The coat

Let's say it outright - Roman Catholics get a bum deal.

Guilt is built-in from the moment that you're born, and it's cultivated throughout your life. As a child, my mother frequently warned me that the Virgin Mary cried every time I told a lie (although I was fairly certain the BVM had more important things to worry about than how much licorice I ate).

Every time I half-suggested that I wasn't hungry, it was obviously because I didn't appreciate all the hard work my mother poured into that plate of pasta (she might also throw in a little something about starving children in Africa, but only if initial tactics didn't get the desired result).

When I finally moved out of my mother's house at the age of 27 (oh, yes, you read that right), her square-hipped cronies from the neighbourhood would stop me on the street to ask me why my mother's house was no longer good enough for me when everything she did was to make me happy, did I know that I needed to do my own laundry, etc.

So what does this have to do with a coat? Today, for the first time in 5 years or more, I bought myself a spring coat. In cherry red. With big, black buttons. It's a Soia & Kyo coat, so it cost a little more than something from your average mall boutique, but it's very reasonable for the quality and the style.

Did I mention that it's cherry red?

Anyway, I'm feeling a wee guilty about buying it. If my mother knew how much I paid for it, she would be horrified and explain to me in great detail just how much money she spent on the first coat she bought when she came to Canada. Perhaps even an inventory of how many garbage bins she had to empty at Ville Marie in order to afford it.

I'm generally pretty impervious to my mother's lamentations, but there are obviously inner workings at play. Apparently, Catholic guilt is so insidious because it infiltrates at the cellular level and triggers a self-policing effect in the brain. Even though my mother is not actually in my apartment right now, I can still hear her voice in my head.

Is she telling me to make my bed?

I'm just going to watch Splash. It's on TV, and mermaid movies generally make me feel less conflicted.