MY FIRST EPIPHANY
There are quite few firsts one has to go through growing up Catholic.
First of course, Baptism, then First Confession, Confirmation, First Communion…But I also had a first Epiphany. By the strictest of Catholic standards it would probably be considered my First mortal sin.
It was 1968 I think. I know I wasn’t yet attending school, and I remember my best friends Michelle Basile and Johnny Kipps were in sight, sitting with their families too, so it must have been in the year I attended Kindy. ( Aussie for Kindergarten ).
It was Geraldton .. a windswept hot and salty beach side port town we lived in before we moved back down to Perth.
I was 4 years old. Old enough to vocalise many things, but not to have the vocabulary to express many things of profundity.
I was a shy kid for the most part, or shy among strangers and non-family or unfamiliar faces.
Being the youngest of 5, I was used to having older siblings and my parents to be the barrier between me and the big unknown world. A world that I innately sensed from before I could speak was not at all what it appeared to be.
I was afraid of the camera and when photos were taken, and usually peered out with a frightened look on my face, holding my Mum or Dad’s hand, hiding behind their legs.
I think I must have thought the camera might steal my soul or something.. much like I’d heard some cultures in Africa believed.
It was a stinking hot summers morning, a Sunday morning, and I’m fairly sure it was Easter because we were at the big Cathedral, not the little school/church around the block. It must have been one of those summers that never ended and extended far into what should have been autumn. Either that, or Easter was incredibly early that year, in March perhaps.. when actually some of the WA's hottest day happen.
Legs. I remember a sea of legs. I remember the tall forest of legs everywhere in the congregation. I remember the adults all repeating verses with such bored joyless voices.
The priest would drawl off a line about Jesus or God or heaven or whatever, and the adults would repeat in painfully patient disinterest. The church was dank and hot, people were sweating buckets, and the air was filled with a heady mixture of Tweed perfume, California Poppy Hair Oil and teenage body odour.
Men in shorts with shirts soaked through that stuck to their backs, and ladies with colourful dresses that stuck to their buttocks, wearing hats on their immovably hair-sprayed barnets. Amazing, the perspective from a tiny four year olds point of view.
I remember thinking how silly this all was. I was bored. I wanted to go home and hunt for Easter eggs.
This seemed pointless. The standing, the kneeling, the sitting, the droning. At one point in the proceedings, the smell of incense filled the room. AH! Something exotic. Something interesting at last. I liked this bit.
oh no..More droning… More Jesus, more hallelujahs … bugger.. the interesting bit didn’t last long.The congregation sat down and sighed relief… we’d entered a part when everyone could sit while the priest stood at the pulpit and began droning in ernest.
I became fixated on the huge Crucifix above the alter. Usually our family sat on the from row and I’d always have a perfect view, but this meant we kids had to be on the best behaviour. For some reason we weren't in the front row today.
My sister Diane looked green. She was prone to feinting in church. A few years later she’d feint at church in Perth, get stuck under the kneeler and my Dad would pull his back out trying to release her and be unable to move from a kneeling position for the rest of the service. The rest of us kids would spend the entire mass in tears of laughter while Dad, trying to stoically endure the awkwardness and pain, would whisper to us to “ Be quiet or I’ll do my Lolly” … which made us only burst into more tears of laughter.
Anyhow.. the Crucifix. The corpse attached, of a dead Jesus, complete with blood drooling from his crowned head, his lanced abdomen and the nails in his hands and feet. His head slumped to one side with a beautifically maudlin gasp on his dead face. I looked at it and shuddered. It dawned on me in my 4 year old mind that here we were celebrating the rebirth of the Son of God, who was hanging dead and eternally un-rotted each week above the altar for all to see.
Something is wrong, I thought. Something is very very wrong.
Here we are celebrating life.. returning from the dead, while we continually worship an effigy of a corpse. All of a sudden the whole church seemed to be otherworldly. All the grown-ups suddenly seemed unreal.. Not human.. like zombies. It scared the shit out of me.
I knew I had stumbled on some kind of truth, but had no words to frame or describe this revelation. I sensed that talking about this would be an absolute no-no.
It was time for the adults and older children to go and have communion, to “eat” the body of the Christ who was hanging dead high from the rafters.
I concentrated on the thought of the Easter egg hunt we’d have at home later. Dad would organise it and have all us kids running everywhere in the house and garden looking for clues. Dad would be fun Dad again, Mum would be back in her apron preparing Sunday lunch, my brother and I would be able to wear shorts, no shirt and bare feet again. Everything would be just as I liked it.
