Captain Daddy and I almost didn’t get married based on vastly differing spiritual beliefs. All of that now seems like the sort of completely irrelevant nonsense that young people fixate on when making monumental decisions like who to spend the rest of their lives with, unaware that it’s actually anxiety, boredom and the laundry that will do you in, not God.
Religion rarely comes up around here. But it does have its moments, and it’s true that the Chickens get vastly different results depending on who they hit up for information on the subject.
Friday, Chicken Noodle approaches:
“What are we doing for Easter, Mom?”
Captain Daddy was nowhere in sight. This one was mine.
“Going to Grammy and Grandpa’s for an Easter egg hunt.”
Her face crumpled. “But we have to go to church!”
Curious. Where on Earth could she have gotten this radical idea? I doubted it was Captain Daddy. He doesn’t actually go to church anymore, just occasionally frets that he’s failing as a parent and going straight to hell because he doesn’t.
I looked at her inquisitively.
“Maddy said!” Ah. Maddie. In her Kindergarten class. Whose father is a minister.
“Hmm.” I considered. “Well, it’s true that Easter is actually a religious holiday. It’s about Jesus.”
“Who’s Jesus?”
I told you religion doesn’t come up much around here.
Knowing that if Captain Daddy were here, this conversation would now veer confusingly into talk of the flesh of God, and perhaps, gruesome-yet-apparently-necessary description of the crucifixion, instead I delivered up the child-appropriate version of what I actually believe about Jesus.
“He’s a famous and really wonderful man from history.”
Noodle contemplated this.
“So we’re not going to church?”
“Well, sort of. We’re going to the church of Grammy, Grandpa, chocolate and love. It’s quite nice, really.”
Publishing May 17 is my travel guidebook, Day Trips From Portland, from Globe Pequot Press.
