Wake me up when September ends

It is again October, the second of the ber months which herald the coming of the holidays. And it was around this time last year, while I was getting all excited to come home to Palawan for Christmas, when my mom called and told me, “Good news, anak. Mormons na kami.”

I was shocked. I almost dropped the phone and not to mention, my jaws, when I heard her “good news”. It wasn’t something a Catholic son would expect to hear from his devoutly Catholic mother. I didn’t know what to say. But I knew I wanted to know the details. I wanted to deconstruct her news and ask her the 5Ws. I wanted to now why. But the only W I managed to blurt out was the least useful at that time, what.

I remember that phone conversation being very brief. Maybe, my mom sensed I needed time to let her news sink in. Or maybe, I did drop the phone. I forget. I think it was all too traumatic for me that my mind just chose not to remember it.

But what’s still clear to me is the feeling. As a saying goes, “What the mind forgets, the heart remembers.” I found it hard to believe that my mom, the most prayerful person I know, has been so easily converted. And my brothers! My rough and rowdy little brothers, who have no trace of religiosity whatsoever. I couldn’t imagine them wearing long-sleeved shirts and ties just to go to church. The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter-Day Saints that is.

It wasn’t just disbelief that struck me. I also felt betrayed. Before the “news”, I was very much looking forward to spending Christmas with my family after 11 months of living far from them. I couldn’t wait to attend simbang gabi, then walk home and enjoy the cool Christmas breeze--- with them.

But after the revelation, my all-I-want-for-Christmas-is-you attitude melted away. I imagined ourselves leaving the house every Sunday for church but going separate ways. I feared that they would no lnger do the usual Yuletide merriments, that I would wait for noche buena alone.

I felt excluded and I hated it. The three of them ganged up on me! They didn’t even bother to tell me before they converted. I thought that the conversion would never have happened if I was there with them. But it had. And my only ally now, is my father, who was born a Catholic, who died a Catholic and who’s now probably in Catholic purgatory, or heaven, hopefully.

When I finally went home that December and got to see my Mormon, or Latter-day-Saint, family, I was determined to be more Catholic, if Catholicism had degrees, in defiance to their ganging up on me. I resolved to pray the rosary in the morning, the three-o’clock prayer, well, at three-o’clock and the Angelus at six in the evening just to mock my mom. I was also watchful of my brothers to catch every misdeed and say, “Is that what Latter-Day Saints do?”

But after the first two Sundays, I gave up on it altogether. Self-righteousness is exhausting. While I was busy pretending to be religious, they, on the other hand, were trying their best not to make me feel shut out. They never mentioned the word conversion at home. Or even religion, which I find funny now that I realize that our surname is right in the middle of it. It was okay. We had plenty of other things to talk about anyway. And we’re still a family, after all.

On the third Sunday of Advent, we’ve come to some sort of compromise. I found myself going with them to their church. I didn’t want to be alone. They wanted to be with me. And their “mass” wasn’t so different, at least by my skewed standards of spirituality, from the mass I was used to.

The night before I flew back here to Manila, I finally had the courage to ask my mom the W question I very much wanted to ask. I asked her, why? She felt it was the right thing to do, she said. She didn’t lose her faith; she just found a better way of exercising that faith. I then asked her how she found out if it really was the right thing to do. She said it was by praying. And knowing my mom, who could have prayed more than a dozen million times in her lifetime, she knows what she’s talking about.

I therefore welcomed this year realizing how praying can change lives. And it is with this realization that I haven’t prayed for nine months now. I don’t want any more lives changed.

Before writing this, I texted my mom to ask when exactly they have converted. It was Sept. 22. It’s been one year. She asked, why? I told her that I needed it for an article. Is it about family or religion, she asked. I said both. Then she said, “It would be great if you could write about how our conversion changed our lives.”

Good news, Mom. I just did.

It is again October, the month of good news.