A Frugal Education

          I am a rare specimen; I am a person that graduated from college without receiving financial assistance from my parents and without taking out student loans.  When my classmates were taking out loans to afford on-campus housing and meal plans, I was living in the sketchier area of town, wearing thrift-store clothing, and getting creative about locating free food on campus.  I attended Cornell University, where my frugality was outside the norm.  Most of my classmates were either from the upper middle class or the wealthy 1% and lacked the perspective of growing up without money.

          Even the students that didn’t have the money to cover their costs had no compunction about taking out loans to finance their lifestyle.  One of my friends, the daughter of a professor, was attending college for free as part of her father’s tuition benefit.  Even so, she graduated with more than $40,000 in loans; she didn’t want to live at home, her father didn’t want to pay for housing, and she spent her summers studying abroad instead of working.  When she told me about her loan situation, I stared at her in shock.  I couldn’t fathom spending money you didn’t have and taking out loans you didn’t need.  But this friend of mine was hardly outside the norm; I met many students who admitted that they didn’t mind taking out extra loans, if these loans ensured they had a fun college experience.  “Avoid unnecessary debt” was a mantra drummed into me from both my parents and my religious up-bringing.  

          I was very lucky; I was accepted to a university with the financial resources to provide a generous aid package.  Since my parents didn’t have a lot of money, my tuition was covered by grants.  Living costs were harder to cover; I had to work during the school year and during the summer.  I also had to take a couple semesters off to work as a full-time lab technician.  There were a lot of times, especially towards the end of the school year, when my bank account was hovering around $0.  I ate a lot of pasta and eggs, to the point that one of my roommates instituted a ban on eggs in the house out of concern for my health.  

          Sometimes I regret not having a more laid-back student experience.  I missed out on some valuable college experiences because I was always either working or studying.  But I was raised by parents that taught me to be frugal and to live within my means.  My parents are examples of hard-working people that fought their hardest to keep their heads above water, all while raising a large family on a very limited income.  Sometimes my parents had to get creative; for years, my parents raised cows, chickens, and pigs in order to feed the family.  And there were times when my parents had to rely on public assistance and church welfare.  But my parents never gave up.  No matter how dire the situation got, there was always the self-assurance that we were doing everything we could to make ends meet.  

          I am grateful to my parents for the lessons they have taught me.  Now, post-college, my husband and I are free of student loans, free of credit card debt, and we were able to afford a 20% down payment on our home.  I also had the privilege of studying at a wonderful university, one that taught me how to question and to think critically.  My college experience was one that I treasure, as my education taught me to push intellectual boundaries.  There were times when I had to struggle to make ends meet but in the end, I discovered my own strength and resourcefulness.  

          Thank you, Mom and Dad, for teaching me to always live within my means.  

A Missionary's Heart

          My older sister decided to serve a mission around the same time that I chose to leave the Mormon Church.  This fact caused a lot of tension in my household, as my father vacillated between picking fights with his apostate daughter and bragging about his dutiful BYU-educated daughter.  The spring of my senior year was not easy as I prepared to head off to college while my sister prepared to go on her mission in Brazil.  

          A few months after my sister left for her mission, she started e-mailing me.  This was in the fall of 2003 and from what I gathered, she had been granted special permission to communicate with me via e-mail.  Her primary form of communication, along with most of the other missionaries in her area, was via conventional snail mail.  In her e-mails, my sister talked a lot about her faith in the Mormon Church, with an occasional snippet of her everyday life.  From the rare glimpses of her life that she revealed, I gathered that she was living in unsanitary housing, complete with leaking roof and faulty plumbing, and subsisting on a diet of rice and beans.  She also asked me to keep the details of her housing situation a secret from our parents.  Every once in a while, she would write to my parents begging for money; her fair skin was peeling due to the harsh sun and she couldn’t afford to buy sunscreen.  

          I have always struggled to communicate with my sister; we are two very different people and I always felt that she judged me.  This communication barrier was only exacerbated by our differences in belief; the bulk of my sister’s e-mails were centered around bearing her testimony to me of the truth of the Gospel.  I tried to write like a good sister but I also struggled to contain my frustration.  I never was able to shake off the suspicion that my sister’s primary motivation in writing was to try and re-convert me to Mormonism.  E-mails with my sister were intermittent as she completed her mission.  She came back from Brazil eighteen months later a little thinner and a little tanner than before.  

          Not long after returning, my sister started getting sick; she was dizzy and couldn’t keep food down.  She ended up in the emergency room a couple of times, where the doctors assumed the problem was an ulcer.  But the ulcer medication didn’t work and my sister's condition kept deteriorating.  Eventually, after three or four months of unsuccessful treatments, the doctors discovered the real cause.  My sister had pericarditis, which is when the sac surrounding the heart (the pericardium) gets inflamed.  Her pericardium had been rubbing against the heart and fluid had started to build up, to the point that it was pressing against her stomach and restricting her heart’s function.  

          Words cannot describe my horror when I first saw my sister after coming home for Christmas break that year.  Her condition had worsened to the point that she could no longer get out of bed.  Always thin, she looked like a Holocaust victim; her wrists stuck out at odd angles and I could count each rib on her body.  For months she had been unable to keep solid food down and was now subsisting on a diet of Ensure.  Her blood pressure hovered around 70/40 as her heart struggled to pump blood to the rest of her body.  My sister’s surgery was scheduled for the day after Christmas; the surgeons were planning to go in, remove the excess fluid, and determine if the cause was congenital or not.  

          My sister’s surgery was a success.  The doctors have yet to discover the exact cause of her condition.  Their suspicion is that she picked up a virus while living in Brazil.  Now that I have learned more about the Mormon Church’s treatment of missionaries --- their disregard for missionaries’ physical and mental health, their scrimping on costs at the expense of missionaries’ well-being, their blatant ignorance of a country’s culture --- I find myself wondering just how badly my sister’s heart was damaged during her mission to Brazil.  

Note: If you are interested in reading more about the everyday life of Mormon missionaries, I highly recommend the book "Heaven Up Here" by John K Williams, which is a very honest and moving account of the author’s years as a Mormon missionary in Bolivia.  

Don't Just Get Drunk

--- Get Mormon drunk!

Talk about a sugar hangover!  

Even the cat succumbed...




So toss back a (root) brewski and you'll be on your way to being Mormon drunk in no time --- that peculiar blend of sugar-induced religious fervor!  

My Grandmother, the (Illegal?) Immigrant

          My grandmother immigrated from Toronto when she was six years old along with the rest of her family.  She married my grandfather, a US citizen who worked in an auto-plant, when she was twenty.  Grandma then went on to live a full life, outlasting her husband and two of her children, before finally dying at the ripe old age of ninety.  She was a tough lady, having survived the Depression with her wit and humor intact.  When asked about the Depression, she would say that for breakfast they ate potatoes and tomatoes, for lunch they ate tomatoes and potatoes, and for dinner they had a choice of either potatoes and tomatoes or tomatoes and potatoes.  Grandma always had a sharp remark for empty platitudes and hated being the object of people’s pity.  

Potatoes and tomatoes?  Or tomatoes and potatoes?

          My sister, who studied genealogy in college, liked to interview my grandmother about our family history.  Sometimes Grandma was willing to collaborate, filling out the bare bones of our family tree with the details that make history come alive.  Other times she would get short-tempered, usually when my sister pointed out all the first-cousin marriages cluttering up our family tree.  

          Another point of contention was my grandmother’s immigration status.  Whenever my sister brought up the naturalization process, my grandmother would become un-characteristically quiet.  We never did find evidence of our grandmother becoming a US citizen, although she was married to one and collected Social Security.  I suppose, in those days, the rules weren’t quite as strict.  In any case, my grandmother was as much of a citizen as anyone else; she worked, raised a family, and paid her taxes, just like everyone else.  

Mormon Temple Ceremonies

          I was raised to believe that the temple ceremony would be the pinnacle of my existence as a Mormon girl.  The temple ceremonies were shrouded in secrecy; members were forbidden to reveal details of the ceremonies to others.  To do so would be to risk dire punishment.  Some of my peers whispered about the temple ceremonies being discussed online; my faithful mind shrank from the blasphemy of the idea.  

          As a girl, I imagined the endowment ceremony and sealing to be a metamorphic experience; I would go in as a caterpillar and emerge as a beautiful butterfly.  I thought the ceremonies would be full of holiness and light and awe, one that would forever transform me as a person.  My imagining of the temple ceremonies was wrapped up into a starry-eyed ideal and reinforced by the many times members talked about their temple experience as being “the most sacred day of my life”.  

          Even after I left the Church, I was reluctant to pry into the secrets of the temple.  Mormons view their ceremonies as sacred; I did not want to infringe upon the beliefs of others, even if those beliefs were no longer mine.  I dismissed the comments of non-Mormons about the temple ceremonies as propaganda, in spite of the fact that I had no idea of what the temple ceremonies were about.  My voice teacher, who had been disowned by his Catholic parents for being gay, made a comment about the temple ceremonies as being about “learning a secret handshake”.  I brushed off his comment, although the idea stuck in my mind and led me to start wondering about the ceremonies my family had been through.  

          My curiosity grew and grew, until one day, three years after I lost my belief in the Mormon Church, I finally caved in to my desire for knowledge.  With shaking hands and a jumpy demeanor, I went online and typed “Mormon temple ceremonies” into the search engine.  
          What I read stunned me.  Secret handshake?  Washing and anointing of the initiate’s body, who was only wearing a thin white sheet?  Blood atonements?  My understanding of my family and my religious up-bringing, which had been based on the idea that Mormonism is a simple religion free from ritual and ceremony, shifted and tore in the wake of this new knowledge.  My parents received their endowments in 1977, when members had to make a ritualistic cutting gesture across their throats as an indication of the penalties they would face if they ever talked about the ceremony.  The ceremony I read about seemed so different in tone from the church that I knew.  I couldn’t picture my parents --- the product of a long line of New England Puritans, complete with an aversion to rituals and pomp --- going through these ceremonies.  But the details made an odd sort of sense; my siblings’ jokes about fig leaf aprons took on a whole new perspective.

          Learning the details of the temple ceremonies altered how I view myself as a post-Mormon.  I may not be a Mormon but I was raised as one and my family still believes.  There were a lot of under-currents running through my childhood that I only had a dim understanding of.  For example, I never understood why my mother was so submissive to my father, to a degree that almost destroyed my family.  Now I know that my mother swore an oath in the temple to “observe and keep the law of your husband, and abide by his counsel in righteousness”.  Since my mother is a very religious woman, I have no doubt that she takes this vow very seriously.  I have struggled for years to understand why my mother is so submissive to a husband that is indifferent to his wife and children.  My struggles to over-come my mother’s example, to shape my own expectations of family and marriage, has been a long-running theme throughout my adult life.  

          There are still many aspects of my childhood that I don’t understand.  Someday I hope to arrive at an understanding of who I am and how I fit into my family and the world at large.  Until then, I will seek to learn as much as I can.

Note: If you would like more information on Mormon temple ceremonies, I recommend this resource http://home.teleport.com/~packham/temples.htm

Garments And Temple Ceremonies

          When I was thirteen, I spent a month living with my non-member aunt in Ottawa.   I showed up at the local Mormon meetinghouse alone on a Sunday morning, dressed in my finery, ready for church.

          Young Womens’ that day was taught by a newly-wed with curly-blonde hair and an earnest manner.  The lesson for the day was about temple ceremonies.  She kept talking about an “endowment ceremony” and “garments”.  I was confused, so I raised my hand.  

          “What do you mean by endowment ceremonies and garments?”  I asked.  

          “The endowment ceremony is when you make covenants with God in the temple.” she said.  “When you make these covenants, you agree to wear garments as a sign of your promises to God.”  

          I sat there, absorbing the information.  Then a lightbulb went off in my head.  I raised my hand again.  “I know what garments are!” I said, excited by this new knowledge.  “I see them hanging on the clothesline at home all the time!”  The teacher smiled at me.  The class had been rowdy, with a lot of restless girls; I think she was happy to see that her lesson had hit home with someone.  

          After church, the teacher offered me a ride home.  We walked out to her rusted station wagon, where she introduced me to her husband, a thin man with brown hair.  He asked me how the lesson was.  

          “I learned about the endowment ceremony today.”  I was embarrassed by the fact that I had never heard of endowments and garments, in spite of a lifetime of membership.  “I had never heard about them before; I guess I have a lot of learning to do.”  I felt very insecure about my status as a Mormon; how could I have not heard of garments and endowment ceremonies before?  

          “Oh, I am still learning about the endowment ceremonies.” he said, with a wry smile.  His smile held an unusual note, a touch of dissonance that was uncommon to the usual Mormon dialogue.

          Years later, when I discovered what happens during the endowment ceremonies, I would remember that smile and wonder.    

A Coffee Love Story

          I was raised to believe that drinking coffee was a sin.  No one in my family touched the black liquid; to bring coffee into my home would have been sufficient to spark a small war.  Having never been exposed to coffee, the very smell was enough to make me feel queasy.  Even after leaving the church, I stayed away from drinking coffee.  Sometimes, when I was cramming for exams and needed the caffeine, I would drink large cups of badly brewed coffee, which was sufficient to convince me that coffee wasn’t anything to get excited about.  If I needed the caffeine, I stuck with my standard Diet Coke.  

          And then I met a boy.  I was at a party when I struck up a conversation with a grad student in engineering.  He was funny and smart and we talked for hours as the party slowly died down around us.  He gave me his number and I resolved to call him again.  Which I did.  I called him, we talked, and we decided to meet for a coffee.  He picked me up after work and took me to his favorite coffee-shop.  

          This was not just any coffee shop.  This was a special coffee shop, with some of the highest standards in the industry.  The beans are ethically sourced and roasted locally by a master with years of experience.  The coffee is then prepared by baristas that have gone through months of rigorous training in order to pull a single shot.  The result is an espresso that is rich and earthy, with a beautiful caramel crema. 

          We talked for hours as I savored my coffee.  My horizons opened up, both by this new realization of the art of coffee as well as my conversation with a man who was raised by a single mother in India.  He told me about the trials of growing up in a highly orthodox Brahmin family while I told him about the trials of growing up in a highly conservative Mormon family.  We discovered a commonality in our experience that transcended cultural barriers.  Here was another person who had challenged his up-bringing and in so doing, had become more open-minded, more tolerant, more aware of humanity in all its glorious diversity.  I sensed I was on the verge of something spectacular.  

          Six years later and I find myself married to the same man that introduced me to good coffee.  There have been challenges of the sort that are inherent when two stubborn, strong-willed people from two very different cultures choose to get married.  But in-between these struggles have been a lot of good times.  We have shared a lot of laughter and had a lot of conversations that have challenged my view of the world around me.  I have a partner that makes me laugh, that reminds me to stop taking life so seriously, whose smile lights up the room.  More than that, I have a partner who understands the trials of walking a different path in life.