“Is Dad home?”
“Yes,” she answered as she shut the door behind us.“He’s in his study, but he’s not ever too busy for you.”
I took a seat on the couch as she went to go get my father, and if I survived what was coming, then I was going to have to make it a point to visit my parents more often.As much as I loved my job and life, there was no way that I was going to be able to come out of all this without a shift in my priorities.
When my parents finally walked into the living room together, I immediately stood up to hug my father, emotion hitting me unexpectedly.This was a man that could have raised me to be a traditionalist, but instead of forcing his beliefs on me, he’d chosen to step aside to let me conquer the world in a way that had best suited me, not them.
“Honey,” he sighed as he wrapped his arms around me.“It’s so good to see you.”
Pulling back, I let him kiss me on the cheek.“I missed you guys.”
“Let’s sit,” he said as everyone took a seat, my mother sitting next to my father on the couch, me taking one of the armchairs for better conversation.
“So, catch us up,” my mother said.“How are you doing?How’s everything?”
Now that was a question.
“I’m good,” I lied.“Work is work, but it’s good.In fact, I was even able to leave a bit earlier than usual today, so I decided that it was time for a visit.”
“Well, we’re glad that you did,” my father beamed.“We don’t see enough of you, that’s for sure.”
Doing my best to not lie to them too much, I said, “I...I’m actually here for work, too.”
My mother’s brows shot up curiously.“Oh?”
“I...I have this project that I’m working on, and it tackles conversion,” I lied.“Religious conversions to be exact, and I was just wondering...I guess I never asked why you guys hadn’t fought me harder when I mentioned wanting to convert to Catholicism.”
“Well, from a very young age, you’d been so...so enthralled with religion and the many different denominations of worship that...”My father looked over at my mother, seemingly looking for the right words, but that didn’t surprise me since they’d always been a unit like that.
Taking over, my mother said, “When you first mentioned wanting to convert to Catholicism, we’d been devastated, Elisabeth.I cannot lie about that.However, we also knew that you hadn’t come to the decision lightly.With as much as you studied religion and questioned everything, we knew that your request hadn’t been something of a whim.”
“Plus, we’d been raising you to practice Judaism all your life, so when you mentioned becoming Catholic, we knew that whatever was calling you in that direction had to be stronger than anything that we could understand here on earth,” my father continued.“So, while extremely disappointed, we’d been left with the choice of allowing you to find your own way or risk losing our relationship with you, and losing you just wasn’t an option for us, honey.”
“Let countries go to war over religion,” my mother said.“For us, nothing is more important than you and your happiness.We did not have, raise, and love you just to lose you over something that will always be bigger than any of us could possibly ever understand.”
Trying to wrack my brain for memories of when I was younger, I said, “I don’t remember being fascinated with religion before high school.”
“That’s when you became academic about it,” my father clarified.“However, before that, you used to question us ad nauseum about Judaism and what we knew about other religions.”
“You also used to claim that all of your imaginary friends were from different religions,” my mother chuckled, and I did my best to keep a straight face.
“I had imaginary friends?”At that, both of my parents chuckled.“What?”
Still smiling, my father said, “That seemed to be all that you had.”
“They were also religious figures,” my mother added.“You used to say that you were friends with angels and these other kids that always wanted to play with you.”
Then my father really threw me for a loop when he said, “But your best friend was Russ.”He looked over at my mother, chuckling again.“Remember that?”
My mother joined in on the laughter.“You used to get so upset because Russ didn’t go to your school or come over to play.”
I had to calm my breathing and steady my nerves, lest they realized that something was up.My parents were very intuitive, and being an only child, they had paid enough attention to me to recognize my many different moods, and they were also able to sense when something was wrong with me.
Doing my best to keep my emotions at bay, I said, “You know, I don’t think that I ever thanked you guys for letting me be me.I can’t recall a single time when I ever felt judged by either of you, and that matters.It matters so much, which is why I probably moved back home to start my career.”
They both looked at me pensively as my father said, “Well, I don’t think that we’ve ever asked you why Catholicism.During that time, we’d been more focused on how you were leaving your Jewish faith behind that...well, we never asked why that specific denomination.”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.“There just felt something profoundly right about it.Still, no matter what made me choose Catholicism, I didn’t abandon all other faiths completely.I just...Catholicism just felt like the right fit for me.”
