I grew up surrounded by homes with traditional families. Somehow even when I was in their care I would scoot off to my future elementary school on an adventure. I couldn’t wait for Kindergarten. I would climb up onto the window’s edge of a bay window and go from window to window waiting for the summer to end so I could attend. There was a glorious jungle gym inside. Sometimes I would sit behind bushes to hide watching other children as they went to school. I had wanted to go to the parochial school in the other direction but it became clear I couldn’t. It sat next to the church and it had no convenient windows to climb on with no vision of what was inside. This was so attractive to me. I loved my adventures.
Catholicism was practiced by my friends and their families. This was the school they would go to. As we grew older, being Catholic was a religious struggle for them. I saw my girlfriends being afraid of kissing until marriage. This was what my mother promoted in our home. I wished I could go to a religious school and have a religion to belong to. Mom would rest on Sundays and off to church she would send me where my friends would go. “God was everywhere,”my mom said. She would have no dogma in her daughter. Her father made her stay home and read the bible on Sunday nights. She wanted to go and see the boys at the church.
I often left mom for church with a hanky on my head. When the bells rang inside the Catholic Church, I would tap my chest. I still am not sure what that means. What I know is that churches and God were my comfort. I wasn’t even supposed to kiss a boy and learned French kisses were a mortal sin. Girls became pregnant by touching a boy's hand. My confusion grew after being told you couldn’t get pregnant till marriage. Eventually I figured it out differently as I quizzed and pushed my mother relentlessly. After seeing a TV show with an unmarried woman getting pregnant, finally my mother decided to tell me her truth of the day. She was desperate again that her daughter would not get pregnant before marriage. Boys could touch you in your private parts before marriage, she told me. I began to cry, too young for this knowledge. I kept saying I’m never getting married. There was no tender talk or explanations for deep love. My father died and I never saw my father kiss my mother or hug her after that. These private parts of mine were not going to be private! Later I knew I wanted closeness and hoped touching would be wonderfully filled with care. This talk from my mother did not give me comfort with any truths. I carried these ideas into young adult life and after.
As a teen, I always felt separate. After my first date I was accused of doing what had been defined as my mother’s unspoken truth. She told me I had sex. I did not. I was now going to stay home and pretend I had boyfriends. Imagination and sexuality were fostered through dancing during high school, often in front of the TV.
As I prepared to go to England. During my senior year, I met a nice Jewish boy, Alan Goldstein. I would sit on his lap and he would kiss me. How I loved kissing. I got on the ship with love bites around my neck, pulling up my collar to cover them. I ran into him later after I had become a free spirited 20 year old and I asked him why he never tried anything with me beyond kissing. He said I seemed so afraid. I was! He probably had some of his own fears.
