Salon.com > Sue Sanders

Our awkward talks about God

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 19:00:00 +0000

“I’ll make a peanut butter and matzoh sandwich since I can’t have bread,” Lizzie said, grabbing a knife from the drawer. My daughter, at 13, has decided she’s a little Jewish. Her ancestors, Irish Catholics, are as Jewish as I am, but the only dad she’s ever really known, who came into our lives when she was 4, is a nonreligious Jew. And, as an agnostic ex-Catholic married to him, I don’t mind at all that Lizzie is experimenting with religion. But I do hope it's non habit-forming.

Lizzie has been trying on bits and pieces of religions for years now, discarding each after a little wear. A few years ago, as we read the decidedly secular Nancy Drew together one night, she asked out of the blue if I believed in God. As she snuggled into the crook of my arm, chewing on a strand of dark blond hair, she waited for an answer.

“Well, some people believe in God,” I answered, carefully putting on the same serious but accessible voice I’d used to answer previous uncomfortable questions about where babies come from and why there are Republicans.

“Do you believe?” Lizzie said, stressing the you so I could almost see the italics flying out of her mouth. There was no getting around it. I had to answer.

Interview With My Bully: The mean girl I can’t forget

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:00:00 +0000

A week before the seventh grade, my family moved for the 13th time. My dad was in the oil business, and we left Indonesia, where I’d had friends, for a small Southern town, where I had none. My only companion dressed exclusively in navy culottes and white button-down shirts, her wardrobe compliments of her Pentecostal religion. We were practically the only two girls without The Hairdo: a feathered Farrah Fawcett cut that necessitated a cloud of Aqua Net hairspray to tame it in Louisiana’s humidity.

Each morning of seventh grade I took the bus to school, and each morning I was bullied by a girl I’ll call Jane.

“Ew -- don’t you wash your hair?” Jane shouted at me from two rows back as her sidekick Kim laughed. I did wash my hair, but apparently once a week was not enough. And I wasn’t exactly the most fashion-conscious kid. In fact, I was pretty much fashion unconscious -- to the point where I could have used some smelling salts and a personal shopper. I thought sitting behind the bus driver would protect me. Instead, he just turned up the volume on the Eagles. (Years before Noriega was tortured by rock 'n' roll music, so was I.) This went on all through seventh grade. That year, I pretended to be sick so often that I’m surprised my parents didn’t whisk me to the local hospital.

What if my daughter grows up to be Republican?

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 17:01:00 +0000

My parents are Tea Party. I'm a liberal. My husband is to the left of your average communist. Dinners together walk a tightrope of small talk -- none of us wanting to veer too far in either direction, frightened we'll go careening into a political abyss. Our daughter, Lizzie, is always a safe topic. She's our Switzerland.

But I'm not sure how much longer that will last. Lizzie, at 12, is becoming politically aware.

She's always been well informed. Not that she had much of a choice. After the 2000 election and before her first birthday, she participated in her first protest. I stuffed her in her bright green baby backpack and headed to Times Square. There, she grinned and drooled as tourists in fanny packs and white tennis shoes yelled mean things at a dozen of us who were demanding that votes be counted. They weren't, thanks to the Supreme Court, and George W. Bush was sworn in -- thus assuring that Lizzie's formative years had ample opportunities for protest. Her favorite was the huge antiwar rally in Central Park, when she was 3. There were balloons and face painting -- and the playground near the park was more exciting than the ones back in Brooklyn, N.Y., where we then lived. Riding the train home, she waved her small paper flag like a sword and chanted, "No Twar! No Twar!" Then she yawned and asked for her sippie cup.

“Mom, have you ever smoked marijuana?”

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 00:30:00 +0000

"Mom, did you ever smoke marijuana?" my 11-year-old daughter, Lizzie, asked as we pulled up in our driveway, gravel crunching under the car's wheels. Her question wasn't totally out of the blue -- we'd just passed a passel of teenagers hanging out on our town's main street, a smoky cloud hovering over them like a mass Schleprock, and my husband and I had commented about the local drug problem -- but I was still caught off guard. My husband muttered something unintelligible and darted from the car to let the dog out of the house. I sat, frozen with panic. Do I answer honestly? Or lie? Spinning possible answers like a roulette wheel in my mind, I opted for truth.

"Yes, I did. A long time ago, in high school." I unclasped my seat belt and turned around to face her.

Lizzie actually gasped. "Why?" she asked. She's the type of kid who likes rules, the more of them the better. There are hints of the adolescent rebel lurking inside her. But for now, she uses words like "marijuana" instead of "pot."