, she’d huff, furiously blotting a napkin and say, “Oh for Pete’s sake… I slopped!”
You might be wondering why a second grader was allowed to drink coffee. I am wondering how it became customary to dress a second grader in a tiny wedding dress and veil.

That was a day of first tastes for important things—namely, the body and blood of Christ. But wires crossed and inspired a different type of religious devotion. I had been begging my big sister Kate to let me try coffee and on this very holy day, she agreed. As the sixth of eight kids, four of those older siblings being sisters, I thought anything and everything they did or had was cool: their Bruce Springsteen posters, their boyfriends’ letterman jackets, their collections of cassette tapes, their Sweet Valley High anthology. Kate drank coffee and therefore I wanted to, as well.

This rite of passage—the coffee-drinking, not the Communion—went down in our dining room after most of the family party had cleared out. The baked ziti and sheet cake had been consumed, and the cousins had piled back into their station wagons to return to Long Island. Family parties were among the few instances we used our formal dining room; otherwise, it remained dark. With ten people under one roof, in hindsight, this was somewhat a waste of very precious space. But we respected its invisible border and only entered when permitted. It was the 1980s, in suburban New Jersey, thus the mahogany furniture was heavy and imposing and the Oriental rug high-pile and there were a lot of glass/mirror/taper candles/breakable things—Lladro, Waterford, Precious Moments, light fixtures. Our Mother loved the dining room, though; it was her chosen place for ceremony and celebration.
Some may assume Communion dresses, like the wedding dresses they resemble, are only worn once, but that was not that case. My stain was inconvenient because of a horribly conspicuous Catholic tradition (upheld by my Mother) in which you had to wear your Communion dress to mass the following Sunday as well, when you were among laypeople in laypeople’s clothing. It was 45 minutes of my 44 years of life and the embarrassment is still palpable.

***

Our Mother loved dining-room traditions and she also loved her unwavering daily rituals, including coffee. She had a mug collection that spilled out of her cabinets, which stands to reason: When you have children and grandchildren and a 23-year-long career in education, clear out a cabinet or two, because you are about to be lousy with coffee mugs. College bookstores, Mother’s Days, teacher’s gifts. Sources were ubiquitous and supply was bottomless.

Many or most of these mugs were stained with lipstick marks, which is how you knew which ones she used and which ones were favored by our Dad. When she returned to work as a guidance counselor, it spawned a new collection of travel mugs. She worked at the middle school in our very town—about a 7-minute commute, if that—but preferred to start her day, every day, with coffee from home on the drive.

She smelled like coffee, her car smelled like coffee. She drove a champagne-colored Cadillac SUV she absolutely loved. She was an excellent driver, actually, and had a lead foot which she lorded over our more conservative father. Nevertheless, for someone who was impeccably put-together, she slopped quite a bit of coffee in her beloved car. There were dried coffee rings in the cup holders, splash marks on the tan leather passenger seats, and when coffee chains started putting those wasteful plastic stoppers into the lid’s openings, she accumulated them by the handful in her glove compartment.

Our mother had a passion for shopping and thus leased her cars; she loved getting a brand-new one every few years. After we lost her, in the division of responsibilities, I was to clean hers out before returning it to the dealership. Sitting in that car was like being with her, this very small space that was still thick with the scent of her coffee and her signature perfume, the radio set to the station she most loved, her purple umbrella in the door pocket. There are the obvious horrors of losing a parent suddenly, and then there are these smaller, more surreptitious brutalities that you never see coming. This one nearly destroyed me.
At that point, my magical-thinking brain believed that she was coming back, that the day would surely come when the mud hall door would open and we’d all hear the jangling of her bracelets as she returned from her Saturday errands, always with her medium half-decaf, half-regular in hand. Surrendering that car felt like a horrible concession that she would not miraculously re-appear to deliver us from our pain; that she had ascended into Heaven.
…seated at the right hand of the Father… to come again in glory…
Except for the fact that I, Sheila, needed her Earthly presence, the one in which she needed her car. When she came back to us—and if prayers were heard, she would—she would need her car, wouldn’t she? Faith requires you to suspend reason and science and simply believe.
Hadn’t I been raised to believe?

***

I prefer crappy coffee. I’m a devotee of Dunkin’ Donuts—Ben Affleck, my Bostonian brother in Christ!—and cannot be convinced that anything smaller-batch or poured-over is superior. For many years, I took mine with skim milk and four Splenda and, yes, that is objectively gross. Now that I have settled into middle age and motherhood, now that I’m a business woman and a grown-up, I’m straight hazelnut-with-almond-milk, hold the sweetener. But put whatever you’d like in yours—I am not here to judge.
My therapist is mildly horrified. “I can’t take you seriously with that coffee, Sheila!” she shrieks, when my extra-large enters the frame of our Zoom, approximately the size of my head. (She is a tea drinker who grew up riding horses). With her holiday card, I sent her a bag of ground Dunkin’ Donuts. “For when you have company you want to impress,” I wrote.

My God, I love coffee. I love the smell, the taste, the buzzy warmth that spreads through my body when I take my first daily sip, as soon as humanly possible after I wake up. I overlook what it could do to my teeth (Crest whitening strips are available on Amazon Prime) and what it absolutely does to my stomach. Coffee has never made me feel angry like gin and tonic did, or guilty like water does. Each day there is coffee and each day, I give thanks for it. Each day, it makes me feel lucky to be alive, even just for a few precious minutes.

***

There’s a term, “cafeteria Catholicism,” which essentially means followers pick and choose which aspects they adhere to, as if they were perusing stations at a buffet. That may be an accurate descriptor for our upbringing. We identified as Catholic—Irish Catholic, specifically— but scripture wasn’t exactly dinner table discussion fodder, even after we said Grace first. In our house, sacraments were celebrated (with parties in the dining room), Sunday Mass was non-negotiable and CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, i.e. religious education classes for us public school heathens) and CYO basketball (Catholic Youth Organization, i.e., church-sponsored sport leagues) were routine after-school activities. Some of our parents’ closest life-long friends were couples they met in something called Baptismal Group—but these were very couples they had over for raucous New Years’ Eve parties. Nevertheless, it still felt more cultural than canon. We didn’t rise to the level of having priests over for dinner (thank God), which is definitely a Catholic thing. We do have a first cousin who became a Priest, which is not nothing.
After public grammar school, we were marched into same-sex Catholic high schools, where we spent years in wool skirts and knee socks and our parents spent quite a bit on tuition, and yet I don’t remember learning much about Catholicism. Sister Catherine’s Morality class set some guardrails, and who could forget being instructed “to leave room for the Holy Spirit” between ourselves and our Senior prom dates. But the rest of it—the biology and geometry and Spanish and sports—was likely indistinguishable from a secular school experience, except for the total and inconvenient absence of teenage boys.
Almost all of my siblings advanced onto Jesuit colleges and universities, somewhat automatically. Coming from a school called The Academy of The Holy Angels, it made sense that you’d be applying to the Georgetowns and the Holy Crosses and the Loyola Marylands of the world. But I don’t think any of us were holding a line for papal infallibility or against same-sex marriage and IVF—in fact, I’m certain not. To our dear father’s chagrin, once most of us left the house for college, our weekly Mass attendance fell by the wayside, as well. Forgive us, Dad.

***

Our Mother was beautiful, charismatic, and very private. Raised Catholic, she was also a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, and seemed to be much more comfortable discussing politics than religion. Yes, she raised her eight children Catholic (fun fact: she attended the same all-girls high school that we did) and was what you’d classify as “practicing,” but she allowed for a bit more wiggle room than did our father. For example: When we’d be down the Jersey Shore for summer vacation or visiting the older siblings at college, she’d sometimes suggest skipping mass by virtue of “traveler’s dispensation.” Our Dad would grumble, but she was, by his own designation, The Boss. We were thrilled.
When I was in middle school, the Church made a small concession, a rare progressive update: Girls could now become altar servers, a role and responsibility previously bestowed only upon boys. Altar servers are self-explanatory: Kids in robes, usually at least two or three, who assist the priest during Mass, holding candles and prayer books, preparing the altar—things of that nature.
Our mother jumped on it. “You girls will become altar servers,” she said, to my twin, younger sister, and I. Obviously, we complained loudly. Going to church every week was rough enough for a teenager, we believed—waking up early, dressing nicely, but being up there, in front of everyone?! Wearing robes?! Why did all roads lead to unflattering clothing?! She held firm. Her conviction wasn’t faith-based; it was feminism. Altar-serving was an act of participation but also a form of protest. She had spent her lifetime watching boys and men lead these masses, she said, and even as a young girl she knew it was unfair. So altar servers we became, serving monthly until we got to high school and happily hung up our robes in retirement.
When the abuse scandals broke, she was deeply pained. Children and their wellbeing and protection were prioritized over all things; this was beyond a doubt the bedrock of her personal and professional life, of her value system. She was not the type to broadcast her feelings publicly—yes, she cursed the existence of fat-cat Republicans and Facebook and if you brought up either in her presence, she’d likely let you know how she felt—but her style was primarily one of quiet opposition. She could hold a grudge like no other. At a certain point, after yet another explosive diocese report, she stopped attending weekly Mass with our Dad. There was no announcement of this, no dramatic proclamation or statement of dissent. It was the quiet snuffing out of a candle, or closing of a book.
Our Dad continued to attend without her, respecting her decision. He was a devout Catholic but more so a devoted husband, and very much placed her on a pedestal. This was the same man who brought her coffee every morning for over 50 years.

***

I haven’t been to Mass in some time. After we lost our Mom, all of her seven daughters returned to our childhood home and surrounded our Dad, making sure he was fed and kept company, helping with the affairs. He wanted to go to Sunday Mass and so for a time, we did, filing in behind our COVID-era face masks and seating ourselves up in the choir loft, away from the other churchgoers. Our grief was suffocating enough and I think we needed the breathing room. Nobody down there could possibly understand what we were feeling, what we had lost. We didn’t want them to try.

I am not sure I’ll ever be a practicing Catholic again. So much has changed and yet not enough has changed. I hold grudges, just like her. My daughter was baptized and that’s another story for another day. But I can still recognize the value: a refuge and place and space to reflect, to process, to ask forgiveness and express gratitude. Something to believe and sometimes blame. Plenty of good people find that in the weekly congregation of a church, a synagogue, or a mosque.

Others find it in their morning cup of coffee, in a well-loved, lipstick-stained mug.