"My Lutheran Catholic Grandma" from the Tell Me What Happened podcast

Molly is the guest storyteller for Tell Me What Happened's 50th episode. Host Jay Rehak listens as Molly remembers her Grandma making a shocking admission (proudly!) at a big family dinner.

Jay and Molly discuss how we often think that we already understand the people closest to us, when there is actually great wisdom and insight to be gained from asking them to... Tell Me What Happened.

Thanks to Mr. Rehak (my high school English teacher!) for having me on, and for letting me share this story and a poem titled Us, Together. Both are about my grandma, and I'm honored to share a tiny bit of her with you.

Please check out Tell Me What Happened, and take a moment to share Ketamine Insights too.

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Transcript

Molly: Hey, everyone, this is Molly Dunn from Ketamine Insights. I was recently on another podcast, and we're going to air that episode today. It's the 50th episode of the tell me what happened podcast, where people tell a story of a formative event from their childhood. It features people from all walks of life, which is a lot of fun. Most of them are from Chicago, but not all of them. The host, Mr. J. Rehack, was actually my high school English teacher, so it was great to be back in touch with him and to share this story and a poem about my grandma. A quick note from me to support Ketamine Insights, please join our Patreon. You can find that at patreon.com/ketaminights and you can email us at ketaminsights@gmail.com with feedback or with suggestions for season two. Thanks so much. Here is episode 50 of tell me what happened.

Jay: Pull up a chair and tell me your memory. Why does it matter to you? I want to hear your story, your point of view. Tell me what happened to you.

Jay: Hi, and welcome back to Tell Me What Happened, the podcast that features folks from all walks of life telling us of one childhood experience and how that event, that moment, impacted who they are today. I'm your host, Jay Rehak, and like you, I've had my share of childhood experiences, some of them very positive and some of them actually quite painful. But I'd like to think that everything that ever happened to me has made me who I am today. 

Jay: Tell Me What Happened is sponsored by Sideline Publishing, publishers of quality books, including Susan Salador's classic, One Little Act of Kindness, and I've Got Peace in My Fingers, both available wherever quality books are sold. They're the perfect gift for the holiday season for the little ones in your life. 

Jay: All right, today I have as my guest Molly Dunn. Molly is a disabled writer and former student of mine. She has worked in the United States Senate, earned a graduate degree from Oxford, and spent time in a Chicago psych ward. Her weekly podcast, Ketamine Insights, explores mental illness and psychedelic medicine from a patient's perspective. Welcome to Tell Me What Happened.

Molly: Molly Dunn thank you so much, Mr. Rehak.

Jay: I was wondering if you were going to say Mr. Rehak or Jay. You were a former student of mine back in the day, Molly, and you were great.

Molly: That's right. It's hard to shift into Jay, but I could try if you'd prefer.

Jay: Either way, whatever makes you feel comfortable. I'm grateful that you're on the show. I'm grateful that you are still talking to me in any capacity. It's been a while and everything, and I'm grateful to know you. So, Molly, are you ready to tell your story?

Molly: I am.

Jay: All right. Well, listen, I'm going to get out of the way. What I'm going to do then is I'm going to let you tell your story. And at the end, I'm going to ask you just one question. And that one question is, how do you think that childhood experience has influenced who you are today? So take it away, Molly.

Molly: Thank you. So, first, I'm going to say that memory can be a little strange for me these days, because about four years ago, I forgot everything. I went through what's now called electroconvulsive therapy. It's also known as ECT, or back in the day was called electroshock treatments, and that was to try to help my lifelong depression. And what it did was it wiped away my memory completely, which is a known side effect. We knew that would happen. I couldn't remember my own biography for months, and still my brain does feel different. My mental stamina is just way worse than it used to be. I can't read books anymore, and my memory is really bad now, but I'm never really sure whether any given lapse is because of ECT or if it's just normal forgetting - everybody forgets their keys or forgets their wallet sometimes - and this can make storytelling a little weird for me, in part because I think I treasure my memories now more than I did before ECT, and also I'm more unsure of them. 

But this one I'm pretty sure about. And it's about my grandmother, who I was really close to. Both of my parents were raised Irish Catholic here in Chicago, and they decided not to raise my brother and I within the church. So we were not baptized, not confirmed. My parents weren't married within the church. And this was a very big problem for my grandparents at the time, especially my grandmother, who she used to yell at my mom about it. She used to yell at us about it. 

Molly: And, for example, one time when I was real little, I went downstairs during a big family party, and I found my grandmother in the back room of the basement ironing furiously and crying to the ironing board. And I asked her what was wrong, and she said it was because we weren't baptized. And I honestly kind of doubt now that that was really why she was crying. But the point is, it was a big deal in my family at the time, and it bothered me a lot to think that big parts of my family, including my grandmother, thought that me and my brother were going to burn in hell, as far as that was my understanding of it at the time. 

Molly: So we couldn't... The thing about not being baptized within the catholic church is you can't really hide it because especially back then, every family wedding and funeral and everything included a mass. And if you were baptized you could go to mass, but you couldn't take communion. And that was always like public. You can tell at mass who takes communion and who doesn't. And so another little side story. When I was little, I went to Ireland a lot and there, even family reunions, the priest came to the house. When I was eleven in Ireland, and they had a mass at the house, and the house was so crowded that the priest had to walk around to every single individual and give them communion. And I was standing right next to my grandmother and I was the only person in the whole family who had to refuse communion. It was really embarrassing. It just felt really horrible. 

Molly: So anyway, this story is about me, actually, when we knew each other, Mr. Rehakk, as I was a sophomore at Whitney Young and my grandparents came over to our apartment for dinner. And at some point my grandma told us matter of factly that she hadn't been to confession since my uncle was born, which at the time was like 35 years previous. And my grandma just gets into this story about how when that uncle was born and he was her fifth child, she almost died in childbirth (which my whole family had known), and the doctors told her, don't have any more babies because it would be very dangerous for you. So she's got five kids. It's a scary proposition, obviously, not to be around to raise those kids or to have a 6th. 

Molly: So she didn't know what to do. So she went to her local priest, her local parish priest, and she said she went to confession and she told the story, the doctors tell me not to have any more kids. What should I do? And the priest said, why don't you try living with your husband as brother and sister? And she doesn't like, my grandmother didn't mess around and she was a really smart and quick woman. So she said, well, Father, wouldn't that be a violation of my marriage vows? Which honestly, it's a great point. And the priest had no response for that. 

Molly: So she went to another parish and to a different priest and went to the confession booth and asked the same question, told him the situation and he said, why don't you try that thing that they have now what is it? The pill. And this was completely against the teachings of the Catholic Church, so she couldn't believe it, and she told all of us very proudly, I haven't been in confession since. I don't think they know any more about God than I do. 

Molly: And everyone at the table was just flabbergasted. What are you talking about, Grandma? And at the time, I was taking AP European History from Mr. Tennyson, and the big class project of that semester was an in class heresy trial for Martin Luther. And I was one of Martin Luther's defense lawyers, so I was, like, really steeped in what Martin Luther had taught and how he disagreed with the teachings of the Catholic Church. And the way I understood it, one of Martin Luther's central teachings was basically exactly what my grandmother had said at dinner, which was, you know, the church and its priests don't have a direct line to God. And I would have never said this to her at the time, but I was thinking to myself, like, Grandma, you're a Lutheran. You're not a good, quote, good Catholic. And it blew our minds because we had spent so many years thinking we were the sacrilegious ones or like we were the ones that weren't following the rules. And it was just such a shocking story at the time, and I never forgot it. So that's my story, Mr. Rehak.

Jay: I love it. Your grandmother was radical in her own way, for sure.

Molly: Definitely. Yeah.

Jay: I feel your grandmother's sense sensibility, and in terms of your life, I can't imagine after having sort of been mourned over the fact that you weren't baptized, and then she's telling you this story. It's like, wait a minute, you are a Lutheran. Alright. Well, anyway, I don't want to take your story. I mean, I don't want to interpret your story. I want you to interpret your story. So how do you think that moment, that experience, your grandmother's revelation, impacted who you are?

Molly: I mean, on the one hand, I completely agree with her. I don't think the catholic church or priests or anybody has a more direct line, necessarily, than you do or I do or my grandmother did. I think it's like, I try to let that story remind me that we're all really full of internal contradictions. 

Molly: And also, it's important maybe to try not… This is something that I struggle with, is to try not to shape your lives according to what other people want from you, in part because they don't care as much as you do, but also in part because their wants might not make sense. It just might be kind of nonsensical in the end. 

Molly: And also, I think to me, the most beautiful part is similar to what you're doing here, is that we often don't bother to ask for stories, especially from the people we love, especially from the people we're closest to and live with every day. We think we know what motivates them and how they came to be the people they are, or we don't think it's our place to ask or something like that. And I think even if you just start to scratch to the surface, whenever I've done that, it's usually surprising. And there's a lot more kind of wisdom and insight and intricacies than you might expect when you're filling in the blanks yourself.

Jay: It's so true that stories, especially from people who are sort of your adults in your life, the older folks in your life, the parents, the grandparents, et cetera, when you get a deeper insight, it changes everything. The paradigm shifts, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And then you realize, wait a minute, I've been sort of living my life assuming something that's not actually true, and maybe things are deeper than I realize. Well, again, I don't want to get into my own family history, but I identify tremendously with what you're talking about. But again, it's not my story, so I'm going to leave that alone. Now, let me ask you, we talked before the show and you said that you actually had written Cestina, which is to say a significant poem regarding your grandmother and your relationship with her. Can you read that for us or say that for us?

Molly: Sure. Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah. So this poem is about that same grandmother, and it is called Us Together. 

The two of us were alone together 

twice in our lives, sick. 

We each took a turn. We cared 

for the other. We loved 

actively. To me, she was more than Grandma, 

And then death. I find that she is not gone. 

Tomorrow they say she'll be twelve years gone. 

And only today I realized that we were together 

when I had scarlet fever, that it was Grandma 

who sat by my side, confident, competent with the sick. 

It was happenstance. My parents worked, but her love 

would mean the world for decades. Her care 

Would be a hope, a prize. I cared 

so much about her judgments still ringing years after she's gone. 

She was so mean, but I knew about her love 

Because she'd nod at me quickly in approval, because we'd been together 

when I was sick. 

I didn't see until today that it had been Grandma. 

When, after years, I came home and hugged my Grandma, 

Felt how frail she had become. It took my breath, I cared. 

And I stayed with her. Then I held her, sick, 

until, only months later, she was gone. 

I would dream for years of us - back together, 

healthy or sick, confident, competent in our love. 

My memories of her taught me the thing about love.

How it travels not just distance but time. Grandma, 

who surely baptized me in secret, who, together 

with so many of us hid, through drink, our caring, 

our pain, our loneliness for each other. In a way she was often gone. 

In a way we were both so sick 

All along. The kind of sick one lives with despite love. Because of love. 

We thought she'd never die. Now, twelve years "gone," 

when I love, when I turn my Claudagh inward, I think of Grandma. 

Me and her, we do nothing more than care. 

That's not an easy way to be. Thank God we're in this together.

Jay: It's beautiful. Thank you very much for that. This is my 50th podcast and that's my first poem, so I appreciate that.

Molly: Nice.

Jay: I was an English teacher so I love original poetry. Moves me and I actually have read it and reread your piece on that and I will take another look at it afterwards just because hearing it, you hear some pieces but then you got to kind of read it again. That's my view. So if you don't mind, I might put it on the website. 

Molly: Sure, yeah, that'd be great 

Jay: Underneath your bio just so people can take a second look if they wanted to. Well, thank you for coming on the show, Molly. I really appreciate it. I haven't seen you in 5000 years and it's great to see you.

Molly: Absolutely. Thank you so much for asking me, Mr. Rehak. This is great. I really appreciate the chance to share a little story about my grandmother and to catch up with you again.

Jay: Yeah, it's great. And actually I enjoyed listening to Ketamine Insights. I didn't know about it actually, how it works or whatever. And now listening to you is pretty interesting. You have a partner with that, right? Isn't there another woman that works with you on that?

Molly: I do, yeah, it's an old friend of mine named Lynn Schneider. She is the co-host and the two of us talk about mental health and psychedelic medicine and the idea is it's from a patient's point of view. So that's kind of a voice that I feel like is lacking in the mental health conversation. So it's been a lot of fun to do. We just published our 8th episode today actually.

Jay: Hey congratulations. Well, I'll be sure to take a look at that. And I'm also going, I will actually link to it again on the website so people who would be interested will be able to pick it up, I'm assuming on Apple podcasts and other venues, right?

Molly: Yep.

Jay: Fantastic. All right, so that's our show. I'd like to thank my guest, Molly Dunn. Also like to thank our sponsors, Sideline Publishing, publishers of quality books. Again, go out there and get Susan Salador's I've Got Peace in My Fingers. Or One Little Act of Kindness for the little person in your family for the holidays. I'd also like to thank laughsaver.com. Visit laughsaver.com and record your laughter. It's free. We keep it for you forever. You can also download the app on Android or iPhones. 

Jay: Alright, I'm going to end this show in honor of Molly Dunn's relationship to her grandmother, which is complicated, but I believe in the end was love based. So we're going to end it with Susan Salador's classic Love Revelee. So until next time, this is Jay Rehack asking you all to please stay safe out there and try not to hurt anybody.

Susan: Love Revelee. Supposed to wake up our hearts. I love you, I love you, I love you every single day. I hear you, I hear you, I hear you and all that you have to say you, I see you, I see you, I see you and all the kind things you do. I love you, I love you, I love you just because you're you close.