My mom’s idea of religion was simple: get your ass to church, eat some weird Scandinavian food, and don’t ask too many questions. But I asked. At five, I was already pissing off the Sunday School teachers.
“So Jesus fed five thousand people with a couple loaves of bread and fish? What, were they on a diet?”
I’d poke the felt board with the little flannel disciples and ask about dinosaurs, evolution, and whether Noah had to scoop elephant shit off the ark two-by-two.
Still, every Sunday, mom marched me and my siblings into the Lutheran Church, a church so blonde and stoic it looked like it had been carved out of a glacier. We sat in the same pew where her mom had sat, and her mom before her, Great-Grandma Inga, who immigrated from Norway sometime around the dawn of Lutheran guilt and stayed just long enough to die in 1987 as the oldest living member of the congregation. Her claim to fame was once surviving on nothing but boiled potatoes, hymns, and lutefisk for an entire winter.
Let me explain lutefisk. It’s cod that’s been dried, then soaked in lye, then boiled until it reaches the consistency of a jellyfish having a panic attack. It’s served with butter, probably because butter is the only thing that can make you forget you're eating chemically resurrected fish. But you eat it anyway, because you're Lutheran, and pain is part of the tradition.
Church wasn’t just Jesus and guilt, it was also Bible camp in the summers, potlucks with twelve types of beige casserole, and Christmas pageants featuring tiny blonde kids dressed as shepherds who forgot their lines and cried in the nativity straw.
When high school rolled around, it was time for confirmation. My confirmation class was about a dozen hormonal kids, none of whom could recite the Ten Commandments without giggling. Hell, we were the smoke-free Class of 2000, which is hilarious considering half of us were chain-smoking behind the fellowship hall by age thirteen.
We memorized Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, not because we believed it, but because it was the only way to get our moms off our backs and get confirmed. Which we did; awkward photos, itchy beige shawls, and the momentary thrill of being able to drink church wine legally at sixteen. Jesus’ blood tasted like expired Robitussin, but we drank it anyway, mainly as a hair-of-the-dog, trying not to puke from partying the night before.
I didn’t stick with church. I still don’t go, unless it’s for someone’s funeral or because my mom asked me to. But looking back, I get it. It wasn’t about belief, it was about belonging. About rituals and weird foods and stoic Norwegian women who could break you with a glance. About learning how to sit still, listen, question, and still come home hungry. It gave me a foundation. A shaky, weird-smelling, fish-gelatin kind of foundation, but a foundation nonetheless.
Photo circa 1983, me, aged two - my great-grandma Inga aged 95
This brings back so many memories. I could never stomach the lutefisk, but the grandparents always had it for Christmas. It soaked outside before cooking because it was so stinky! You have described the texture to a T! Bible camp and Confirmation linger in my mind, as well. Old Pastor Leonardson bragged that he could write down all the books of the Bible faster than any confirmand and challenged us to do so. He probably never did that again, as I beat him! Ironically, I ended up marrying a Lutheran pastor, God rest his soul, although I don't think I met anyone's standards as a pastor's wife. I didn't make cookies or those beige casseroles, but I sure remember them. In North Dakota, it was all about various sweet "bars" and weak coffee, not suited to any Scandinavian. The grandparents always made good coffee and had skorpor (crispy cinnamon toast) with it.
12 kinds of beige casseroles—fabulous. I also had ark logistics concerns.