Watercolor: Kathy Mommsen.com
I was 11 or 12 playing in the school yard, which was the church parking lot on Sundays, running around on cement trying not to get scraped up or too sweaty. My best friend and co-conspirator and I were curious about french kissing. I think we had been at a classmates party and one of “the boys” said something about it. What else do pre-pubescent girls do while being active on a warm spring day while running around on cement.
So in our utter innocence and curiosity we figured we would ask an adult. Not one of the nuns, not sure why we decided that but a priest seemed like the right choice. After all they were the ones in “authority”. They were the ones that listened to all our “sins” and we confessed everything to them. Yup, you guessed it ~ a Catholic girl! So we figured who better to know what french kissing meant than a priest. So as fate would have it as we are running towards the rectory, playing and giggling out comes one of the priests. We look at each other and in that instance we knew we could ask him that question
I can still remember us running up to him. I can’t recall if she asked it or if I asked him the question. Very innocently and very curiously, “Father, what does french kissing mean?” Well, in that moment I unconsciously understood and felt shame. I can still remember the way he looked at us. I can only imagine what he thought or felt but the outward expression was one of horror, amusement, reprimand, and countless other emotions crossing his face in an instant. He didn’t answer us. He just looked at us for what seemed like a day and said very calmly “Go back and play because recess is going to end soon.” End of conversation!
I do not know what we did after that but I do remember feeling uncomfortable. I remember that I felt like I did something so wrong and thinking what could “french kissing” possibly mean? In my simple innocence I was shamed, shut down and dismissed.
This story has two flavors for me, hard and dismissive and a sweet child story. And in a lot of ways it set me up to believe that curiosity and questions aren’t to be answered. They are to be dismissed, avoided and left hanging like those clothes on the clothes line that I had to learn to use. Dangling in the wind, hung a certain way, clothes pins put on the socks and shirts differently. Every season no matter whether it was freezing or sunny. Clothes got hung out. In the winter I would pull the clothes line in from my second floor bedroom window and my fathers shirts would be frozen solid. Then I would try to get them through the window I was hanging out of without them breaking LOL. Then place them on the steam radiator with a towel on the floor to catch the dripping shirts as they thawed. I never understood why I had to hang them out in the first place. OH I think I just digressed? Or was that another part of being dismissed by an adult when I asked why they had to be hung outside when they were going to freeze and then I had to bring them in on a heavy clothes line that wouldn’t move because it too was frozen. Invariably the clothes line would get stuck until spring and my grandfather would have to climb the pole in the yard to get it to move again. Ah..Memories in the corners of my mind!
Moral of these snippets of my life story ~ Both memories coincided to encompass many facets of living: joy, laughter, repression, shame, confusion, discomfort, curiosity, silliness, maturity!
I still love my clothes lines. I think I have had one in every home I have lived in the last 40 years. I especially love the smell of the clothes when I bring them inside to fold them.
And at around 13 years old I stopped going to church and hung out in the park with Billy (my childhood sweetheart) french kissing.
Something shifted inside of me with that school yard experience. I discovered that God/higher power/spirit existed inside of me and not just inside a nun or a priest or any adult that couldn’t or wouldn’t honestly with respect and regard for the beauty of my questions give me answers. So I figured if he didn’t know what french kissing was then there wasn’t anything there for me to learn. I didn’t cognitively know this then but I felt something in that experience that created a determination inside of me to remain in my questions no matter what anyone answered or didn’t answer. It gave me the determination, strength and fortitude to cultivate my own internal resources.
