Somber ceremonies in Vatican City
remind even a Baptist of his past
"What's this?" Mom asked.
I didn't immediately supply an answer because I couldn't see what she was referring to, as I was in the middle of lowering onto the floor of my bedroom one of the travel bags I was helping Dad bring in from the car. They were visiting for an Astros-Braves game and would be sleeping in my room since I had yet to buy a bed large enough for two adults for my guest bedroom.
So I didn't connect her question to the pendulum-like slapping of plastic on wood that I also was hearing. At least not until I turned and saw her looking down at the rosary beads hanging from the inside doorknob of my bedroom door.
Like in that precise moment you realize you've locked your keys in your car, locked yourself out of your house, forgotten a critical appointment or left tickets to a sporting event or concert at home, a surge of panic flashed across every node of my nervous system.
Though it lasted only a second, it presented enough of a hesitation on my part to give Mom time for a follow-up question.
"Something of Spence's?" she added.
Good grief, no, I thought.
Spencer was my roommate, and, more importantly, is Mormon.
My family, on the other hand, is as Baptist as Billy Graham. With the exception of an uncle by marriage who led my Aunt Rhonda and two of my cousins to the Methodist Church — a denomination that, in the area where I grew up, was set apart by only one theological difference: "They sprinkle rather than dunk" — every single relative I can think of has been raised in a Baptist church, from suburban Houston to backwater burgs in rural Alabama. To say I'm from an area where Baptists are common would be an understatement akin to saying Osama Bin Laden has been hiding in a region where Islam has a slight influence.
As far as I know, my school had only one Catholic student while I was there, and he wasn't a practicing Catholic. My exposure to this "other" Christianity was limited pretty much to classic literature, European history, Martin Luther and the blue version of The Way I tried to buy in junior high because it's one of Auburn's school colors, before the parental explanation that "it's a Catholic Bible."
So as Mom now posed these questions to me about this device of Catholic ritual found in my bedroom (which I seem to remember even some nun on an episode of Happy Days once rubbing), I stood thinking that surely she knew enough about Catholicism and Latter-Day Saints from Training Union classes to know no Mormon would have a set of these. Did she really know even less about these other faiths than I once had?
Or maybe it was something else. Maybe she suspected Spence was more to me than a friend who was relieving some of the burden of my monthly mortgage payment. It would be another 15 months before I came out to my parents. But here was Mom, asking whether some fixture in my room was something of my roommate's. Did she think I was shacking up?
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