Fierce Roots – Melani/Leskin

Every conversation I have with my father, I want to tear open his brain and take out all the Jewish memories. What else do you remember about the Jewish cousins you lived next door to in Philly? I keep asking. This time, he remembers an Uncle Marvin who was “so cool and was so nice to me.” The Leskins married the Lakins. It was like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers where there were a few matches between the two families. My father’s grandfather was Joseph Meier and my grandmother’s name? Chana – חַנָה. One of my uncles was named Leon Lakin and married Rebecca who they called “Becks.” There was a Rose and a Frieda, my Aunt Helen and finally my grandmother, my father’s mother: Abigail Leskin married to Cecil Kinsey.

Looking at my name: Elisabeth Kinsey, you’d never know that I come from a Leskin and a Melani. I’m so hungry for my immigrant roots, it’s hard not to look back at my Mormon life as a big sponge that wiped all that rich culture clean and left white bread behind. I wouldn’t be writing this, however, if that Jewish Italian self didn’t absorb my heritage from my grandparents throughout my life. I’m fierce about that. Fierce to protect that struggle to make a life in the new land. Fierce to grow tomatoes in Saratoga, California. Perhaps the Torah service prepared my father for the three hour Mormon service. Maybe Mormon ritual reminded him of a more straight forward form of the Jewish ritual? He confided to me that he never learned Yiddish and felt like an outsider because of it. Looking at my Mormon parents, you’d never see those fierce roots. Until my mother tells me to put the basilico into a recipe or my father reminisces about his days in Philly. Then I know where I stand.

Ex-Mo Groups and Monsters

(This is a re-post from my closed down Blogger account.)

I have a hard time writing with my new EXMormon slant. The reason is obvious to me but maybe readers wouldn’t think of it. My parents raised me, gave me love and nurturing and now I go and slander their wonderful religion that’s always supported them in life. You know that saying “There be Monsters” at the edge of the globe? I live in that place according to Mormons. So, what news do I have today to slander my parent’s savior and guide from the monster side? I am a member of a handful of Ex-Mormon groups and I wanted to share why they exist.

For the most part, religion is attached to identity and belonging. Many times, we’re raised in a specific faith and taught not to question it. In fact, questioning my faith would mean I doubt God almighty. What if I doubted God at the tender age of six-years-old? That’s what my memoir’s about.  That, and the journey to being okay with myself after Mormonism and disappointing my parents. It’s ongoing. And the ExMormon groups are there to support any religion-leaver with open arms and funny/sad/condemning/crazy posts and activities.

There’s an ExMormon conference. It’s like the Mormon conference, but the delivery is about spirituality after leaving one’s faith. There are activities like hopping on a bus to go gamble while doing Jell-O shots.  ExMormon groups come in all shapes and sizes and you can find them all over the internet. What I enjoy is the community of ex’s. They’ve left something to find themselves; they are on the identity journey with me. While it still doesn’t make me feel okay for letting my parents down, I have somewhere to go to remember why I left.

Borrowing Faith

    I keep having terrible back attacks for which no doctor can find a solution or cause. Always, in my crumpled state, tears forming in my eyes without my control, I call my parents. Nothing comes out of my mouth because it hurts to talk or breathe. Everyone I describe this to says “kidney stones.” But then I go pee in a cup and nothing shows up. Nothing. My pee is heavenly, beautifully, clear pee.

So then my parents pray for me. I ask them to and I say, “Because God loves you guys the most.” I say this sardonically, as if God plays favorites, but there’s some truth to it. If God kept a list like Santa’s naughty or nice list, my parents would be in the top 1000.

I ask them to pray for me because I believe that they believe and that strong belief has to count for something. I don’t believe and don’t know what I believe.

A friend recently introduced me to this cool bunch of joyous spiritualists called Matrix Energetics. They embrace dolphin-like wonder approaches to the world and have an open energy about them. They preach that everything that has worked works for a reason. Christianity. Crystals. Buddha. Bahai. All of them have merit. Use them because they work.

So, I ask my parents because prayer works for them. I guess it’s my way of channeling a pure thing. My parents are the purist. Me? Not so much. I have to rely on others’ faith.

Mashugana

       

    I was discussing Judaism and ethnicity with a friend who I didn’t know was Jewish. My father’s side of the family was Jewish, which technically makes me no Jew at all. But, what do I do with the memory of my grandparent’s Jewishy home? What do I do with my Grandmother’s and Father’s penchant for dropping Yiddish on my eight-year-old ears? Those words haunt me still. I recognize them upon hearing them but can’t seem to pull them out of my memory.

           Even though my father, Gerald, was Gerele’ at that house my mother never converted for me to “really” be Jewish. Also, both my parents embraced Mormonism when I was three. Henceforth, I became the girl on the outside of the Jewish glass looking in at a Menora I’d never dance around. Mormonism took a a white garment and washed all that away.

     One phrase I learned that is possibly the worst racial slur in my Jewish past: “to Jew” something. I can see Abigail Leskin, my Grandmother, waving her cigarette at one of my tall uncles, “Try to Jew ‘em down.” Translation: it’s okay to say this but only if you’re Jewish. This slur got under my skin. I said it recently to my friend. It just came out. And then I quickly stated: “I’m a Jew.” But really, do I have the right to spew such a slur in any physical realm? It’s a slur. It’s racial and not something I take part in. Usually. This throw back from my childhood just came out. Bad form. I know.

            Then came the question from my friend: “Why does everyone equate race with Judaism and not religion?” I paused and said, “It’s in my blood.” Although buried under the torment of Mormonism, the washer away of all my identity on both Italian and Jewish immigrant sides, it’s in my blood. It pulses and says: Italian Jew.

            I missed all the rich Jewish religion and ritual that accompanies being raised in Jewish tradition, that I feel Mormonism robbed me of. At least I have these tiny memories of my father’s life overheard under the stair banister at my grandmother’s house.

          Mashugana was thrown out in a heated debate over the 60’s pink kitchen table, the smoke rings haloing my grandmother’s head. The word was on fire for me. I repeated the word and ran into the vast living room practicing it in my mouth. Finally, I ran outside to my sibling horde shooting dart guns in my grandmother’s backyard filled with lemon trees. I pounced: Mashugana! with a monster gesture – splaying my fingers in my brothers’ faces. Instant laughter.

It became a Kinsey hit for years. Road trips offered miles of Mashuganas.

 Ethnicity? That’s gray. Blood? For sure. Identity – Yes.

My Not So Mormon Blog

Hi all,

I’ve migrated my blog from blogspot here and I hope you’ll follow my trail!

As most of you know, when you ask me about God or Religion, I start to go blue and wave you off. You have heard me talk about my upbringing and even read excerpts from my memoir. Well here’s the continuing saga of a woman still grappling with all the anatomy of Mormon guilt.

There’s no end to being a Mormon, just a new way of thinking, of letting information in and surrounding oneself with new ideas. I live with the uncomfortable feeling that I have made the wrong decision in life, that God is disappointed in me for leaving the only true church on earth and that somehow I’ll be cut off from my family forever. I live with this feeling in the back of my head, but consciously, I know it’s not true. It’s kind of like cutting off feelings for an ex after divorce. The caring never goes away, but we have to move on.

This is the depiction of my first option to be non-Mormon. My grandmother was Catholic Italian and left the church because she thought she had the right to be a pastor. She became a pastor for another local church thereafter. After her lead, I left the church after 20 years of deciding it wasn’t for me.

There are so many times in my life where I am gripped with nausea and indecision and then I realize it’s a throwback to Mormon doctrine that I had to wade through to find out what I really wanted and not what a bearded grandfather (God) leaning down over his Sunday throne would think of my decision.

This blog won’t be all holy but I’d like to look at the world as not a recovering Mormon, but as someone wading. No matter what, pieces of Mormonism will always be there. The Mormons have an instruction book: The Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, The Doctrine and Covenants. All of these books give Mormons life’s rules. At the same time, they’ll all profess that they “make their own decisions.”

This blog is how I live without rules and make them up, everyday.