When she raised me and my siblings, my mom spared us a number of things she didn't love about her own childhood. So, for the same reasons that I've never tasted brussels sprouts (thanks, mami!), I never had to go through most of the things the rest of my Catholic cousins always complained about: getting ready for their First Communion, fasting during Lent, kneeling on those rock-hard church pews that left your knees sore, etc. In a way, it was like having my cake and eating it, too. We had posadas with piñatas and tamales without having to sit through mass afterwards, and the only remotely ceremonial part of my quinceañera was an unrehearsed waltz with my dad.
It's a pretty solid arrangement, but at times, being Mexican without being Catholic feels a little bit like watching a movie without any popcorn. Besides generally feeling like I was cheated out of some potentially life-changing
Virgen de Guadalupe swag, a tiny part of me grew up desperately wishing that I could go to church in an imposing cathedral lined with ornate stained glass windows instead of a rented office building next to a 7-Eleven. Catholic Mass was like the cute boy next door that I liked for all the wrong reasons.
Look at the fancy outfit the priest is wearing. It smells so exotic and important in here. I wish we got to wear special cross necklaces.
In elementary school, I snuck little acts of wannabe-Catholicism into our Mormon church meetings. For a while, I made it a habit to quietly cross myself at the end of Sacrament meeting, making sure to kiss my thumb at the end. Looking back, it was probably really odd to see a 9-year-old kid trying to act like a super-devout widow from some novela. At the time, it just seemed like a really fun thing to do.
Given my extremely exciting (read: borderline creepy) childhood pastimes, it shouldn't be too surprising that I responded to my total freedom and lack of supervision at college by self-imposing more religious observances (#yolo #collegelife). So while other people at my dorm were feeling like bad-asses for smoking weed on a sub-free floor, I was feeling like a bad-ass for getting ready to experiment with Lent.
Obviously, it's not like Lent had ever been forbidden at my house. We fasted for two meals a day on the first Sunday of every month, so Lent felt more like the next level of masochism. Just like running cross country in high school had never been about developing healthy habits, my first time doing Lent had never been about remembering Jesus Christ's sacrifice. It was purely an exercise in trying to beat myself at something, and I was so excited. It would be like running a long-distance race - it would suck the whole time, but at the end of it all I could feel like a champ for proving that my will to suck it up for 4 kilometers of pain and cramps was stronger than my will to sit on the couch and nap. Which proved that I was a decent person, right? Right.
There were several contenders for what I would give up, and 100% of them were found in the dining hall, where I had unlimited access to any number of unhealthy food options - sugary cereal, bagels with cream cheese, cheesecake bars - that weren't readily available at my house. After realizing that I was drinking pink lemonade and Coke with breakfast, lunch and dinner, I decided to stop drinking soda.
Over the course of the next 40 days, my relationship with soda underwent the kind of emotional roller coaster you'd expect from a romantic comedy. At first, I would pass by the soda counter in the dining hall without taking a second glance.
Who needs soda? Soda is for chumps. This will be easy. It took approximately three days for my nonchalance to turn into a raging obsession.
Please please please all I want is a sip of pink lemonade I'll do anything I'll sell my soul aaaaauuuuggghhhhhh . I developed an irrational disdain for water, hating it for trying to substitute something as crisp and bubbly as Coke. I become acutely aware of what kind of soda Meredith Grey was drinking on Grey's Anatomy, noticed how many ice cubes she tossed in her drink. And this sort of thing would go on until sometime in April when I would celebrate the end of a successful Lent fast by cradling a 2-liter bottle of Coke Zero in my arms and singing Shania Twain's "
You're Still The One."
In theory, the cool thing about Lent is that people can strengthen their character by distancing themselves from their vices and reducing their dependency on unnecessary things, whether they're soft drinks or red meat or sweets. I wish I could say that over the past few years that I've done Lent, I've improved myself by being less emotionally dependent on inanimate objects.
It doesn't take long to realize that's not the case...
If I'm not undergoing 40 days of misery to actually better myself, why do I still get off-the-charts excited for Lent every year? And I mean, I get
excited. Like marking the days on my calendar excited. When I first started thinking about why I get so much enjoyment from what's supposed to be a pretty crappy 40 days, I thought it had more to do with my decades-long desire to connect with the sort of exalted sub-culture of Mexican Catholicism that permeates every other holiday or rite of passage in my family's life. Maybe this was just my personal Virgencita Plis decal.
But when I'm really honest with myself, I think I look forward to every Ash Wednesday simply because it's a chance for me to fall in love with something all over again. After spending more than a month missing my liquid therapist, imagining what it tastes like, composing poetry about all the ways it is superior to any other drink, I can reward myself with a reunion that will be sweet and satisfying. Distance makes the heart grow freaking obsessed, in part because the absence of something I adore makes me realize all the tiny, but important ways that it makes me happy. Lent offers a way to experience the thrill of the chase, but the best part is that it offers a happy ending. Resurrection and religion aside, that seems like a pretty good deal.
