ARTICLES

Prodigal Daughter

FINDING THE FACE OF CHRIST

by Allyson Smith

My Protestant father agreed to let my Catholic mother raise their children as Catholics, so in July of 1960, two months after my birth, I was baptized at Holy Trinity parish in San Diego. My godmother was my maternal grandmother, Nanna, who held me over the baptismal font as the priest poured the water and recited the prayers that filled my soul with sanctifying grace and welcomed me into the Catholic Church.

My mother took seriously her obligation to pass the faith on to her children. One of my earliest memories is of her kneeling on the floor by my bed, murmuring my favorite prayer, the Salve Regina: "Hail Holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope."

Nanna, who lived with us then, taught the faith by example. Every morning and every night, she would kneel and pray before the crucifix that hung above her bed. If her door was open, I would often join her. So, living in the domestic church, I first learned about Jesus and the Catholic faith.

While I was still three, that domestic church grew crowded with two little brothers, separated by a little sister, Alyssa, who has Down Syndrome.

To ease the stress, my parents looked for a class for pre-kindergarten students. They found one near home, so before I turned four, I entered a preschool class at a school staffed by sisters of the Society of the Sacred Heart, an order of internationally respected educators. The school's demanding curriculum included French, social studies, math, science, and Catholic doctrine, as well as the arts. I especially loved reading and writing. By second grade I discovered the library, and spent hours there poring over lives of favorite saints like Maria Goretti.

Discipline, courtesy, and obedience were integral to a Sacred Heart education. Conduct was publicly graded every Friday at "Primes," a dreaded weekly assembly of students and religious. Mother Superior sat at the head of the class and pronounced each student's name and conduct grade. The student then walked up to receive her rating card from Mother, made a polite curtsy and returned to her seat. This was easy enough to do when the rating was "Tres bien" or "Bien" but utterly mortifying when the rating was "Bad." The prospect of public humiliation during Primes was normally terrifying enough to guarantee good behavior.

In second grade, I made my First Confession and First Holy Communion. I still remember the solemnity of the Mass and my awe as I knelt at the Communion rail and tasted the Body of Christ for the first time. The same "sense of the sacred" pervaded many occasions during my years at the convent. Devotions were always conducted with reverence, in beautiful surroundings. The nuns fulfilled well their mission of imparting a perception of transcendence and of rich Catholic traditions.

My years at Sacred Heart coincided with the Second Vatican Council, but as it took time for conciliar change to filter down through the order, I caught the tail end of traditional Catholic culture. By the time I was transferred to public school in 1969, the formal black habits were gone. But, young as I was, the treasure I'd found in the Catholic faith was planted deep in my heart. Later, it was obscured for years by the muck of sin, but it never quite died. I always knew the Catholic Church was the true face of Christ in the world, even when I betrayed Him with my own behavior.

The year 1969 also marked the end of my parents' troubled marriage. Dad was a successful surgeon, able to provide us with anything money could buy, but my mother felt he was emotionally unavailable to her and us four small children. The gulf between them led them to separate when I was in fourth grade and divorce when I was in fifth. Divorce was uncommon then, and I remember the embarrassment of being the only child in my class whose parents had "untied the knot." Even after the divorce agreement was signed, their quarreling continued for ten years, until I had graduated from high school and my father had remarried. What should have been one of the happiest times in life, childhood, instead for me was a time filled with terror and sorrow, and I could not wait to leave it behind.

My leaving the Church was not the result of a deliberate decision, but of an accumulation of personal and cultural factors that propelled me away. The divorce was the primary one. At first Mother took us to Mass each week, trying to keep the faith even through the divorce proceedings. But as her situation grew more difficult, and we acclimated more to the secular world, she stopped trying. My training in Church teachings, learned in the ordered beauty of Sacred Heart School, fell away like a dream in this new environment. There was not much order of any kind in my life now, and my conscience grew numb. Soon we children began to object to going to Mass, and we stopped completely, except for Christmas or Easter. Thus, at an age when most Catholics were making their Confirmation, I no longer practiced the faith.

At my father's urging, Mother went to Texas for nine months during my freshman year of high school, to take a refresher course in nursing. Dad had told her they might have a chance to reconcile if she started working again. While she was away, I lived with my father and two brothers. Alyssa had been living in an institutional setting for nearly four years, and as the only female in the household, I was suddenly charged with household responsibilities about which I knew next to nothing, in addition to attending school. During this time, my father continued to drink heavily, and he was not a happy drinker. Many nights he would arrive home late, raging over my mother's initiation of their divorce.

My mother's refresher course ended. She returned from Dallas, got a job as an operating room nurse at a local hospital and rented a small apartment. Within a week of my sixteenth birthday, I got my driver's license, left my father's house and went to live with her. This further enraged Dad.

The California lifestyle was a factor in my drift to disaster. I assimilated the "sex and drugs and rock-and-roll" mentality. Living with emotional tumult, I escalated my drug use, trying to blot out my parents' divorce through artificial highs. I discarded my virginity and sought a substitute for my father's love in uncommitted romantic relationships. Between the arrival of the Pill and the arrival of AIDS, many high school friends considered "having sex" the normal thing to do. By the time we graduated, few of us were virgins. Several had had abortions, and referred to them almost as badges of honor.

One bright spot in my life was Mr. Murphy, music teacher at Granite Hills High School and choir director at nearby St. Kieran's parish. I took piano lessons from him, sang in his high school choir, and joined the community service club he headed. Ray Murphy was a Harvard graduate and a Catholic family man. He and his wife, Patty, had four children near my age. Aware of my family turmoil and that I was heading down the wrong road, he invited me on his family's outings. He urged me to come to Mass at St. Kieran's. "I met Patty through Church," he said. "The Catholic Church is a good place to meet good people."

I listened politely, but I never took him up on the invitation to attend Mass. It was not until years later that I realized that he was as wise as he was kind.

In the middle of my senior year, I got involved in my first serious sexual relationship with a man a few years my senior. Long-haired Bryce was a non-conformist who liked Harley-Davidson motorcycles, disliked full-time jobs; I thought him the most exciting man imaginable. But I knew what my mother would think about him if she met him, so I made sure she didn't.

One morning the smell of breakfast made me bolt to the bathroom. That day I bought an in-home pregnancy test, and it told me what I suspected: I was pregnant.

But I was determined not to have this baby, not with this man who could not provide for himself, let alone for me and a child.

When I told Bryce of my condition the next day, he said, "Well, what do you want to do?" Abortion seemed the perfect solution. At Planned Parenthood, I scheduled an appointment for the first available abortion date, which wasn't until August 11, some three weeks later.

The intervening days were excruciating, as my body changed and I considered my choice. Though I wasn't ready to commit my life to Bryce, I did love our baby. Yet I knew exactly what I was going to do to him: I was going to kill him. More than killing, I dreaded the shame of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. I did not see that my motive was "convenience," nor did I see that I was trying to conceal one sin by committing another. I have never considered myself a "victim" of abortion, either then or now. Even at the age of eighteen, I knew I was premeditating a crime: the murder of my child.

The day of the abortion arrived. My memory has blocked out most of the details of the experience. For a year afterward, the sound of a crying infant would send me into spasms of tears. Not a day has gone by since when I have not thought of my abortion with pain, guilt, grief, and sorrow. Nor will I cease to think about it to the end of my life.

Bryce and I tried to go on together. Some two years after the abortion, he proposed marriage, and I accepted. But three weeks before it was to take place, I called off the wedding, and we separated.

I resigned from my job and returned to college. During my junior year at San Diego State, I met Stan, and fell in love. But Stan was in love with another woman. After a tempestuous nine-month affair, he ended our relationship to marry her. As I struggled with loss and rejection, my grades took a plunge. Depression lingered for nearly a year.

I settled, on graduation, for a post that took me to San Francisco. There I met Ron, a handsome co-worker whose humor made me laugh. Before long I fell in love with him, but our relationship never progressed beyond friendship. I began to guess what the problem was and confronted him with the question. Yes, Ron admitted, he was homosexual.

This time it took me longer to recover, because I was overwhelmed with self doubt. I was twenty-four. In the years when most other young women were finding husbands and marrying, I had experienced, in close succession, three devastating failures in serious relationships. The first cost the life of my baby and the life of grace in my immortal soul; the second wounded my confidence and stunted my career; the third left me in doubt that I was either loveable or capable of sound judgement. My depression was intensified by awareness that my friends seemed to have no trouble finding the happiness that eluded me. Seeing nothing ahead but a lifetime of loneliness, I lost weight and entertained thoughts of suicide.

"Why does this happen to me? What does everyone else have that I don't have?" Unreasonably, I blamed God, "Why are You so cruel to me? Why do You let others find happiness but snatch it away from me?" I felt as though He had abandoned me, that He was deaf to my desperation.

But He was listening.

The second part of "Prodigal Daughter" appears next month. It is taken from Prodigal Daughters, by Donna Steichen, 17 essays about Catholic women who left and returned to Church. Published by Ignatius Press, San Francisco. Used with permission. To order, call 1-800-651-1531 or visit website, www.ignatius.com.

In addition to her day job as a technical writer for a major computer manufacturer, Allyson Smith is a free-lance writer for the Catholic alternative press. She is active in the local pro-life activities, including abortuary protests.

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