Growing up a Skepchick
Donna Druchunas

I am American, white, and a woman—all by accident of birth. Ostensibly of Lithuanian and Russian descent, my family assimilated into American culture and I don’t speak the language of my grandparents and their parents, nor do I practice their traditions or hold to their values. The only memories I have of my origins are a few faded photographs and tattered recipes.

My mother's family was Russian Jewish. But like so many American Jews, my grandfather was an atheist. Having decided at a young age that his Jewish relatives didn't live up to his moral standards and since his Irish Catholic neighbors—who drank and beat their wives all week then confessed each Sunday to be absolved of their sins—were hypocrites, he abandoned faith.
My father came from a long line of Lithuanian Catholics. My grandmother went to mass every Sunday, said the rosary every day, and never ate meat on Friday, even after Vatican II declared it was permitted. Whenever she visited, she navigated the religious waters carefully, ordering cheese pizza or making potato pancakes for dinner every Friday, knowing that our favorite meatless foods would make us forget that we were following a religious ritual.

Although I spent my first three years in New York City, I grew up in a Long Island neighborhood that was very likely the source of the "melting pot" cliché. Going to school, I learned to appreciate many different cultures. My friends, Irish, Greek, English, African American, Italian, and Puerto Rican, were all of different religious backgrounds, but it took me some time to discover this. I was five or six when Trisha and Diane, our WASPy neighbors from down the block, invited me to Vacation Bible School at their church. My mother prepared me with a warning.

"They're not Catholic," she said, "so they may sing songs and say prayers that seem weird to you."

"Are they Jewish?" I asked.

"No," said my mother, "they're Christians."

I pondered this for some time, trying to understand how someone could be not Jewish and not Catholic. My universe hadn't included anything else up until that moment.

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