*Please note: I will add to this autobiography on a periodical basis. Keep checking back for updates!
Memories that stretch to birth and beyond: the early years...
I was born, not unlike anyone else, in the very ordinary maternity ward of a modern Canadian hospital- St. Michael’s, in Lethbridge, Alberta- on a cold December morning in 1984. Right from birth, I was a devoted Catholic girl. Having entered this world so close to Christmastime in a Roman Catholic family, my very first experiences of life revolved around family dinners with the lighting of a customary advent wreath; hymns sung to the newborn Lord around my grandma’s piano, and the joyful festivities of large family gatherings to honor the spirit of Christ through gift giving and feasting. It was a wondrous time to come into embodiment, for sure, and my memories of those first few days of life are filled with colourful lights, glorious sounds, and joyous feelings... These first memories are all the more enjoyable for me to recollect because they are uncontaminated memories; languageless, reliant not on linguistic descriptions of happenings, but on pure direct perceptions. Yes, you read that correctly- I can remember my first few days of life. One of the gifts the great Almighty has given me is the gift of a nearly spotless memory, which traces back to the very moment I was born, and beyond- to realms of space and time indescribable and indefinable by this worldly mind through which I am now writing to you.
(Of course, when I say that God has gifted me with this powerful memory, some of you, who have read the biographies of Hindu and Buddhist mystics, will be thinking, "But Sudevi! This isn't a gift from God- a heightened memory tracing back to birth is something many masters and yogis have. It's there on account of your punya, the spiritual merit you've built up through practice and austerities in previous lifetimes." And to that I would reply, "Yes, you're absolutely right. It is God's gift, indeed.")
Even without a verbal or conceptual understanding of who God was or what religion is, I was a decidedly religious little baby, who fully enjoyed every moment of the celebrations- from Christmas, to Easter, to the 'Ordinary Times,' my heart always basked in joy at church, and around my religiously inspired grandparents, I too, felt a passion for the Lord.
As I grew older and became a speaking and thinking child, my goals in life were intrinsically connected to two very important aspects of living: first, religion and the glorification of God; and second, personal perception, clarity, and and a quest to return to the experiential state of pure being without the continuous distraction of verbalized thoughts. As much as I enjoyed words and their magical ability to render comprehensible to another the innermost feelings, I equally yearned to be able to just 'be' once again, as I had been when freshly born, so that I might be able to experience the richness of sight, sound and touch undisturbed by the incessant narration of the mental voice.
Whenever I had a chance question my elders, I would ask them about God, and Jesus, and Mary and the angels... and once their answers had satiated my religious curiosity, I would request guidance and instruction to return to the thoughtless state, “How do you stop thinking at times when you don’t want to think?” Naively, I assumed there must be a common knowledge way to enter into the no mind state, and that, like everything else in life, it needs only to be learned before it can be practiced... like eating with chop sticks, or saying the rosary. I expected my mom, or teacher, or daycare leader to laugh at happily at my question, and give some practical advice. Maybe, they would have said something like, "Oh, dear Sarah- don't you already know? Simply, sit like this, put your hands like that, now focus on your breathing..." But alas, this was a small Christian city in the part of Canada known as 'The Bible Belt,' where, in the eighties and early nineties, scant few would have known the difference between a Vedic meditation technique and a diet fad...
Needless to say, my passions were deemed quite peculiar by those to whom I spoke, especially kids at preschool who didn't come from Catholic families, and babysitters who watched over me on nights when my mom went out. (One, in particular, truly hurt my little heart badly when she laughed out loud at me for praying 'Bless Us Oh Lord' before we ate a snack, and once again, when she scoffed mockingly at my bedtime prayer for the safety, health and happiness of everyone I knew.) Perhaps even more misunderstood than my strong love of God was my odd and continuous request for a technique by which to silence the inner voice. This question was met with incredulity by those to whom I enquired who, with their western mentalities, believed that once language has become known to a person, that person is sentenced (sentenced... very apt terminology) to a life confined by wordly descriptions. This created in me a double edged sword of sorrow: the pain of an indescribable urge to spend every moment for God without the full support of everyone around me, and an equally strong urge to learn how to experience life from the pure perspective of a baby once again, without an adequate understanding of how to rid my mind of the incessant parade of words that marched bothersomely along, whether I wanted to think them or not.
Only when I sat by myself in silent prayerful contemplation was I able to enter into a state of inner balance, combining my love of God, and my enjoyment of inner peace. My mom recalls many a time when she came to find me, even in my youngest of years, sitting cross legged with my back totally straight, just silently being. (Had she been a Hindu or a Buddhist mother and not a Catholic one, no doubt, she would have recognized that her toddler was sitting in a state of meditative awareness.)
At four, I entered into kindergarten at a French Catholic elementary school called St. Mary’s, and was immediately struck- as many other ‘only children’ must surely be struck when they encounter large groups of other kids for the first time- by the vast differences between myself and my peers. Some kids were quarrelsome, others shy, and others still were insufferable in their tantrums, teasing and bullying one another, fighting and tormenting the teachers...
Myself, as you probably already gathered, I was a quiet child, and soon to be labeled a class outcast because, no matter which games the other children wanted to play or what they wanted to talk about, the only topics that interested me were decidedly religious and consciousness based in nature. Instead of dressing up barbies, I preferred to draw geometric patterns... instead of playing in groups, I preferred to sit in silence or pray... and instead of complaining bitterly about church, (“My mommy says I can’t watch cartoons on Saturday if I don’t go to church on Sunday. It’s not fair!”) I yearned to spend my every moment there, admiring the pools of multicolored light that danced across the aisle from the stained glass windows above; listening to the choir sing Glory and Praise; hiding my tears as I contemplated the sorrow of Mary, whose sculpture sat in pure maternal agony, cradling the lifeless body of her crucified son Jesus, next to the pew where my mom and I sat to attend mass every week. Some nights, as I tossed and turned in bed waiting to fall asleep, I would imagine myself alone in the church building, and take comfort in knowing that although God’s house was about 30 city blocks away from my own, under the protective folds of my bed sheets and beneath the cross that hung over my head, I could be there with Him still, every night, in spirit.
It wasn’t just the other kids at school who noticed my quiet, introspective constant love of God; my family, too, faced it every day of my young life. Once, at the Sunday dinner table, surrounded by my grandparents, mother, aunts and uncles, I proudly declared, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a priest!”
It was the Sunday following our first vocational discussion at school, in which our teacher asked us each to think carefully about what we want to be when we grow up, so that we could all describe our future dreams in the next show and tell. To my utter sadness, though, my ‘calling’ to the priesthood was quickly answered by muffled laughter on behalf of my aunts and uncles, and an apologetic talk from my mother, who explained to me that girls cannot grow up to join the priesthood. I was devastated, wondering why I had been born as a girl if I had such a burning passion to talk about God; I considered it deeply unfair that the only job out there that would allow me to do what I most wished to do was not an option for me. It embarrasses me, still, to think back to my ardent prayers that night, when I asked God over and over again to let me wake up the next morning as a boy...
After a few weeks of quizzical debates with my mom, trying, failingly, to get to the core reason why girls couldn’t enter the seminary, I finally asked, “If a girl can’t be a priest, then what can a girl be if she wants to serve God every day?"
After a few moments though, a smile broke out across her face, and my mom said, "A nun!"
"Oh!" I exclaimed in excitement and curiosity, "What do nuns do?”
Although my school was a Catholic one, and my family attended mass on a weekly basis, our community had a sad lack of visible nuns. The convent was connected to a parish removed from our own, and teaching jobs were reserved for the laity with university degrees. (No ruler slaps by habit-clad cliche's for us...)
She answered my question about female monastics very beautifully; my dear mother told me that nuns are women who love God so much that they decide not to marry a man and start a small family, but instead, dedicate their lives to God as His own wives, and in so doing, they take the entire world as their family.
God's wife! Mother of the world! Had I but known such a calling was possible earlier, it would have rendered needless my disappointment at the gender exclusivity of the patriarchal priesthood.
“That's it, then! When I grow up, I'll be a nun!” I made this triumphant announcement, again, at my grandparents house after church on a Sunday, surrounded my my proud Catholic grandfather, who beamed at me from behind his newspaper, and my aunts and uncles who snickered as much as they had when I had declared my plans to be a priest. I pretended not to notice the hushed laughter, and repeated my declaration once more in my mind to reassure myself, "I will be a nun.”
That afternoon, like I did on many of my childhood Sundays, I skipped off after brunch to play the piano. In the living room, my grandma had a beautiful old German upright that I often spent hours with, my gaze turned inward, thoughts completely dissolved in musical bliss, while harmonies and tunes came streaming through me, made into sound by the miracle of the hidden strings tapped by the strike of the black and white keys... I wasn't formally trained (or even informally trained, for that matter) but somehow, whenever I sat on the folded wooden bench, took a deep breath, and placed my little hands on the keyboard, music simply happened. I didn't think of myself as someone who could 'play the piano,' but rather, as someone through whom the piano was played. Whenever anyone asked how I did it, I told them that I didn't know- it was natural, like breathing. God had made me make music, and so, the music was made.
***
One Sunday after church, my aunt- who still lived with my grandparents- invited me to clean her bedroom. While that may sound like a grievous chore, her room was already spotlessly clean, and really, I enjoyed this cleaning- spritzing the mirror with blue fluid, then wiping the smooth glassy surface with a cloth... somehow, whenever I washed her mirror, memories of a forgotten place eased hazily into my mind, filling me with curious visionary wonder. The scenes that unfolded, one after another, reminded me of the beauty of fiery lamps swung gracefully to the ringing of bells and beating of drums, while visitors knelt and bowed... the fragrant aroma of thick spicy incense... and the presence of God emanating from from my heart towards all who looked upon me. Lost in the wonder of these visions, I didn't bother trying to figure out what they meant, or where they came from. In my childhood innocence, I wasn't concerned about their calculable reality as memories, or as truthful happenings. No- I just enjoyed them for what they were.
"You're a brat," my aunt said, breaking my mystic reverie.
"What?" I asked her, dumbfounded.
"You heard me," she said, lazily from her bed. "I said, you are a brat."
It was like being struck by a sudden unfathomable illness. I dropped the cloth and ran upstairs in shame, ignoring my grandmother when I passed her in the kitchen, and retreated into a contemplative aloneness on an oversized living room chair. I wondered to myself how it was possible that I had lived four years of my life without ever realizing that I was a brat; I wondered why so many people were nice to me in spite of my unfortunate less than ideal state. My eyes filled with tears, and I silently apologized to God for being a brat.
After about half an hour of silent weeping, my grandfather came looking for me. Usually, on Sundays, I would have been playing the piano, or drawing at the kitchen table, or asking him to go for a walk to the lake or play catch with me outside. When so much time had passed quietly by, he rightly guessed that all was not right.
"My dear, what's the matter?" He asked, when he saw my shameful face.
"Grandad," I said in a teeny, tiny voice, "I just found out that I'm a..."
"Yes?" he asked, when I was too scared to say it.
"a... brat." I said it with grave and shameful finality.
He smiled a little bit, as if trying not to laugh at me, and asked for more information.
"Auntie just told me," was my simple answer.
Without another word, he stomped downstairs, and I heard his fists pound on my aunt's closed door.
"What?" she called.
"You told Sarah that she's a brat, and now she's upstairs crying!" he yelled.
"What?" she asked.
"She's crying in the living room! How could you tell her something like that... didn't you know she would believe you?"
Then their voices became muffled, and I though I strained to hear them through one of the furnace grates, it was not possible. What my grandad had said left me in utter shock and confusion; what did he mean when he told her that I had believed her? Why wouldn't I? People didn't say things unless what they said was true, did they? Oh... unless... she had lied!
Prior to that day, the very idea of speaking an untruth was unfathomable to me. I had never lied, nor known anyone else to do it. Suddenly, my crying stopped, and a deeper feeling of unsettlement came over me: I realized that people I know well- people who are in my very family!- were capable of lying! In Sunday School, we were taught that to lie is to directly disobey one of the rules God has given us. My prayer then shifted; while before, I was praying for God to forgive me for being a brat, now, I prayed for God to help my aunt stop lying!
When my grandad came back to check on my once again, and to offer an apology on my aunt's behalf, I was already feeling much better. Even still, he offered me a special treat to cheer me up.
"How about we visit the secret drawer?" he asked.
"Really?!"
Such an invitation filled me with excitement beyond belief! The secret drawer was a locked drawer at the top of his dresser, which he had filled with all kinds of goodies to impress a little girl like myself. Art supplies, costume jewellery, toys, books... as the director of curriculum in the Catholic school board, he had access to many wondrous things sold in teacher's conventions, and early childhood education seminars. These, he stockpiled, and whenever he caught me in an act of goodness, my reward was a trip to the secret drawer, where I would be lifted high above the bed, and allowed to choose one precious item.
"But I didn't do anything," I enquired.
"No, dear. But- you don't have to 'do something' for me to remind you that you're a good girl."
My little eyes teared up yet again. At the time, I didn't know why, but now, after years of living in this cruel world, which often calls the good by names much worse than 'brat,' I know they were tears of bittersweet happiness; they were joyful tears of vindication after a false accusation.
When my grandad held me up to look into the secret drawer, all other emotion was quickly replaced with a feeling of religious awe and wonder. My eyes met with a most welcome sight: there, strewn casually atop the heap of books and toys and crayons and colorful things, was a blue rosary. For a moment, I just looked at it, amazed by the sight. I knew instantly what it was, since I had seen similar strands draped over the prayerful and outstretched hands of Mary in many of her statues. I had asked my mom about the necklaces, and she had explained to me that the beads encircling a cross were not jewelry, but instead, a hand-held system on which to keep count of prayers; she told me each bead represents one prayer. While holding one of the beads, the prayer is recited, then that bead is slipped back- like on an abacus- and the next bead is held, while another prayer is said, until the end loop is reached. I asked her why Mary always held one of these prayer strands, and she told me that these prayer strands, called the rosary, were one of Mary's most cherished possessions.
How I had wished to have one of my own, so that I, too, could pray like the Mother of Christ! For some reason, though, I had never thought to ask; it didn't even cross my mind that such a sacred and precious thing could be had by just anyone! Like the holy book and the chalice... like the robes of the priest or the stations of the cross that adorn church columns, I had naively assumed rosaries were to be kept in the house of God, or else owned only by those of great religious merit- like priests, and saints, and the people who run the church.
Slowly, with baited breath, I reached into the drawer, and took delicate hold of the blue beads.
"Grandad," I said, quietly, "may I choose this rosary?" I asked.
He was quiet, and finally said, "Sarah- you can choose anything you want."
"This!" I exclaimed enthusiastically, "Grandad! I've always wanted one."
"Are you sure about that? Here, then. Take the rosary, and also, choose something else. There are sticker books, and packs of felt pens, and..."
"No," I interrupted, as he pointed out toys and other fun things, "there's nothing else that I want."
That day marked a turning point in my young life: for one thing, I understood for the first time that it was possible for people to blatantly say something that they knew fully not to be true. 'Lying' was no longer just a concept taught as being wrong by the teachers; it was an actual offense committed casually by people, for no good reason at all, and it hurt. I also learned something, by choosing the rosary from the secret drawer, which stuck with me always: I discovered that my intense religious fervor was not common. As an only child (and also, an only grandchild) I was rarely exposed to other children. The only time I saw them, really, was at church- in the dayhome I attended, all were either so much younger or older than me, that we really didn't talk, and at ballet lessons, we were too bust plieting and curtseying, there was no time to share interests. So, when I heard my grandad announce to the family that "Sarah chose a rosary instead of a toy!" and that I "didn't even want to look at anything else!" and when they responded with comments like, "Yeah- she's funny like that," and "Imagine, so prayerful at four," I realized, for the first time, that not everyone lives for God.
"One day," I thought to myself, gingerly fingering the beads of the rosary, while listening in on the grownups conversation about me from the other room, "I'll share my love for God with the whole world."
School Days
At the age of four, I entered kindergarten at St. Mary's, a Catholic French immersion elementary school. As an only child, it can be understood that my expectations of the other children was far from the reality I soon discovered in the classroom and on the playground. Of course, I didn't know that I had any expectations, until they were all dashed.
On our first day, by way of introduction to our classmates, our teacher asked us each to say a few words about ourselves- what do we like to do best? What do we hope to learn in school? Which words would we be happy to discover in French?
The others spoke about their favorite toys and games; they parroted each other on school, stating an interest in sports and play time; they asked for dirty words like poop and pee to be translated in perpetual love of a cheap laugh from the others. When it was my turn to speak, though, things didn't go well at all.
"Et Sarah," the teacher addressed me in French, "c'est a toi."
"My favorite thing to do," I said, slowly, a little bit nervous to be speaking in front of so many kids, "is... to pray at church, until I feel God is really there. I know He's there all the time, but I don't really feel Him unless I'm praying. Sometimes, when it's time to go down to Sunday School, I wish I could just stay in the pew with my family; I don't like coloring pictures, or playing games, as much as I like to silently talk to God, and Jesus, and Mary, and the angels. And I love looking at the stained glass windows... they're like shiny jewels in the sunlight..."
I didn't know why they were all laughing; I wasn't telling any jokes.
Blushing, I continued, quickly changing the subject, "I look forward to reading and writing, I'd like to learn the French words for things that don't exist in English."
This was the phrase that caught my teacher by surprise. She looked up for the first time since I had started talking, and said, cheerfully, "Bien, Sarah, tres bien. Very Good. But- what do you mean when you say, you'd like to know the French words for things that don't exist in English?"
All my life, any time I had spoken about the inner world experiences brought about through lone meditation, the adults to whom I spoke looked at me as if I was an alien. Somehow, they couldn't fathom what the lights on the insides of my eyelids were, or what I meant when I said I wanted to learn how to stop thinking all the time, not just while sitting with my back straight, focusing on my breath. When my mom had asked me whether I wanted to go to school in English, or if I would prefer to learn French, I immediately said, "French!" because I had hoped that a new language would also have a new lexicon of understandings.
I was sadly mistaken.
"Madame, I mean- I want to know the words for things like the feeling of drinking water while praying, and suddenly understanding that everything is perfect."
The kids laughed again, and she raised her eyebrows.
"Sarah, there is no word for this nonsense in the French language. Next- la prochaine- Melanie. Tell your classmates a little bit about yours..."
Her abrupt dismissal of my quest to rectify the linguistic lack of terms to express states of prayerful consciousness was the first of many heartbreaks I was to face in the next few years, but still, my desire to share the unexplainable was strong.
When I got home that day, I cried and cried, and told my mom that nobody understands me.
"Oh, Sweetheart," she said, "it was only your first day. Things will get better."
Things got worse. From the beginning, I was the laughingstock of the class; the one child most teased and tormented by all the other children. I retreated further into myself, and my fervent prayers to God intensified.
Towards the end of the school year, my intense wish to be properly understood reached it's zenith.
"Mom," I announced one evening after dinner, "I decided to make my own language."
She asked me what I had in mind, and I explained to her, "I've tried to tell people about myself in English, and in French, and it doesn't work. The world needs a language with words that explain things these other languages don't have."
We spent the whole evening with a pen and a piece of paper, and I asked her to scribe down for me the various definitions of the 'new words' that I spoke, as if in tongues.
I would draw a little symbol, then tell her, "Write down beside this one, 'feeling light like floating after praying quietly,' and by that one, 'the colorful lights inside the eyelids that can only be seen after keeping eyes closed for a few minutes.'"
Like that, hours went by, until I was satisfied that enough of the subtle physical and spiritual states had been verbally and symbolically classified.
The next day, I didn't bother to tell any of the kids at school about this new language, but decided to share it with the lady in charge of my after school home daycare program.
She humored my entire presentation, but laughed out loud when I went outside, assuming I couldn't hear her.
"That girl is crazy, I tell you," she said to the director of daycares, who was visiting for the day. "Seriously. At five, she thinks she can make a language? Of all things..."
When I got home and reported the incident to my mom, she consoled me, and said, "Dear daughter, you're not crazy. Making this language is a fun game for you. I'll still play, if you like."
That summed it up. Even my own mother didn't believe it was possible for me to create new terms of spiritual understanding. For over a week, I was in depression, grimly accepting the sad fact that I might never be able to truly articulate the pleasures of my young life.
(Of course, now, after having studied the Vedic truths in India, I know that the Sanskrit language is filled with a more sacred vernacular than my childhood self could ever have dreamed of! The sensation of drinking water while yogically immersed in deep prayer, for example, is the flow of 'amrita,' divine nectar. The colorful lights that dance across the inner space eyelid screen indicate the preliminary levels of the opening of the 'ajna chakra,' or third eye. And to reach a state of thoughtlessness after sitting in silent self contemplation is to go into 'satori.' Just as a Hindu or Buddhist parent would have seen my early straight-spined sittings as meditations and not lazy obscurities, a Vedic parent would have recognized my linguistic pursuits as a calling to learn Sanskrit, and not as an eccentric game of make believe language.)
When kindergarten came to an end and the first grade started, I hoped, throughout the two beautiful months of summertime, the new beginning would afford me the opportunity to actually make friends. I dreamed other kids as passionate about God and the inner world would somehow appear at the school, or that my kindergarten classmates would have matured over the holiday break, ready to share my joys of subtlety.
Oh... innocence.
On the first day of the first grade, during play break, while climbing in the playground, one of the boys pushed me off the jungle gym, and I fell hard at the bottom of the pole.
"Move it, or I'll jump on you," he shouted from above.
I couldn't move, because I was in shock from the hard landing.
"Move!" He yelled it again, then slid down the pole fast and landed with his feet crashing to my head.
I fell over, then came to as a few of the other kids lifted me up.
"Sarah," one girl asked, "why didn't you move?"
"I couldn't," I said simply.
"Then you should have told him not to slide down."
She said it with an air of authority, and I didn't have any interest in correcting her by stating that I wasn't able to speak since the fall had winded me.
When we got to the teacher, she said, "Madame, Sarah fell down the pole."
Our teacher looked me up and down, then said, "Be more careful next time," and walked away.
"But Madame," I called after her in my own defense, "I was being careful. Somebody pushed me."
"Who?" she asked.
I looked over, and the boy gave me a mean and threatening frown. I knew that if I told her he had done it, my later punishment would be worse than the crime already committed. I kept quiet.
"Who pushed you?" she asked again.
When I remained silent still, she shook her head in disgust.
"Honestly, Sarah, saying that you were pushed just because you don't want to take responsibility for your clumsiness. Go inside, sit at your desk, and think about this."
Such is the unjust life of elementary school for so many of us. From that day on, I sat by the door and waited for the alarm bell to ring throughout every recess break and lunch hour. I had no interest in playing with kids whose only use for me was a comedic and painful one- nobody wants to offer him or herself willingly as the butt of jokes for the teasing pleasure of others. So, instead of playing or talking with kids who I simply couldn't understand, I sat, alone, and prayed.
"God, I know you can hear me, and I thank you for being my friend even when nobody else will. I must not be very good, because I get made fun of so much. But still, God, I feel that you love me, and I'm so glad that you do! Please, help me be better. Help me love all the other kids, even though they're mean to me. In religion class, the teacher tells us that we should love our enemies, and when we are hit, we should turn the other cheek. God, help me love them more! Help me love unconditionally, as we're supposed to. Help my not judge them! The Sunday school teacher tells us not to judge... oh God, I judge them all the time. I think it's mean and bad for them to laugh at me for loving you. Help me stop judging. Other times, I wish they would be nicer. This is not unconditional..." I was inwardly tormented by the idea of sin.
I wondered if I was a sinner because my love came with a wish for others to love back. Often, I told them that God asks us to love one another, but they scoffed at me, and eventually, I had a number of nicknames that all basically equalled one thing: I was a religious fanatic and nobody but God would ever like me.
After a while, I realized all my God-directed thoughts were ramblings, and I didn't know whether or not even God would want to listen to my prayers, so I started to sit silently, recapturing the meditative states I had once enjoyed at home, in my earliest childhood life, before school had started.
One day, one of the teachers on supervision marched giddily towards me and said, "Get up! Go play with the other kids!"
I told her that I preferred to sit and pray.
"Honestly, Sarah," she said, in the exasperated tone adults put on when they're both frustrated and also caught in pretend disbelief, "what kind of a child would prefer to pray than to play? Get up! Go!"
She pointed to a group of girls who were skipping together in the grassy field, and wouldn't hear my protests. Reluctantly, I walked into a fit of teasing.
"Madame says I have to play with you," I told them.
"No! No! No! No!" they all sang in unison.
"Why don't you go play with God?" one girl taunted.
"Yeah!" another chimed in. "He's your only friend. Go play with God!"
My eyes filled with tears, and I wondered how it was that nobody else seemed to think it was a good thing, and not a bad, to be close to the Father in Heaven?
I looked back at the teacher who naively called to me, "See, Sarah? Much more fun in the company of your friends," and I pretended to smile back at her through my tears.
For a moment, I tried to skip, until the teacher had turned away. Then I sat down, right there, in the middle of the field, looked up into the sky, and asked, "Why did you send me here!?"
The Burning Questions Begin
Summer holidays were for me, as for most children, the happiest time of the year; a relief and a repose in which I could simply be myself unbothered by the teasing and tormenting. In the holiday break after second grade, I had a particularly rabid attack of teasing to overcome. At St. Mary's School, the students assembled at the end of each academic year for an awards ceremony. Trophies and prizes were handed out to the top athletes and scholars in each grade level, and for various levels of achievement. The last award to be given at the assembly was one removed from sports and classes; it was an award handed out based on religious merit and behavioral attitude alone: Christian Action Award. In each class, the boy and girl deemed by their teachers to display the most Christ-like temperament was given, in front of the assembly, the prize of a most beautiful two tone metal crucifix. In my class, I was the girl who had one.
After the ceremony, I approached my teacher, and told her that I didn't think I deserved the award. She asked me why not, and I said, simply, "I haven't had a chance to perform any Christian actions. I haven't helped anyone in need, or given to the poor, or comforted the sick..."
Madame bent down, hugged me, and said, tearfully, "Ma belle; tu est vraiment la meilleur choix; you're the top choice. What you've just said is a pure expression of humility."
I didn't think I was being humble, though. No. I was stating a simple fact. For the entire school year, I had sat and prayed throughout every recess break not because I thought myself to be saintly, but simply because the love of God that burned ever in my heart was not shared by my peers. I didn't think I deserved the award because I hadn't gone out of my way to help any of them, instead, I had remained out of their way, so as not to be bullied by them.
Of course, the winning of this award didn't raise me at all in their social esteem. It was one more black mark against me. One more tease to add to all the other taunts. Teacher's pet. Chubby. Religious. All true marks of a schoolyard martyr.
Oh, but summer had come! During summer holidays, I spent most days sitting in the backyard, visiting with the neighbor cats, and searching the ground for clear stones that I called crystals, and collected, pretending they had a mystical power unknown to the most. Sometimes my mom and I would go out for walks after dark, to gaze at the stars and discover previously unseen parts of the neighborhood... and some of the best nights were storm nights. Any time a thunderstorm came rolling in, we watched, enthralled, as if seeing a movie!
The summer after the second grade was a time I think of now as my last enjoyment of genuine innocence. That summer, my mom and I moved, for the second time in my life, from a rented house, to a house she had bought and owned. (Well, mortgaged.) A few short weeks before the beginning of the next school year, my first grade teacher called to congratulate us, and to offer a gift that my mom couldn't refuse (literally): a kitten. My mom couldn't refuse because, from the time I was a little girl, (well, littler girl) she had promised me that we could get a kitten as soon as we lived in a house of our own. We couldn't have one before that, of course, because most landlords don't allow pets. Now, my mom could have refused, theoretically, if my teacher had offered her the kitten, but, it happened differently. She spoke to me in French, offering my pick of the kittens recently delivered by her friend's cat, based on a story I had once read in her class that involved the mention of my mom's promise to let me have one as soon as we moved. (Ah- Madame must have had a memory as keen as my own...)
When the long anticipated day arrived, my mom surprised me: we chose from the four not one, but two, beautiful little kittens. A boy who we called Sneaky, and a girl who we called Snoops. It was instant love, after they took a day or two to acclimatize to their (and our) new home. Sneaky, especially, was practically inseparable from me, right from the beginning. More like a loyal puppy than cat, whom we hear are 'aloof' and sometimes sullen, he would follow me around the house, from room to room, all day long, and when night time came, he didn't just sleep on my bed, but with his tiny little head on the pillow next to mine.
When the first day of grade three came around, it was slightly more bearable for me to go to school than in previous years, because I knew that the love of those two precious little kittens awaited me at the end of every torturous day. And the days were torturous. Our French Language Arts teacher had a violent temper the likes of which many children's schoolyard horror stories sought to encapsulate. She was known to have been sent away on sick leave once for stapling a boy to the wall. (Of course, whenever this tale was recounted, it sounded to the shocked listener like a horrific reproduction of the crucifixion until it was made clear that she hung this child by stapling his clothing, and not his flesh. Even still...) She took a particularly harsh disliking to me since I had a tendency to fall behind on the grueling task she gave us, which was, to copy a tremendously long French story from the series of chalk boards, word by word, with a _______________ left every few words, in order for us to 'create' our own stories... I was a painfully slow handed scribe, so often lost track of the copying, and had bits of the story erased before I got to them. For this, she kept me indoors during recess and lunch break, as a punishment for falling behind.
Interestingly, enough, these extended lessons with the angriest woman in the school gave me much time to formulate my first true and well thought out thesis on enlightenment. Of course, I didn't then know the term 'enlightenment,' but instead, thought of, 'perfect peace.' I wondered why so many adults were permitted to inflict their frustrations, beliefs and inner frustration on children, and wondered if, perhaps, part of the reason we can't relearn to not think once we start thinking had something to do with the fact that we are always surrounded by people who won't let us simply rest? I watched her grow irritated by me when, throughout all of her red faced yelling, I smiled back at her unafraid. It seemed that the angrier she became, the less attached I was to the fact that I was kept inside for a punishment. I started watching her during class, too, when she snapped at the other students, and labeled some the French equivalent of 'smart ass,' and others 'lazy.' I could see that the other kids actually started to believe the insulting things she said about them, though usually she was wrong in her assessments, and made mental notes of all of it, thinking back to a long forgotten hamlet that sometimes came into my dreams at night... a field, with a circle of children learning to compose poetic verses, from adults who were as calm and untouched as a spring breeze. Her ruler slap on my desk would break these reveries, and I started to wonder, without knowing why I was wondering it, "What's happened to this world?"
My happiest moments were still those moments spent at church at with my cats. At church, I saw in the priest the kind of adult I thought other adults should learn to emulate. He moved slowly and gracefully at the alter; he spoke with measured words and expressed what I considered to be the highest truth: that to love God and live with kindness is the greatest way of life. And my cats... they showed me the kind of love that I didn't find existent in the world of people: unconditional love. They seemed to have a sixth sense around me, showing extra affection when I returned home from a bad day, especially Sneaky, who was always waiting for me by the door with a smile on his face (I kid you not) ready to greet me after my walk home from school.
Now, you may be wondering why I've said that the summer break leading up to this year was my last enjoyment of innocence. The reason is multifold, but basically, it was in the third grade that I started to actually question the world in which I lived. Prior to that year, I had enjoyed many visions and dreams of what can only be called Vedic scenery, and I had enjoyed them thoroughly. That year, though, I started to compare and contrast those inner visions with the world's outer reality, and the disparate quality of what passes for normal here was beyond evident.
My true initiation into a lifetime of breaking moulds came one weekend when my mom and I set out on a road trip to visit her brother, who had just moved to a very small town called Consort. An avid follower of the Canadian Food Guide, and a teacher whose elementary school health classes no doubt incorporated the Food Pyramid, my mom did her best to keep me away from all forms of junk food; my lunches were made with brown bread and an apple, not white bread and a fruit roll up, and our dinners always included foods from all four groups. It was only on rare occasions- sometimes after my skating lessons or swimming, and sometimes while on a long country drive- that she would indulge in fast food. On this particular drive to Consort, we had a rare lunchtime treat: a burger and fries from a drive through.
My mom had considered pulling over if we found a picnic spot, but in this barren Alberta stretch of farmers fields, there was no apparent resting place to be seen. As we drove, though, we came across an unexpected road block: a fence seemed to have come open in a grazing field, and cows with their young were wandering all over the narrow road. She honked the horn, but still, these slow moving wanderers stood, chewing their cud, and idly lazing on the desolate highway.
"Well," she said, turning off the ignition, "shall we eat?"
I unpacked the brown bag, and we unwrapped our lunch. As I started to bite, chew, and swallow, my eyes drifted across the scene laid out before me. Cows. In every direction- out the windshield, through my window, through the driver side window, out the back and in the mirrors. They were everywhere. Some lying down in the hot summer sun; others meandering in the shade of some tall grass. One, in the field directly across from my window, a young calf, was lying on his side. Immediately, at the site of his relaxed pose, I thought of Sneaky. This young calf was lounging in the field in a position identical to the way my kitten relaxed on my bed.
Suddenly, as I chewed, I didn't want to swallow.
That calf stood, as if on cue, and took a moment to steady himself on his young little legs. Then he walked, tilting and swaying, out of the field, and up the semi steep embankment of the road. He stopped walking only when his doe eyed face was right next to my window. From the side of his innocent prey animal head, with one eye, he looked at me.
"Mom," I said, slowly and uneasily, "when a farmer makes an animal into meat..."
"Yes?"
"... does he wait until it dies of natural causes first, or does he kill it?"
For a very brief moment my mom hesitated. She didn't need to have awakened psychic powers to know where that question was headed.
"He kills it." She said it, I'm sure, because she couldn't let herself blatantly lie, or else she ran the risk of my sure future wrath.
A silent tear rolled down my cheek as I continued to watch the doomed creature who stood, on feeble legs, within arms reach of my window.
It was the most terrible moment of my life till then.
I wondered helplessly what I could do! Looking out at the span of cows that filled the landscape from the safety of my mom's car was like sitting in a luxury yacht, surveying the wreckage of a sunk ship, unable to pull any of the drowning passengers from the water. I knew that each and every one of those cows would be killed, and that there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I looked down at my now guilty lunch, and wrapped the burger once again in it's paper.
"I'm never eating meat again."
I didn't say it angrily, or triumphantly. I said it quietly, filled with shame over the fact that I had never understood the horrific nature of the meat industry before.
How could I have been born and raised in a world where people kill and eat animals? I wondered, grimly. Is it possible that anywhere in existence, life just happens without killing and harming anyone?
Briefly, my mom tried to convince me that the consumption of meat was mandatory for human health, and insisted that I finish my food, but eventually, due to my persistent refusal, she let it go. Finally, a few big trucks came barreling down the road towards us, blasting their pull horns, and the cows walked away, back to their field... back to their ill fated waiting game of grazing, which had only one possible ending: slaughter.
For the rest of the car ride, we rode in silence. My half-eaten lunch filled the car with an odour I hadn't known prior to that day: the stench of death and guilt. Any other day of my life up to that moment, it would have appetizing to me, and yet now, the burger smelled only like a cooked body of a poor cow. My tears continued to streak down my face as I thought back to all the meat I had eaten in all my years of life... they were't just tears of sadness for the lost lives of so many farmed animals, but also, tears of deep disillusionment. Of course, everyone growing up on Earth in the twentieth century could plainly see that all was not right in the world: the television was continuously blaring news stories about war, poverty, murder, homelessness, riots, strikes, and more, but somehow, in my youthful naiveté, all of these headlines had swirled past me like ugly streamers in the airwaves. The realization of the truth about meat, though, struck such a deep inner chord that it was no longer possible for me to think of the world as a place in which peace could be hoped for... or happiness aspired to... or even basic decency experienced. I thought of all the people whom I loved, and all the people who seemed to be good and decent towards one another, and then I thought of all the animals who were killed to feed all of those people. Had a been a child prone to queasiness, I would surely have felt sick to my stomach. Instead, on my mom drove in awkward silence, and down my tears poured in unending succession.
When we arrived at my uncle's house for the visit, he announced that he had prepared a barbecue dinner; hand formed beef patties, buns, and all the needed toppings. I started to cry once again, and my mom said to him, over my head, as if I wasn't there, "Sarah wants to be a vegetarian now..."
"That's funny," my uncle answered. "k.d. lang used to live a few blocks that way..."
"Why is that funny?" I asked.
"She's one of Canada's most famous vegetarians," he answered, perhaps very briefly proud to be living in Consort, Alberta.
My eyes widened, and I said a small prayer in my heart.
Thank you, God, for letting me know there are others.
***
At seven years old, it's hard to make a lifestyle choice and strictly follow through with it. Of course, I announced my decision never to consume flesh again to my mother, and made it very clear that I meant it very seriously. But, in typical motherly fashion, she chose to fight- rather than embrace- my 'animal rights phase.' (The last thing I hope to do by writing this short account of my life is paint my mother as a bad guy, because she has been a major asset to my life, and her encouragement and support for my mission is priceless, but, in these formative years, we certainly didn't see eye to eye.) As an elementary school teacher trained to preach the government food guides (industry endorsed and filled with propagandized 'facts,' of course) she was unwilling and unable to consider the possibility that a child could grow healthily on a diet that excluded meat, so, she forbade my vegetarianism.
As much as my mother was strict, I was determined. At school, I ate the fruit, granola bar, and carrot sticks that she packed in my lunch, but threw away the meat and cheese sandwich. At dinner time, I spooned tomato sauce onto my pasta carefully sifting out the chunks of ground beef. My daily meals became a practice in careful avoidance, and even more careful hiding of the avoidance. Once or twice, my mom caught me sneaking meat off my plate and back into a pot or a pan, and when she did, she erupted in anger, rehashing the lectures about health sometimes, or letting me know how hard she works to provide the food others. (Especially when she learned that I wasn't eating my sandwiches.)
At school, my new diet wasn't any more embraced than it was at home.
TO BE CONTINUED
Memories that stretch to birth and beyond: the early years...
I was born, not unlike anyone else, in the very ordinary maternity ward of a modern Canadian hospital- St. Michael’s, in Lethbridge, Alberta- on a cold December morning in 1984. Right from birth, I was a devoted Catholic girl. Having entered this world so close to Christmastime in a Roman Catholic family, my very first experiences of life revolved around family dinners with the lighting of a customary advent wreath; hymns sung to the newborn Lord around my grandma’s piano, and the joyful festivities of large family gatherings to honor the spirit of Christ through gift giving and feasting. It was a wondrous time to come into embodiment, for sure, and my memories of those first few days of life are filled with colourful lights, glorious sounds, and joyous feelings... These first memories are all the more enjoyable for me to recollect because they are uncontaminated memories; languageless, reliant not on linguistic descriptions of happenings, but on pure direct perceptions. Yes, you read that correctly- I can remember my first few days of life. One of the gifts the great Almighty has given me is the gift of a nearly spotless memory, which traces back to the very moment I was born, and beyond- to realms of space and time indescribable and indefinable by this worldly mind through which I am now writing to you.
(Of course, when I say that God has gifted me with this powerful memory, some of you, who have read the biographies of Hindu and Buddhist mystics, will be thinking, "But Sudevi! This isn't a gift from God- a heightened memory tracing back to birth is something many masters and yogis have. It's there on account of your punya, the spiritual merit you've built up through practice and austerities in previous lifetimes." And to that I would reply, "Yes, you're absolutely right. It is God's gift, indeed.")
Even without a verbal or conceptual understanding of who God was or what religion is, I was a decidedly religious little baby, who fully enjoyed every moment of the celebrations- from Christmas, to Easter, to the 'Ordinary Times,' my heart always basked in joy at church, and around my religiously inspired grandparents, I too, felt a passion for the Lord.
As I grew older and became a speaking and thinking child, my goals in life were intrinsically connected to two very important aspects of living: first, religion and the glorification of God; and second, personal perception, clarity, and and a quest to return to the experiential state of pure being without the continuous distraction of verbalized thoughts. As much as I enjoyed words and their magical ability to render comprehensible to another the innermost feelings, I equally yearned to be able to just 'be' once again, as I had been when freshly born, so that I might be able to experience the richness of sight, sound and touch undisturbed by the incessant narration of the mental voice.
Whenever I had a chance question my elders, I would ask them about God, and Jesus, and Mary and the angels... and once their answers had satiated my religious curiosity, I would request guidance and instruction to return to the thoughtless state, “How do you stop thinking at times when you don’t want to think?” Naively, I assumed there must be a common knowledge way to enter into the no mind state, and that, like everything else in life, it needs only to be learned before it can be practiced... like eating with chop sticks, or saying the rosary. I expected my mom, or teacher, or daycare leader to laugh at happily at my question, and give some practical advice. Maybe, they would have said something like, "Oh, dear Sarah- don't you already know? Simply, sit like this, put your hands like that, now focus on your breathing..." But alas, this was a small Christian city in the part of Canada known as 'The Bible Belt,' where, in the eighties and early nineties, scant few would have known the difference between a Vedic meditation technique and a diet fad...
Needless to say, my passions were deemed quite peculiar by those to whom I spoke, especially kids at preschool who didn't come from Catholic families, and babysitters who watched over me on nights when my mom went out. (One, in particular, truly hurt my little heart badly when she laughed out loud at me for praying 'Bless Us Oh Lord' before we ate a snack, and once again, when she scoffed mockingly at my bedtime prayer for the safety, health and happiness of everyone I knew.) Perhaps even more misunderstood than my strong love of God was my odd and continuous request for a technique by which to silence the inner voice. This question was met with incredulity by those to whom I enquired who, with their western mentalities, believed that once language has become known to a person, that person is sentenced (sentenced... very apt terminology) to a life confined by wordly descriptions. This created in me a double edged sword of sorrow: the pain of an indescribable urge to spend every moment for God without the full support of everyone around me, and an equally strong urge to learn how to experience life from the pure perspective of a baby once again, without an adequate understanding of how to rid my mind of the incessant parade of words that marched bothersomely along, whether I wanted to think them or not.
Only when I sat by myself in silent prayerful contemplation was I able to enter into a state of inner balance, combining my love of God, and my enjoyment of inner peace. My mom recalls many a time when she came to find me, even in my youngest of years, sitting cross legged with my back totally straight, just silently being. (Had she been a Hindu or a Buddhist mother and not a Catholic one, no doubt, she would have recognized that her toddler was sitting in a state of meditative awareness.)
At four, I entered into kindergarten at a French Catholic elementary school called St. Mary’s, and was immediately struck- as many other ‘only children’ must surely be struck when they encounter large groups of other kids for the first time- by the vast differences between myself and my peers. Some kids were quarrelsome, others shy, and others still were insufferable in their tantrums, teasing and bullying one another, fighting and tormenting the teachers...
Myself, as you probably already gathered, I was a quiet child, and soon to be labeled a class outcast because, no matter which games the other children wanted to play or what they wanted to talk about, the only topics that interested me were decidedly religious and consciousness based in nature. Instead of dressing up barbies, I preferred to draw geometric patterns... instead of playing in groups, I preferred to sit in silence or pray... and instead of complaining bitterly about church, (“My mommy says I can’t watch cartoons on Saturday if I don’t go to church on Sunday. It’s not fair!”) I yearned to spend my every moment there, admiring the pools of multicolored light that danced across the aisle from the stained glass windows above; listening to the choir sing Glory and Praise; hiding my tears as I contemplated the sorrow of Mary, whose sculpture sat in pure maternal agony, cradling the lifeless body of her crucified son Jesus, next to the pew where my mom and I sat to attend mass every week. Some nights, as I tossed and turned in bed waiting to fall asleep, I would imagine myself alone in the church building, and take comfort in knowing that although God’s house was about 30 city blocks away from my own, under the protective folds of my bed sheets and beneath the cross that hung over my head, I could be there with Him still, every night, in spirit.
It wasn’t just the other kids at school who noticed my quiet, introspective constant love of God; my family, too, faced it every day of my young life. Once, at the Sunday dinner table, surrounded by my grandparents, mother, aunts and uncles, I proudly declared, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a priest!”
It was the Sunday following our first vocational discussion at school, in which our teacher asked us each to think carefully about what we want to be when we grow up, so that we could all describe our future dreams in the next show and tell. To my utter sadness, though, my ‘calling’ to the priesthood was quickly answered by muffled laughter on behalf of my aunts and uncles, and an apologetic talk from my mother, who explained to me that girls cannot grow up to join the priesthood. I was devastated, wondering why I had been born as a girl if I had such a burning passion to talk about God; I considered it deeply unfair that the only job out there that would allow me to do what I most wished to do was not an option for me. It embarrasses me, still, to think back to my ardent prayers that night, when I asked God over and over again to let me wake up the next morning as a boy...
After a few weeks of quizzical debates with my mom, trying, failingly, to get to the core reason why girls couldn’t enter the seminary, I finally asked, “If a girl can’t be a priest, then what can a girl be if she wants to serve God every day?"
After a few moments though, a smile broke out across her face, and my mom said, "A nun!"
"Oh!" I exclaimed in excitement and curiosity, "What do nuns do?”
Although my school was a Catholic one, and my family attended mass on a weekly basis, our community had a sad lack of visible nuns. The convent was connected to a parish removed from our own, and teaching jobs were reserved for the laity with university degrees. (No ruler slaps by habit-clad cliche's for us...)
She answered my question about female monastics very beautifully; my dear mother told me that nuns are women who love God so much that they decide not to marry a man and start a small family, but instead, dedicate their lives to God as His own wives, and in so doing, they take the entire world as their family.
God's wife! Mother of the world! Had I but known such a calling was possible earlier, it would have rendered needless my disappointment at the gender exclusivity of the patriarchal priesthood.
“That's it, then! When I grow up, I'll be a nun!” I made this triumphant announcement, again, at my grandparents house after church on a Sunday, surrounded my my proud Catholic grandfather, who beamed at me from behind his newspaper, and my aunts and uncles who snickered as much as they had when I had declared my plans to be a priest. I pretended not to notice the hushed laughter, and repeated my declaration once more in my mind to reassure myself, "I will be a nun.”
That afternoon, like I did on many of my childhood Sundays, I skipped off after brunch to play the piano. In the living room, my grandma had a beautiful old German upright that I often spent hours with, my gaze turned inward, thoughts completely dissolved in musical bliss, while harmonies and tunes came streaming through me, made into sound by the miracle of the hidden strings tapped by the strike of the black and white keys... I wasn't formally trained (or even informally trained, for that matter) but somehow, whenever I sat on the folded wooden bench, took a deep breath, and placed my little hands on the keyboard, music simply happened. I didn't think of myself as someone who could 'play the piano,' but rather, as someone through whom the piano was played. Whenever anyone asked how I did it, I told them that I didn't know- it was natural, like breathing. God had made me make music, and so, the music was made.
***
One Sunday after church, my aunt- who still lived with my grandparents- invited me to clean her bedroom. While that may sound like a grievous chore, her room was already spotlessly clean, and really, I enjoyed this cleaning- spritzing the mirror with blue fluid, then wiping the smooth glassy surface with a cloth... somehow, whenever I washed her mirror, memories of a forgotten place eased hazily into my mind, filling me with curious visionary wonder. The scenes that unfolded, one after another, reminded me of the beauty of fiery lamps swung gracefully to the ringing of bells and beating of drums, while visitors knelt and bowed... the fragrant aroma of thick spicy incense... and the presence of God emanating from from my heart towards all who looked upon me. Lost in the wonder of these visions, I didn't bother trying to figure out what they meant, or where they came from. In my childhood innocence, I wasn't concerned about their calculable reality as memories, or as truthful happenings. No- I just enjoyed them for what they were.
"You're a brat," my aunt said, breaking my mystic reverie.
"What?" I asked her, dumbfounded.
"You heard me," she said, lazily from her bed. "I said, you are a brat."
It was like being struck by a sudden unfathomable illness. I dropped the cloth and ran upstairs in shame, ignoring my grandmother when I passed her in the kitchen, and retreated into a contemplative aloneness on an oversized living room chair. I wondered to myself how it was possible that I had lived four years of my life without ever realizing that I was a brat; I wondered why so many people were nice to me in spite of my unfortunate less than ideal state. My eyes filled with tears, and I silently apologized to God for being a brat.
After about half an hour of silent weeping, my grandfather came looking for me. Usually, on Sundays, I would have been playing the piano, or drawing at the kitchen table, or asking him to go for a walk to the lake or play catch with me outside. When so much time had passed quietly by, he rightly guessed that all was not right.
"My dear, what's the matter?" He asked, when he saw my shameful face.
"Grandad," I said in a teeny, tiny voice, "I just found out that I'm a..."
"Yes?" he asked, when I was too scared to say it.
"a... brat." I said it with grave and shameful finality.
He smiled a little bit, as if trying not to laugh at me, and asked for more information.
"Auntie just told me," was my simple answer.
Without another word, he stomped downstairs, and I heard his fists pound on my aunt's closed door.
"What?" she called.
"You told Sarah that she's a brat, and now she's upstairs crying!" he yelled.
"What?" she asked.
"She's crying in the living room! How could you tell her something like that... didn't you know she would believe you?"
Then their voices became muffled, and I though I strained to hear them through one of the furnace grates, it was not possible. What my grandad had said left me in utter shock and confusion; what did he mean when he told her that I had believed her? Why wouldn't I? People didn't say things unless what they said was true, did they? Oh... unless... she had lied!
Prior to that day, the very idea of speaking an untruth was unfathomable to me. I had never lied, nor known anyone else to do it. Suddenly, my crying stopped, and a deeper feeling of unsettlement came over me: I realized that people I know well- people who are in my very family!- were capable of lying! In Sunday School, we were taught that to lie is to directly disobey one of the rules God has given us. My prayer then shifted; while before, I was praying for God to forgive me for being a brat, now, I prayed for God to help my aunt stop lying!
When my grandad came back to check on my once again, and to offer an apology on my aunt's behalf, I was already feeling much better. Even still, he offered me a special treat to cheer me up.
"How about we visit the secret drawer?" he asked.
"Really?!"
Such an invitation filled me with excitement beyond belief! The secret drawer was a locked drawer at the top of his dresser, which he had filled with all kinds of goodies to impress a little girl like myself. Art supplies, costume jewellery, toys, books... as the director of curriculum in the Catholic school board, he had access to many wondrous things sold in teacher's conventions, and early childhood education seminars. These, he stockpiled, and whenever he caught me in an act of goodness, my reward was a trip to the secret drawer, where I would be lifted high above the bed, and allowed to choose one precious item.
"But I didn't do anything," I enquired.
"No, dear. But- you don't have to 'do something' for me to remind you that you're a good girl."
My little eyes teared up yet again. At the time, I didn't know why, but now, after years of living in this cruel world, which often calls the good by names much worse than 'brat,' I know they were tears of bittersweet happiness; they were joyful tears of vindication after a false accusation.
When my grandad held me up to look into the secret drawer, all other emotion was quickly replaced with a feeling of religious awe and wonder. My eyes met with a most welcome sight: there, strewn casually atop the heap of books and toys and crayons and colorful things, was a blue rosary. For a moment, I just looked at it, amazed by the sight. I knew instantly what it was, since I had seen similar strands draped over the prayerful and outstretched hands of Mary in many of her statues. I had asked my mom about the necklaces, and she had explained to me that the beads encircling a cross were not jewelry, but instead, a hand-held system on which to keep count of prayers; she told me each bead represents one prayer. While holding one of the beads, the prayer is recited, then that bead is slipped back- like on an abacus- and the next bead is held, while another prayer is said, until the end loop is reached. I asked her why Mary always held one of these prayer strands, and she told me that these prayer strands, called the rosary, were one of Mary's most cherished possessions.
How I had wished to have one of my own, so that I, too, could pray like the Mother of Christ! For some reason, though, I had never thought to ask; it didn't even cross my mind that such a sacred and precious thing could be had by just anyone! Like the holy book and the chalice... like the robes of the priest or the stations of the cross that adorn church columns, I had naively assumed rosaries were to be kept in the house of God, or else owned only by those of great religious merit- like priests, and saints, and the people who run the church.
Slowly, with baited breath, I reached into the drawer, and took delicate hold of the blue beads.
"Grandad," I said, quietly, "may I choose this rosary?" I asked.
He was quiet, and finally said, "Sarah- you can choose anything you want."
"This!" I exclaimed enthusiastically, "Grandad! I've always wanted one."
"Are you sure about that? Here, then. Take the rosary, and also, choose something else. There are sticker books, and packs of felt pens, and..."
"No," I interrupted, as he pointed out toys and other fun things, "there's nothing else that I want."
That day marked a turning point in my young life: for one thing, I understood for the first time that it was possible for people to blatantly say something that they knew fully not to be true. 'Lying' was no longer just a concept taught as being wrong by the teachers; it was an actual offense committed casually by people, for no good reason at all, and it hurt. I also learned something, by choosing the rosary from the secret drawer, which stuck with me always: I discovered that my intense religious fervor was not common. As an only child (and also, an only grandchild) I was rarely exposed to other children. The only time I saw them, really, was at church- in the dayhome I attended, all were either so much younger or older than me, that we really didn't talk, and at ballet lessons, we were too bust plieting and curtseying, there was no time to share interests. So, when I heard my grandad announce to the family that "Sarah chose a rosary instead of a toy!" and that I "didn't even want to look at anything else!" and when they responded with comments like, "Yeah- she's funny like that," and "Imagine, so prayerful at four," I realized, for the first time, that not everyone lives for God.
"One day," I thought to myself, gingerly fingering the beads of the rosary, while listening in on the grownups conversation about me from the other room, "I'll share my love for God with the whole world."
School Days
At the age of four, I entered kindergarten at St. Mary's, a Catholic French immersion elementary school. As an only child, it can be understood that my expectations of the other children was far from the reality I soon discovered in the classroom and on the playground. Of course, I didn't know that I had any expectations, until they were all dashed.
On our first day, by way of introduction to our classmates, our teacher asked us each to say a few words about ourselves- what do we like to do best? What do we hope to learn in school? Which words would we be happy to discover in French?
The others spoke about their favorite toys and games; they parroted each other on school, stating an interest in sports and play time; they asked for dirty words like poop and pee to be translated in perpetual love of a cheap laugh from the others. When it was my turn to speak, though, things didn't go well at all.
"Et Sarah," the teacher addressed me in French, "c'est a toi."
"My favorite thing to do," I said, slowly, a little bit nervous to be speaking in front of so many kids, "is... to pray at church, until I feel God is really there. I know He's there all the time, but I don't really feel Him unless I'm praying. Sometimes, when it's time to go down to Sunday School, I wish I could just stay in the pew with my family; I don't like coloring pictures, or playing games, as much as I like to silently talk to God, and Jesus, and Mary, and the angels. And I love looking at the stained glass windows... they're like shiny jewels in the sunlight..."
I didn't know why they were all laughing; I wasn't telling any jokes.
Blushing, I continued, quickly changing the subject, "I look forward to reading and writing, I'd like to learn the French words for things that don't exist in English."
This was the phrase that caught my teacher by surprise. She looked up for the first time since I had started talking, and said, cheerfully, "Bien, Sarah, tres bien. Very Good. But- what do you mean when you say, you'd like to know the French words for things that don't exist in English?"
All my life, any time I had spoken about the inner world experiences brought about through lone meditation, the adults to whom I spoke looked at me as if I was an alien. Somehow, they couldn't fathom what the lights on the insides of my eyelids were, or what I meant when I said I wanted to learn how to stop thinking all the time, not just while sitting with my back straight, focusing on my breath. When my mom had asked me whether I wanted to go to school in English, or if I would prefer to learn French, I immediately said, "French!" because I had hoped that a new language would also have a new lexicon of understandings.
I was sadly mistaken.
"Madame, I mean- I want to know the words for things like the feeling of drinking water while praying, and suddenly understanding that everything is perfect."
The kids laughed again, and she raised her eyebrows.
"Sarah, there is no word for this nonsense in the French language. Next- la prochaine- Melanie. Tell your classmates a little bit about yours..."
Her abrupt dismissal of my quest to rectify the linguistic lack of terms to express states of prayerful consciousness was the first of many heartbreaks I was to face in the next few years, but still, my desire to share the unexplainable was strong.
When I got home that day, I cried and cried, and told my mom that nobody understands me.
"Oh, Sweetheart," she said, "it was only your first day. Things will get better."
Things got worse. From the beginning, I was the laughingstock of the class; the one child most teased and tormented by all the other children. I retreated further into myself, and my fervent prayers to God intensified.
Towards the end of the school year, my intense wish to be properly understood reached it's zenith.
"Mom," I announced one evening after dinner, "I decided to make my own language."
She asked me what I had in mind, and I explained to her, "I've tried to tell people about myself in English, and in French, and it doesn't work. The world needs a language with words that explain things these other languages don't have."
We spent the whole evening with a pen and a piece of paper, and I asked her to scribe down for me the various definitions of the 'new words' that I spoke, as if in tongues.
I would draw a little symbol, then tell her, "Write down beside this one, 'feeling light like floating after praying quietly,' and by that one, 'the colorful lights inside the eyelids that can only be seen after keeping eyes closed for a few minutes.'"
Like that, hours went by, until I was satisfied that enough of the subtle physical and spiritual states had been verbally and symbolically classified.
The next day, I didn't bother to tell any of the kids at school about this new language, but decided to share it with the lady in charge of my after school home daycare program.
She humored my entire presentation, but laughed out loud when I went outside, assuming I couldn't hear her.
"That girl is crazy, I tell you," she said to the director of daycares, who was visiting for the day. "Seriously. At five, she thinks she can make a language? Of all things..."
When I got home and reported the incident to my mom, she consoled me, and said, "Dear daughter, you're not crazy. Making this language is a fun game for you. I'll still play, if you like."
That summed it up. Even my own mother didn't believe it was possible for me to create new terms of spiritual understanding. For over a week, I was in depression, grimly accepting the sad fact that I might never be able to truly articulate the pleasures of my young life.
(Of course, now, after having studied the Vedic truths in India, I know that the Sanskrit language is filled with a more sacred vernacular than my childhood self could ever have dreamed of! The sensation of drinking water while yogically immersed in deep prayer, for example, is the flow of 'amrita,' divine nectar. The colorful lights that dance across the inner space eyelid screen indicate the preliminary levels of the opening of the 'ajna chakra,' or third eye. And to reach a state of thoughtlessness after sitting in silent self contemplation is to go into 'satori.' Just as a Hindu or Buddhist parent would have seen my early straight-spined sittings as meditations and not lazy obscurities, a Vedic parent would have recognized my linguistic pursuits as a calling to learn Sanskrit, and not as an eccentric game of make believe language.)
When kindergarten came to an end and the first grade started, I hoped, throughout the two beautiful months of summertime, the new beginning would afford me the opportunity to actually make friends. I dreamed other kids as passionate about God and the inner world would somehow appear at the school, or that my kindergarten classmates would have matured over the holiday break, ready to share my joys of subtlety.
Oh... innocence.
On the first day of the first grade, during play break, while climbing in the playground, one of the boys pushed me off the jungle gym, and I fell hard at the bottom of the pole.
"Move it, or I'll jump on you," he shouted from above.
I couldn't move, because I was in shock from the hard landing.
"Move!" He yelled it again, then slid down the pole fast and landed with his feet crashing to my head.
I fell over, then came to as a few of the other kids lifted me up.
"Sarah," one girl asked, "why didn't you move?"
"I couldn't," I said simply.
"Then you should have told him not to slide down."
She said it with an air of authority, and I didn't have any interest in correcting her by stating that I wasn't able to speak since the fall had winded me.
When we got to the teacher, she said, "Madame, Sarah fell down the pole."
Our teacher looked me up and down, then said, "Be more careful next time," and walked away.
"But Madame," I called after her in my own defense, "I was being careful. Somebody pushed me."
"Who?" she asked.
I looked over, and the boy gave me a mean and threatening frown. I knew that if I told her he had done it, my later punishment would be worse than the crime already committed. I kept quiet.
"Who pushed you?" she asked again.
When I remained silent still, she shook her head in disgust.
"Honestly, Sarah, saying that you were pushed just because you don't want to take responsibility for your clumsiness. Go inside, sit at your desk, and think about this."
Such is the unjust life of elementary school for so many of us. From that day on, I sat by the door and waited for the alarm bell to ring throughout every recess break and lunch hour. I had no interest in playing with kids whose only use for me was a comedic and painful one- nobody wants to offer him or herself willingly as the butt of jokes for the teasing pleasure of others. So, instead of playing or talking with kids who I simply couldn't understand, I sat, alone, and prayed.
"God, I know you can hear me, and I thank you for being my friend even when nobody else will. I must not be very good, because I get made fun of so much. But still, God, I feel that you love me, and I'm so glad that you do! Please, help me be better. Help me love all the other kids, even though they're mean to me. In religion class, the teacher tells us that we should love our enemies, and when we are hit, we should turn the other cheek. God, help me love them more! Help me love unconditionally, as we're supposed to. Help my not judge them! The Sunday school teacher tells us not to judge... oh God, I judge them all the time. I think it's mean and bad for them to laugh at me for loving you. Help me stop judging. Other times, I wish they would be nicer. This is not unconditional..." I was inwardly tormented by the idea of sin.
I wondered if I was a sinner because my love came with a wish for others to love back. Often, I told them that God asks us to love one another, but they scoffed at me, and eventually, I had a number of nicknames that all basically equalled one thing: I was a religious fanatic and nobody but God would ever like me.
After a while, I realized all my God-directed thoughts were ramblings, and I didn't know whether or not even God would want to listen to my prayers, so I started to sit silently, recapturing the meditative states I had once enjoyed at home, in my earliest childhood life, before school had started.
One day, one of the teachers on supervision marched giddily towards me and said, "Get up! Go play with the other kids!"
I told her that I preferred to sit and pray.
"Honestly, Sarah," she said, in the exasperated tone adults put on when they're both frustrated and also caught in pretend disbelief, "what kind of a child would prefer to pray than to play? Get up! Go!"
She pointed to a group of girls who were skipping together in the grassy field, and wouldn't hear my protests. Reluctantly, I walked into a fit of teasing.
"Madame says I have to play with you," I told them.
"No! No! No! No!" they all sang in unison.
"Why don't you go play with God?" one girl taunted.
"Yeah!" another chimed in. "He's your only friend. Go play with God!"
My eyes filled with tears, and I wondered how it was that nobody else seemed to think it was a good thing, and not a bad, to be close to the Father in Heaven?
I looked back at the teacher who naively called to me, "See, Sarah? Much more fun in the company of your friends," and I pretended to smile back at her through my tears.
For a moment, I tried to skip, until the teacher had turned away. Then I sat down, right there, in the middle of the field, looked up into the sky, and asked, "Why did you send me here!?"
The Burning Questions Begin
Summer holidays were for me, as for most children, the happiest time of the year; a relief and a repose in which I could simply be myself unbothered by the teasing and tormenting. In the holiday break after second grade, I had a particularly rabid attack of teasing to overcome. At St. Mary's School, the students assembled at the end of each academic year for an awards ceremony. Trophies and prizes were handed out to the top athletes and scholars in each grade level, and for various levels of achievement. The last award to be given at the assembly was one removed from sports and classes; it was an award handed out based on religious merit and behavioral attitude alone: Christian Action Award. In each class, the boy and girl deemed by their teachers to display the most Christ-like temperament was given, in front of the assembly, the prize of a most beautiful two tone metal crucifix. In my class, I was the girl who had one.
After the ceremony, I approached my teacher, and told her that I didn't think I deserved the award. She asked me why not, and I said, simply, "I haven't had a chance to perform any Christian actions. I haven't helped anyone in need, or given to the poor, or comforted the sick..."
Madame bent down, hugged me, and said, tearfully, "Ma belle; tu est vraiment la meilleur choix; you're the top choice. What you've just said is a pure expression of humility."
I didn't think I was being humble, though. No. I was stating a simple fact. For the entire school year, I had sat and prayed throughout every recess break not because I thought myself to be saintly, but simply because the love of God that burned ever in my heart was not shared by my peers. I didn't think I deserved the award because I hadn't gone out of my way to help any of them, instead, I had remained out of their way, so as not to be bullied by them.
Of course, the winning of this award didn't raise me at all in their social esteem. It was one more black mark against me. One more tease to add to all the other taunts. Teacher's pet. Chubby. Religious. All true marks of a schoolyard martyr.
Oh, but summer had come! During summer holidays, I spent most days sitting in the backyard, visiting with the neighbor cats, and searching the ground for clear stones that I called crystals, and collected, pretending they had a mystical power unknown to the most. Sometimes my mom and I would go out for walks after dark, to gaze at the stars and discover previously unseen parts of the neighborhood... and some of the best nights were storm nights. Any time a thunderstorm came rolling in, we watched, enthralled, as if seeing a movie!
The summer after the second grade was a time I think of now as my last enjoyment of genuine innocence. That summer, my mom and I moved, for the second time in my life, from a rented house, to a house she had bought and owned. (Well, mortgaged.) A few short weeks before the beginning of the next school year, my first grade teacher called to congratulate us, and to offer a gift that my mom couldn't refuse (literally): a kitten. My mom couldn't refuse because, from the time I was a little girl, (well, littler girl) she had promised me that we could get a kitten as soon as we lived in a house of our own. We couldn't have one before that, of course, because most landlords don't allow pets. Now, my mom could have refused, theoretically, if my teacher had offered her the kitten, but, it happened differently. She spoke to me in French, offering my pick of the kittens recently delivered by her friend's cat, based on a story I had once read in her class that involved the mention of my mom's promise to let me have one as soon as we moved. (Ah- Madame must have had a memory as keen as my own...)
When the long anticipated day arrived, my mom surprised me: we chose from the four not one, but two, beautiful little kittens. A boy who we called Sneaky, and a girl who we called Snoops. It was instant love, after they took a day or two to acclimatize to their (and our) new home. Sneaky, especially, was practically inseparable from me, right from the beginning. More like a loyal puppy than cat, whom we hear are 'aloof' and sometimes sullen, he would follow me around the house, from room to room, all day long, and when night time came, he didn't just sleep on my bed, but with his tiny little head on the pillow next to mine.
When the first day of grade three came around, it was slightly more bearable for me to go to school than in previous years, because I knew that the love of those two precious little kittens awaited me at the end of every torturous day. And the days were torturous. Our French Language Arts teacher had a violent temper the likes of which many children's schoolyard horror stories sought to encapsulate. She was known to have been sent away on sick leave once for stapling a boy to the wall. (Of course, whenever this tale was recounted, it sounded to the shocked listener like a horrific reproduction of the crucifixion until it was made clear that she hung this child by stapling his clothing, and not his flesh. Even still...) She took a particularly harsh disliking to me since I had a tendency to fall behind on the grueling task she gave us, which was, to copy a tremendously long French story from the series of chalk boards, word by word, with a _______________ left every few words, in order for us to 'create' our own stories... I was a painfully slow handed scribe, so often lost track of the copying, and had bits of the story erased before I got to them. For this, she kept me indoors during recess and lunch break, as a punishment for falling behind.
Interestingly, enough, these extended lessons with the angriest woman in the school gave me much time to formulate my first true and well thought out thesis on enlightenment. Of course, I didn't then know the term 'enlightenment,' but instead, thought of, 'perfect peace.' I wondered why so many adults were permitted to inflict their frustrations, beliefs and inner frustration on children, and wondered if, perhaps, part of the reason we can't relearn to not think once we start thinking had something to do with the fact that we are always surrounded by people who won't let us simply rest? I watched her grow irritated by me when, throughout all of her red faced yelling, I smiled back at her unafraid. It seemed that the angrier she became, the less attached I was to the fact that I was kept inside for a punishment. I started watching her during class, too, when she snapped at the other students, and labeled some the French equivalent of 'smart ass,' and others 'lazy.' I could see that the other kids actually started to believe the insulting things she said about them, though usually she was wrong in her assessments, and made mental notes of all of it, thinking back to a long forgotten hamlet that sometimes came into my dreams at night... a field, with a circle of children learning to compose poetic verses, from adults who were as calm and untouched as a spring breeze. Her ruler slap on my desk would break these reveries, and I started to wonder, without knowing why I was wondering it, "What's happened to this world?"
My happiest moments were still those moments spent at church at with my cats. At church, I saw in the priest the kind of adult I thought other adults should learn to emulate. He moved slowly and gracefully at the alter; he spoke with measured words and expressed what I considered to be the highest truth: that to love God and live with kindness is the greatest way of life. And my cats... they showed me the kind of love that I didn't find existent in the world of people: unconditional love. They seemed to have a sixth sense around me, showing extra affection when I returned home from a bad day, especially Sneaky, who was always waiting for me by the door with a smile on his face (I kid you not) ready to greet me after my walk home from school.
Now, you may be wondering why I've said that the summer break leading up to this year was my last enjoyment of innocence. The reason is multifold, but basically, it was in the third grade that I started to actually question the world in which I lived. Prior to that year, I had enjoyed many visions and dreams of what can only be called Vedic scenery, and I had enjoyed them thoroughly. That year, though, I started to compare and contrast those inner visions with the world's outer reality, and the disparate quality of what passes for normal here was beyond evident.
My true initiation into a lifetime of breaking moulds came one weekend when my mom and I set out on a road trip to visit her brother, who had just moved to a very small town called Consort. An avid follower of the Canadian Food Guide, and a teacher whose elementary school health classes no doubt incorporated the Food Pyramid, my mom did her best to keep me away from all forms of junk food; my lunches were made with brown bread and an apple, not white bread and a fruit roll up, and our dinners always included foods from all four groups. It was only on rare occasions- sometimes after my skating lessons or swimming, and sometimes while on a long country drive- that she would indulge in fast food. On this particular drive to Consort, we had a rare lunchtime treat: a burger and fries from a drive through.
My mom had considered pulling over if we found a picnic spot, but in this barren Alberta stretch of farmers fields, there was no apparent resting place to be seen. As we drove, though, we came across an unexpected road block: a fence seemed to have come open in a grazing field, and cows with their young were wandering all over the narrow road. She honked the horn, but still, these slow moving wanderers stood, chewing their cud, and idly lazing on the desolate highway.
"Well," she said, turning off the ignition, "shall we eat?"
I unpacked the brown bag, and we unwrapped our lunch. As I started to bite, chew, and swallow, my eyes drifted across the scene laid out before me. Cows. In every direction- out the windshield, through my window, through the driver side window, out the back and in the mirrors. They were everywhere. Some lying down in the hot summer sun; others meandering in the shade of some tall grass. One, in the field directly across from my window, a young calf, was lying on his side. Immediately, at the site of his relaxed pose, I thought of Sneaky. This young calf was lounging in the field in a position identical to the way my kitten relaxed on my bed.
Suddenly, as I chewed, I didn't want to swallow.
That calf stood, as if on cue, and took a moment to steady himself on his young little legs. Then he walked, tilting and swaying, out of the field, and up the semi steep embankment of the road. He stopped walking only when his doe eyed face was right next to my window. From the side of his innocent prey animal head, with one eye, he looked at me.
"Mom," I said, slowly and uneasily, "when a farmer makes an animal into meat..."
"Yes?"
"... does he wait until it dies of natural causes first, or does he kill it?"
For a very brief moment my mom hesitated. She didn't need to have awakened psychic powers to know where that question was headed.
"He kills it." She said it, I'm sure, because she couldn't let herself blatantly lie, or else she ran the risk of my sure future wrath.
A silent tear rolled down my cheek as I continued to watch the doomed creature who stood, on feeble legs, within arms reach of my window.
It was the most terrible moment of my life till then.
I wondered helplessly what I could do! Looking out at the span of cows that filled the landscape from the safety of my mom's car was like sitting in a luxury yacht, surveying the wreckage of a sunk ship, unable to pull any of the drowning passengers from the water. I knew that each and every one of those cows would be killed, and that there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I looked down at my now guilty lunch, and wrapped the burger once again in it's paper.
"I'm never eating meat again."
I didn't say it angrily, or triumphantly. I said it quietly, filled with shame over the fact that I had never understood the horrific nature of the meat industry before.
How could I have been born and raised in a world where people kill and eat animals? I wondered, grimly. Is it possible that anywhere in existence, life just happens without killing and harming anyone?
Briefly, my mom tried to convince me that the consumption of meat was mandatory for human health, and insisted that I finish my food, but eventually, due to my persistent refusal, she let it go. Finally, a few big trucks came barreling down the road towards us, blasting their pull horns, and the cows walked away, back to their field... back to their ill fated waiting game of grazing, which had only one possible ending: slaughter.
For the rest of the car ride, we rode in silence. My half-eaten lunch filled the car with an odour I hadn't known prior to that day: the stench of death and guilt. Any other day of my life up to that moment, it would have appetizing to me, and yet now, the burger smelled only like a cooked body of a poor cow. My tears continued to streak down my face as I thought back to all the meat I had eaten in all my years of life... they were't just tears of sadness for the lost lives of so many farmed animals, but also, tears of deep disillusionment. Of course, everyone growing up on Earth in the twentieth century could plainly see that all was not right in the world: the television was continuously blaring news stories about war, poverty, murder, homelessness, riots, strikes, and more, but somehow, in my youthful naiveté, all of these headlines had swirled past me like ugly streamers in the airwaves. The realization of the truth about meat, though, struck such a deep inner chord that it was no longer possible for me to think of the world as a place in which peace could be hoped for... or happiness aspired to... or even basic decency experienced. I thought of all the people whom I loved, and all the people who seemed to be good and decent towards one another, and then I thought of all the animals who were killed to feed all of those people. Had a been a child prone to queasiness, I would surely have felt sick to my stomach. Instead, on my mom drove in awkward silence, and down my tears poured in unending succession.
When we arrived at my uncle's house for the visit, he announced that he had prepared a barbecue dinner; hand formed beef patties, buns, and all the needed toppings. I started to cry once again, and my mom said to him, over my head, as if I wasn't there, "Sarah wants to be a vegetarian now..."
"That's funny," my uncle answered. "k.d. lang used to live a few blocks that way..."
"Why is that funny?" I asked.
"She's one of Canada's most famous vegetarians," he answered, perhaps very briefly proud to be living in Consort, Alberta.
My eyes widened, and I said a small prayer in my heart.
Thank you, God, for letting me know there are others.
***
At seven years old, it's hard to make a lifestyle choice and strictly follow through with it. Of course, I announced my decision never to consume flesh again to my mother, and made it very clear that I meant it very seriously. But, in typical motherly fashion, she chose to fight- rather than embrace- my 'animal rights phase.' (The last thing I hope to do by writing this short account of my life is paint my mother as a bad guy, because she has been a major asset to my life, and her encouragement and support for my mission is priceless, but, in these formative years, we certainly didn't see eye to eye.) As an elementary school teacher trained to preach the government food guides (industry endorsed and filled with propagandized 'facts,' of course) she was unwilling and unable to consider the possibility that a child could grow healthily on a diet that excluded meat, so, she forbade my vegetarianism.
As much as my mother was strict, I was determined. At school, I ate the fruit, granola bar, and carrot sticks that she packed in my lunch, but threw away the meat and cheese sandwich. At dinner time, I spooned tomato sauce onto my pasta carefully sifting out the chunks of ground beef. My daily meals became a practice in careful avoidance, and even more careful hiding of the avoidance. Once or twice, my mom caught me sneaking meat off my plate and back into a pot or a pan, and when she did, she erupted in anger, rehashing the lectures about health sometimes, or letting me know how hard she works to provide the food others. (Especially when she learned that I wasn't eating my sandwiches.)
At school, my new diet wasn't any more embraced than it was at home.
TO BE CONTINUED