linguistics

I sometimes lament that I was an errant and arrogant teenager, who rather than conjugating verbs in Spanish I, took the bathroom pass and spent my hour lounging on the newspaper room couch. I cribbed other people's homework and used the young (and as yet, undiscovered by one Ms. Cina) internet to translate longer assignments. This not only got me through Spanish I, but another semester of Spanish II. To this day, I can figure out basic words, but can do more but ask permission to go to the bathroom.

Still, cruising the internet researching a story I want to pitch, I realized I speak an entirely different language then other people. It's pretty useless in my everyday life and absolutely meaningless in terms of travel, but I speak Mormon.

words of interest:

Elder
EQ (elders quorum)
sister/brother
Mutual
Relief Society
Melchizedek
Ward
Stake
Law of Consecration
Telestial/Terrestrial/Celestial
the Still Small Voice
Head Council
the Twelve Apostles (no, not those ones)
Patriarchal Blessing
Oh my heck
RMs
Home Teacher
Seminary
Nephi/Lehi/Moroni
Bishopric

But it's hard to explain just with single words -- it's this whole other manner of speech, a language that uses English to allude to a different set of metaphors, reference, and world view. It's this whole other history -- where Joseph Smith, Nephi, pioneer picnics, the quorum of the seventy, stake gatherings, green jello, casserole, pregnancy, tithing, and baptism by immersion are the points of departure. It's this scrubbed down, shiny version of speech imbued with so many references to love and absolutely devoid of curse words.

I always wince when people describe me as Mormon. In some ways, it has nothing to do with me. Not only did I begin to reject the church when I was quite young (with some reborn-ish moments in times of teenage crisis and guilt), but in some ways my family was not very typical -- in the Utah mormon sense. Still, I forget sometimes when I bring people to my grandmother's house that a painting like this:

dominates an entire wall of the living room. When people see it -- eerie light emanating from God as he delivers the gospel to a young New England boy -- it's hard to know what to say. "Oh, that's a painting of Joseph Smith in the grove" never really cuts it. For me, it doesn't seem all that different from grandparents with giant crosses or paintings of Jesus over the headboard in the guest room. But it is.

There is much more. It's hard to explain the way I know people, in these extended semi-kinship relationships. I'm not talking polygamy, but there is an intense community in Mormon churches, one that defines its member's social interaction. People I grew up "going to church with" aren't just girls I saw once a week: we spent Monday and Wednesday evenings together; we played "church ball" all our lives; I was at their baptism; I was encouraged to befriend them over all other children; I attended their sisters weddings receptions in the church gym (another odd note -- most Mormon churches have basketball courts, usually behind the chapel.); I was at the potluck that welcomed their brothers back from their missions. It's this whole web of connection and knowledge, of kinship, that gets left behind when you leave the church.

After reading Mrs. Pant's entry about her protestant upbringing a few Sundays ago these words crossed my mind:

"The ladyfriend is out of town. No one knows where I am. I could go to church and never have to explain it to anyone."

What? The thought surprised me so much I turned halfway around in my chair to see where it might have come from. I couldn't figure out why my mind just said that. Even then it didn't totally go away.

I've decided that it wasn't religious guilt or anything to do with a yearning for Christ. I just wanted to go to a place where old ladies hug you for no reason, where everyone knows everyone's name and calls them "sister", and where there is a whole other language -- secret, private -- that you can speak. It's a club and it's the place where my ideas of community, charity, and support were forged. In some ways, Mormonism is what leads me to being so liberal.

That is today's official brainfuck.

But it's true. Growing up, when someone was sick, lost their job, or had a baby -- duties were informal divvied up amongst church members. Mormons are strangely organized. They run the largest genealogy database in the world, have a world-wide system of churches and missionaries, and a local system of "home teachers" who, theoretically, monitor the well-being and spiritual devotion of everyone in the ward. So on a Tuesday night you get a phone call, "Phil is out of work and we need to organize meals for the family." Boom! Every day for a month a casserole arrives on the front stoop with a cute card and a "this dish belongs to Sister Robbins" adhesive label on the bottom. There is a separate church welfare program, amazing babysitting networks, a tithing system whereby you give ten percent of your income, and some Mormons take a passage of scripture seriously and believe that Joseph Smith intended for the church to live communally with shared possessions and equal wealth. That's right kids, Mormons -- those red state conservatively dressed smiling blonde people -- are closet socialists. God love 'em for it.

It's a strange feeling. My religious upbringing shaped a lot of who I am -- down to the words I use -- and yet I am completely and totally severed from it. I often experience the same sadness living so far away from my large and very-extended family. It seems so natural a thing to return to, a place where I am -- in one way -- most myself. Yet, it is the furthest and most alien thing to who I am. Perhaps it is not that I am most myself at all, perhaps it is a place where my history comes full circle, where I remember most about all aspects of myself. First, because in a church context (or surrounded by Mormons at some family function, some wedding, some basketball game) I am so aware of that which is not Mormon about me. I feel glaringly queer, acutely political, and affected by the city that I currently reside in. But at the same moment, I am reminded of other things I am -- daughter, childhood friend, favorite student, babysitter -- by people who shaped me.

I think that sense of history and place is missing from my current life. I can't ever explain EFY to another person. If I do, it's an oddity, another strange little quirk in the rural and religious upbringing of good golly -- rather than what it is.

Which is tender, and strange, and mine.

I have a fair amount of vitrol and rage at "the Church" -- but when I hear that derision in other people's mouths it seems malformed. I always want to say -- but once when my mother started to recede from the world and my father had taken to working late every night, I stepped out the front door and found a three-bean casseroles, rolls still warm from the oven, and a jar of homemade applesauce. No note attached, no request for acknowledgement, just a piping hot dinner set delicately on top of an oven mitt.