St. Andrew's Day

9754 Steps

St. Andrew's Day came and went without much fanfare. And just how much fanfare is it supposed to get? My brother did send me a nice electronic Happy St. Andrew's card which I appreciated more than I would have thought.

In 1976 I took Andrew as my confirmation name in honour of this saint. I remember when I was 6 (dear reader notice where some frightful patterns started to develop) and in first grade at Our Lady of Mercy Grammar School in Mrs. Jebe's class, I heard that when I was going to be 13 I would be confirmed, slapped across the face by a priest and forced to choose a confirmation name. I can't remember if this was before or after I found out my classmate Marco Flores was born in a another country and I was just born in stinky San Francisco and no place remarkable like Mexico City. I was so angry at my mum because she could have gone back to Scotland to have us on the National Health and chose to just scar us for life instead by having us locally and unexotically.

Both events would set a tone for the rest of my life:

1. I always wanted to be from somewhere else.

2. Fear of choosing

The way I saw it at 6 was that I had only 7 years to figure out the exact right name to have for the rest of my life. Though I had not even been on the planet for 7 years, I knew it was going to go by in a flash. We were supposed to chose the name of a saint we wanted to model our lives after. OH. MY. GOD. My "Lives of the Saints" book had so many eligible candidates. How in the Down Below was I going to pick? My mum who was probably doing something self-involved at the time like folding sheets told me when I confronted her with this to not worry as I had a long time to go before I had to think about it. I remember she said the same thing about shaving.

It got worse. When 13 rolled around and I was the valedictorian of the school, had two plays that I wrote and mounted in the church hall, published and ran a newspaper and was hot off winning the bunny drawing contest beating out Chris K, the self-proclaimed artist of our class, and now I had to chose that name. The time so long off had arrived. It was almost like that witch who tells Sleeping Beauty's parents that in so many year's time she would prick her finger on a spindle and fall asleep for eternity and now it was pay up time. So now it was time to pick that damned name. My mother lied - 7 years went by faster than I could know and the velocity of time was just revving up. Damn and then you are going to hit me with puberty? I have homework and basketball and band practice, I don't have time for all this. I am going to have to shave soon. I don't want to shave.

The priest told us that being confirmed meant we were adults in the church and were choosing Catholicism as our one true religion. He told us it was a big step and suggested it was irreversible. Adults at 13? Choosing a name be damned, I am not ready to be an adult in anything. Being the smartest kid in the school I knew the choice was to refuse to be confirmed. I would pull a Norma Rae in the pew and not go up. I was going to tell my parents that I was going to wait until I was sure about being a Catholic for life. Then I remembered SHAME. My poor parents would have to face the McCarthy's and the Sullivan' s and the Arata's knowing their kids were all fine upstanding Catholic adults and my parents had a son who was going to be in his 20s and still reading Bible stories with pictures. I couldn't handle the pressure. So I thought my protest would be to chose a really weird Saint's name like Meirad or Anskar. But instead I buckled as was my developing pattern and chose St. Andrew in honour of Scotland and because he was crucified sideways in honour of Jesus. IN my mind that combated SHAME with a double word score choice. My dad still managed to be ashamed of me because I didn't chose his name. Oh well.

So now I am an adult in the church with a name that I spent years on and no one ever asks for on any form. While other Catholic adults are bringing their own Gifts from God into the fold and washing their little brains with Catholic love, I have essentially never left high school spiritually. I am passed out in the crèche with beer cans strewn at the feet of the Three Wise Men. And I am unshaven.