Ahh, it is Ash Wednesday again. This year I am prepared because I happened to notice it on my calendar. So, I won’t have that awkward encounter when I see someone with a disconcerting black smudge on their forehead (Yes, yes we see… you are both faithful and pious. Thank you). When I was a child living in rural Maryland we celebrated the Lenten season religiously- we kicked it off with Pancake Day.
While our New Orleans counterparts were getting lining up for a night a debauchery with a parade of themed floats, monstrous puppets, drag queens and showgirls, the denizens of Coleman’s Corner were lined up in the living room of my great aunt waiting for her to ladle some pancake batter into various containers. Apparently when she was younger, and her batter less popular, she used to actually fry up pancakes for anyone who came by. They would hang out in her kitchen, summer kitchen and dining room and literally chat and chew. While the Big Easy was drinking itself into a stupor with the aid of college students, carnival tourists and other undesirables I was eating combinations of pancakes, butter, molasses, homemade jellies and syrup. As a precursor to Lent we all gorged ourselves to prepare for the next 40 “lean” days.
I loved Pancake Day because I loved pancakes and was still too young to make a decent flapjack on my own. My mother was no Julia Childs. I had a very faint idea that our Pancake Day celebration was linked to Lent, the forty days when Christians are supposed to forgo serious temptations but usually just end up swearing off consumables like, alcohol, soda, chocolate, meat and cigarettes. I never gave up anything but was always on guard to see if anyone else had let their Lenten promise lapse. Always the cynic.
The summer I turned 13, after years of pestering my mother, we finally moved to a larger town. After that, there was no more pancake day for me. My new school was Catholic and religious holiday not involving their Virgin was some how a solemn occasion. Class was constantly interrupted by the praise of the lamentations of one saint or another, one tragedy or another, or one sacrifice of another. These events were always accompanied by gruesome imagery of torture and narrated by an angry butch nun telling us that we would probably all go to hell anyway. I sat in the Ash Wednesday assembly watching each of my Catholic classmates wince as Father Bad Acne branded each of them with a grimy thumbprint. I wondered if back in Coleman’s Corner pancake batter was still being served and I thought about how I could convince my mom to take me the Denny’s that evening for pancakes for dinner.
While our New Orleans counterparts were getting lining up for a night a debauchery with a parade of themed floats, monstrous puppets, drag queens and showgirls, the denizens of Coleman’s Corner were lined up in the living room of my great aunt waiting for her to ladle some pancake batter into various containers. Apparently when she was younger, and her batter less popular, she used to actually fry up pancakes for anyone who came by. They would hang out in her kitchen, summer kitchen and dining room and literally chat and chew. While the Big Easy was drinking itself into a stupor with the aid of college students, carnival tourists and other undesirables I was eating combinations of pancakes, butter, molasses, homemade jellies and syrup. As a precursor to Lent we all gorged ourselves to prepare for the next 40 “lean” days.
I loved Pancake Day because I loved pancakes and was still too young to make a decent flapjack on my own. My mother was no Julia Childs. I had a very faint idea that our Pancake Day celebration was linked to Lent, the forty days when Christians are supposed to forgo serious temptations but usually just end up swearing off consumables like, alcohol, soda, chocolate, meat and cigarettes. I never gave up anything but was always on guard to see if anyone else had let their Lenten promise lapse. Always the cynic.
The summer I turned 13, after years of pestering my mother, we finally moved to a larger town. After that, there was no more pancake day for me. My new school was Catholic and religious holiday not involving their Virgin was some how a solemn occasion. Class was constantly interrupted by the praise of the lamentations of one saint or another, one tragedy or another, or one sacrifice of another. These events were always accompanied by gruesome imagery of torture and narrated by an angry butch nun telling us that we would probably all go to hell anyway. I sat in the Ash Wednesday assembly watching each of my Catholic classmates wince as Father Bad Acne branded each of them with a grimy thumbprint. I wondered if back in Coleman’s Corner pancake batter was still being served and I thought about how I could convince my mom to take me the Denny’s that evening for pancakes for dinner.
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