NOTHING: SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN, Voices of Reason presentation, by Nica Lalli (@ CFI)
Prometheus Books Spring 2007
"What is it like to grow up in a house with no religion? What kind of experience does someone have when one is not a believer and yet comes into constant contact with religion? How can a person find out what they are when they focus primarily on what they are not?
These are the questions raised in the memoir Nothing. With humor, wit and poignant insight, Nica Lalli recounts her mishaps and misadventures with religion from early childhood into her adult years. As a questioning child, unsure of her idea of God, then a teenager feeling like an outsider, and finally an adult mother confronted by her husband's born-again Christian family and questions from her own children, Nica vividly describes her struggle to find out what kind of "something" she really is. In the end, the author finds that "nothing" is a philosophy to be embraced rather than feared.
Nothing is an appealing, sensitively written story that offers hope, humor and reason to millions of similar Americans who feel alienated in an ever more religiously polarized nation."
Excerpt courtesy Prometheus Books
I BELIEVE that I asked my parents the big religion question because I wanted to have a first communion. I secretly hoped that they would, upon my reminding them, suddenly remember that I needed a big white dress, white gloves, shoes and a veil. Especially the veil: I wanted that the most. I often put towels on my head to pretend I had long hair, and the veil would be an even better hair extender for my in-front-of-the-mirror fantasies. For Communion everything was going to be white. Like the wedding dresses-big billowy white dresses-that my friends had in their dress-up bins, dresses that had been their mom's. I had seen my mother's wedding picture, which was black and white but I could tell that the dress she had worn was brown: two-tone brown and not a puff on it. It looked like something Laura Petrie would have worn to dust on the Dick Van Dyke Show, not at all a proper wedding dress.
I wanted that white outfit. Michelle had gotten hers. We were allowed to play with the gloves and the veil, but we couldn't even touch the dress. It had to be perfect for the first communion: clean, pure, fresh. Michelle was going to carry a little bunch of flowers, too-white of course-as she marched down the aisle in the church. It was going to be better than playing wedding with Ted, we decided. It was going to be so much more real. In a church and everything.
I knew that Michelle had to go to special classes to be able to get the dress and the bouquet and the whole thing, but I figured it wouldn't be a problem for me to catch up. If I started right away I could learn whatever needed to be learned in a few weeks. I knew some of the stuff already, courtesy of Michelle. I knew the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary. I had even been allowed to hold her rosary. That was pretty, too. I would get one like hers, with pink beads and the tiny cross hanging off the end.
This won't be a problem, I reasoned, because my father is Catholic. I mean he is Italian and Michelle's mom said that all Italian people are Catholic, and she should know because she is from Switzerland, which I know is right next to Italy. So that will make this whole plan a cinch. Dad will realize that he forgot this whole thing and that he needs to sign me up for those classes, and before you know it I'll be on my way. Then Mom can have a party for me, too. Michelle said that some people bring presents and even money.
I came home from my afternoon at Michelle's house ready to find out the most important thing: "What are we?" Knowing, as I did, that my father was Catholic was complicated by the fact that I also knew that my mother was Jewish. I knew that Jewish was not the same as Catholic, that it was somehow opposite. I knew that Jews were often hated and that there had been some kind of tragedy, my mother talked of huge numbers of Jews being killed a long time ago. My information was sketchy (we had not yet studied the Holocaust in second grade), but I was pretty sure that we weren't really Jewish. We couldn't be because we celebrated Christmas which my Jewish friend Suzy did not. Santa came and there were presents and parties. And Easter was always a big event too. The Easter Bunny came and again there were presents and parties, along with the annual watching of the Ten Commandments on TV. Those strange people in robes, Moses and all those bearded guys, were Jewish, but we weren't at all like that. Yet whenever any one asked us, "What are you? Where are you from?" we always answered, "Italian and Jewish." So I figured that Jewish was more like a nationality than a religion.
I was sure that we were not any of the other religions, either. We were certainly not Presbyterian, Lutheran, or Episcopalian. And I knew that we were not anything weird, like Hare Krishna or any other kind of robed and turbaned thing. Most of my middle-class white friends were middle-class white religions.
Before anyone could tell me to get my homework or ask me which game I wanted to play (although "which game to lose" would have been the more accurate question) I announced that I had an important question to ask Mom and Dad. I got them to get rid of my sister by telling them that it was "personal," and while I knew about reproduction by this time I am sure they were convinced that it was a more involved "birds and bees" question. Gina was allowed to watch an extra TV show in the den. And I had the floor.
We sat in a little circle, with Mom on the brown leather chair, Dad on the matching ottoman, and me on the carpet.
"So," I said, "What are we?"
Both of my parents had looks of utter confusion on their faces. I had really stumped them. After a pause, my dad asked for clarification.
"You know, what are we, what do we believe in?" I asked. "I mean, like, are we Catholic?" I asked the last part hopefully, raising my eyebrows at them and nodding a little as I waited for the answer.
"Well," said my mother, "your father was Catholic. But he isn't anymore."
My face fell. "Isn't anymore?" I was confused. "How can you not be something any more? What are you now, then? What are we now?"
I could tell that I was causing them some kind of discomfort. They glanced at each other and shrugged a little and made tiny grimacing faces, just letting their mouths fall into frowns momentarily.
"Look," I said, wanting to simplify things. This was supposed to have been such an easy question. I was supposed to ask, and they were supposed to say, "Of course, we forgot we're Catholic and we have to go to get you the veil first thing tomorrow!" Instead I was sitting here on the itchy yellow and red rug in the living room, staring up at the print of the woman and the moon that hung above my father's head and wondering how to restate the question, to make it easier for them to get it right.
"Look," I repeated, "it's like this: all my friends are something. Stephanie is a Unitarian, Suzy is Jewish, Michelle is a Catholic, and Lucy is a Presbyterian. So I just want to know, what am I?"
I smiled at them to make them feel better. But I was getting pretty nervous too.
"We're nothing." My father was looking right at me, he had a pleasant friendly kind of an expression. "Nothing," he said again.
"That's right," said my mother, she seemed relieved that Dad had just said it, "nothing at all."
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