Fat Tuesday

mmm... these paczkis were deliscious!

Happy Fat Tuesday! I happen to love Fat Tuesday. It is tied to childhood memories of decadence. We hardly ever got doughnuts, but we always knew that when Fat Tuesday came around there would be paczkis (prounounces poonch-keys) for everyone. And, as it was the last day before Lent, it was the day to get in all the tv watching, chocolate, fast food, or whatever it was you were giving up the next day. Once lasy hurrah for indulgence.

Growing up Catholic, Lent was a big deal. All motions and doing and waiting and withholding. Ashes on the forehead, no meat on Fridays, parish-wide fish frys, extended prayer and devotion times after meals, giving up something. It was a rhythm ingrained in my being. I never thought twice about any of it. I jumped through all of the hoops and waited for Easter, that day when the strange haze would be lifted and life would go back to normal.

It wasn't til I got to high school that I realized that God was not going to smite me if I ate meat - none of the other kids were abstaining. I remember my first time. It was pepperoni pizza. I didn't intend to sin, I was just so hungry that I dug in. I realized what I had done too late. The funny thing was, I didn't care. The crossing of the proverbial line felt a wee anticlimatic.

Now Lent is something real to me. Back then it was a thing I did, but now it is a conscious decision. I will go to services tomorrow and come out with ashes smeared on my forehead to remember that I am dust and nothing without the God who created me. I may give up something, I may not. Maybe instead of pining after ice cream, or chocolate or fast food, I will spend the next forty days contemplating the great sacrfice made and the love that makes forty days of haze seem like such a small act in comparison.