Meta-Broccoli 8D

Little rough around the edges. 60-70% trufax. Needs proofreading.

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When I was a child, it never occurred to me that God was real. Church was just one of those silly things that other families did that my parents quietly ignored, like overcooking broccoli of taking away toys from disobedient children. Biblical stories were read to me between fairy tales, and I thought them one and the same. The lord was the fairy godmother: someone who always helped out the heroes and heroines of stories, but couldn’t come help YOU because they weren’t real.

Yet I’m sure it never occurred to any of my more religiously inclined friends that God could ever not be real. I’m sure they raised their eyebrows at my undercooked broccoli as much as I did at their overcooked broccoli, and I’m sure they thought it was odd my parents never punished my misbehaviors with more than a stern telling-off. I’m sure they understood the difference between God and a fairy godmother.

So while my friends where in church on Sunday mornings, my little heathen self went stomping around in the woods behind our house, getting covered in bug bites and tangling my hair in branches. I’d pretend I was a princess being chased by a troll, that I was a witch collecting ingredients for a potion to poison a princess, that I was on a quest from the king, that I was on a quest from God, that I was meeting a secret friend, that I was running from the Devil, that I was a wild forest-child raised by wolves.

Sunday afternoons I could usually find a friend to play with, fresh from brunch with their church-friends. We’d play the same games I’d played in the morning, and then after my friend went home my mother would serve me undercooked broccoli for dinner.

In first grade I made my first friend who wasn’t Southern Baptist. His name was Sam. He was Jewish. He wasn’t much different from everyone else, especially since his mother made overcooked broccoli too.

I knew how Sam’s mother cooked broccoli because I had him over for dinner once. We had broccoli because it was the only vegetable I would eat without a fuss, and he complained to me about it later.

“It was too crunchy,” he whined. “And it tasted too much like a salad.”

But he had eaten it anyway, which was more than I would have done.

When asked about my religion, I always said Christian because my friends were Christian and my grandmother had a picture of Jesus on the cross in her bedroom. We celebrated Christian holidays: we had presents on Christmas and chocolate rabbits on Easter. I had been to a handful of different churches with friends. I knew Christian kids’ songs. So through my childish logic, I was Christian, even if I thought God was the fairy godmother.

At some point I thought to ask questions. I asked my mother, “Why don’t we go to church like everyone else?”

We must have been driving somewhere, because I remember her suddenly becoming fixated with fiddling with something on the dashboard.

“Oh, well,” she answered vaguely. “Your father and I don’t really believe in those things. Did you remember a jacket?”

My father also claimed he didn’t believe in garlic salt or Windows brand computers, which obviously both existed, so I wasn’t sure what this answer meant. But I told her yes, I had my navy jacket tied around my waist, but did she really think I would need it?

But aside from the church thing, we did Christian things, so we must have been Christian. I told my friend Madeline as much when she accused me of being a fake Christian.

“You don’t even know the Christian song!” she yelled back.

“I know other songs!” I said back. “Like– like the one about Noah and his ark!”

“You don’t ever go to church,” she said.

“I’ve been with you to your church tons of times,” I snapped back. In reality, it was probably only three or four times, but I felt religion was something you had to defend strongly.

I left then, even though we were at my house. I went into the living room and pouted on the couch for a while, and Madeline eventually came out of my room and said she was hungry. We had crackers sitting on the kitchen floor and didn’t talk about church or Christianity for the rest of the day.

I don’t know what made me think of that conversation again, but one day I went to my mother and asked her what made someone a True Christian.

“Believing in Jesus,” she said right away.

“What about God?” I asked.

“They’re the same,” she said.

“I thought Jesus was the son of God,” I said.

“God is three people,” she said.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

The following Sunday my mother took me to church with one of her coworkers. She said she wanted me to go to a Catholic church because that was how she’d been brought up, but Miss Jamie was Episcopalian, so that would have to do. So I went with Miss Jamie and came home with her and still not understanding.

I told Sam I thought maybe I wasn’t Christian.

“You do Christmas,” he said.

“But I don’t understand God and Jesus,” I said.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Neither do I.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re not Christian. We Christians need to get this.”

“So you’re Christian?” he asked.

“I guess so,” I said. “That’s what everyone who’s not something else is, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

I asked Madeline if she knew why God and Jesus were the same. She said, “God comes in three parts. Like an Oreo.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I told you you weren’t a true Christian,” she said.

One night when we had broccoli for dinner again, I asked my parents if we were Christian.

“Is this about church again?” My mother asked.

“Kind of,” I said back, pushing the broccoli around on my plate. “We’re not Jewish like Sam, and we’re not Muslim or Hindu like we learned about in Social Studies, so we have to be Christian, but we don’t go to church.”

“You don’t have to go to church to be Christian,” my father supplied. “Your grandma never goes to church, and she’s very religious.” My mother nodded in agreement.

“Because she has a picture of Jesus on the cross on the wall?” I asked.

“No,” said my father, “because she believes in Jesus and what he died for.”

“Do you believe in Jesus?” I asked. My parents exchanged glances and we quiet for a long time.

“No,” my mother said finally.

“Then we do we have Christmas?” I asked.

“You like Christmas,” my mother said.

“But why do we have it?” I persisted.

“Why do we have Thanksgiving?” my father countered.

“Because we’re thankful for what we have,” I said the way I said every Thanksgiving dinner.

“That’s why,” he said, and we went back to eating as was normal.

At night I wondered, Do I believe in Jesus?

And I had to say I didn’t, because Jesus was God and God was the fairy godmother and the fairy godmother isn’t real.

This thought frightened me. All my friends and their overcooked broccoli believed in something, Christian or Jewish or anything else. I did Christian things, but I wasn’t Christian. I couldn’t bring myself to believe in God and it felt as if I couldn’t bring myself to believe in gravity.

“You have no faith,” something in the back of my mind said. I pushed it away, and I spent years pretending I wasn’t completely godless because I wanted something to believe in.

In fifth grade, we had an exercise where everyone sat in a circle and we said what we believe in. I don’t remember the point of this, probably something about how beliefs shape us or how we are all different. Most people said God or Jesus. One person said Santa Claus as a joke, and we all laughed.

I almost said I believed in God, but I didn’t want to lie.

“I believe in the universe!” I announced proudly. I wasn’t even sure what exactly I meant by this, but no one questioned it. The teacher just nodded and turned to the next person. This excited me, because that must have meant this was an acceptable thing to believe in. The universe was real, and I could believe it would go on without believing in God.

Madeline believed in God and Jesus, Sam believed in God without Jesus, and I believed in the universe. We were friends, we liked the same games, we all believed in something. After all, broccoli is broccoli, no matter how you cook it.