When I was in tenth grade, the confirmation into the Catholic Church that I'd managed to fight off for a year came around, and this time my mother insisted that I had to do it. I didn't believe in it, but I was 15 when the year began and few people think a 15 year old knows anything about what she believes; the feeling I got was that my mom wanted us all seen that far through our Catholic indoctrination so that she could say she had raised us Catholic. I could be doing her an injustice there, but then again, in our arguments about it, she never articulated a different or better reason.

So I had to go to weird CCD with the only other older kids who had for one reason or another not made it through in ninth grade like everybody else. And while I resented it mightily, the classes themselves were fine; I was a good student and could answer questions about the reading and doctrine. No one asked if you actually believed anything under discussion. Instead I would argue--not angrily, not even emotionally--with my father most weeks as he drove me to class. He didn't let me out of it, but he never dismissed me as some smug teenager who was just being spiteful.

Toward the end of my sophomore year, it was letter time in the confirmation process. We had to write letters to the monsignor about why we felt ready to join the Church as adults; we would in turn receive a letter from a parent and our confirmation sponsor when we went on a Saturday retreat in the church basement.

To show how Just Plain Off we often were in my family:

* My letter to the monsignor, which to my knowledge no one but he or I ever laid eyes on--assuming he actually did dutifully read the flood of Why I Am a Good Catholic essays he got--was all about my sincere doubts in Catholic doctrine and my growing feeling that being confirmed would be a form of serious disrespect.

* I didn't have a letter from my sponsor because my mom overruled my sponsor choice (my sister Jonna, older than me by one year) and we didn't rope my uncle into it in a timely manner.

The one good thing to come out of this is the letter I have from my father. Because we are Iaconos and that means we never have band-aids, juice, or stationery like normal people, it is handwritten on loose-leaf and folded inside a security envelope, an item that to my mind still always means "Dad". Despite being a horrifically messy person, I have held onto it for over a decade now. I can't reproduce it here verbatim, because it's too much my own. But it begins with him acknowledging and respecting that I didn't believe I should be there. Just taking me seriously, which means a lot at 16. He then said a handful of very kind, very loving, very wonderful things that were impossible to believe about myself at that age and are still not easy now. And lastly, and in perfect balance to the opening that treated my beliefs and feelings as real and worthy of respect, he ended it, "You'll always be the baby."

A short time later, I was confirmed. I have not gone to a mass since apart from weddings and funerals. The basic beliefs I had come to at 15--that I do not believe in a god that involves itself in our daily lives, that there is no afterlife and we are consequently obliged to make this one as just and humane as we can--have not changed. It is a year today since my father died, suddenly and without a goodbye, and the letter has been much more of a comfort than the well-meant assurances of others that "he's still here" or we'll meet again. I do not believe he is still here; I believe that the fact that he was here has to be enough. He was a very loving, very gentle, very funny man, and we were incredibly lucky to have had parents who never once made us question our importance in their lives. It's more than a lot of people get, and in this last year when I have cried more than I knew possible, I have kept trying to remind myself of that.

It hasn't always worked. I can remember vividly the first time I returned to my apartment after his funeral; there was a street fair going on and as I carried my bag of black clothing from the subway I wanted to punch everybody I saw in the face. (I didn't.) For the past year I've felt like I had no skin; like every breeze blew over a wound, like everyone knew just by looking at me that I was wrong, like every handshake was dangerous for me and unpleasant at best for the other person. As someone who is usually reserved--who updates this page so infrequently precisely because of discomfort with the world at large knowing too much about me--it's been strange, painful, and occasionally liberating to be so fucked up I can't contain it anymore and to realize that, even at this level of internal chaos, even feeling so itchy and clumsy and trapped, I still haven't done anyone harm or made too many excuses or seen the world end because people knew I had a problem.

To return to the sort-of point, I still haven't traded in my old beliefs. As comforting as it would be, I do not believe in a great afterlife where I will get to hug my dad again. I do not believe there is a silver lining to death. There are things to hold onto in the flood and things to learn. I'm holding onto what my dad was, what he taught me, how he radiated love for us from his every pore. I'm trying to learn how to live in such a way that people who meet me will know just how wonderful my parents were. (Progress needed.) And I'm trying to forgive this indifferent universe for the small, sharp pains of this loss (chief among those: my having had to ask the presumably well-meaning doctor "Is my father dead?" before she would finally tell me) as well as the great ones (just being without him, and him never knowing the grandson he would have loved so much). One forgiveness I was able to find: for our archdiocese, which stupidly and offensively no longer permits family members to eulogize in church. There's no good reason for it; certainly no doctrinal one or it wouldn't vary from region to region. Our priest's allowing my uncle to say a few impromptu words at the cemetery was kind, but not enough. But this church, which I fought not to join, did give me the letter. It's not my dad. But it is in his hand and his words saying how much he loved me. It may be as much of him as I'll ever have again. For that I thank them.

I'm almost afraid to commit this to print and jinx it, but:

I WON A CONTEST AND LAURA CANTRELL IS GOING TO PLAY A CONCERT FOR ME AND 50 OF MY FRIENDS IN SEPTEMBER!!!!

Details TBD, but . . . holy shit!

I haven't won a random-drawing contest since the ill-fated Ronald McDonald adventure, and that was more a year of torment than a prize. I can't believe that I won something this cool!

This has done tremendous things for my mood. There is nothing like following up two days of weeping with the news that one of your very favorite musicians is going to perform a concert for YOU.

So excited! So geeked up!!! Yeee!

Go buy her albums if you haven't already. She is quietly astonishing.

A long time ago, I got a voicemail from a woman named Naia who was looking for another woman (named Kimba) so that custody of a child could be transferred. Now, my voicemail greeting very clearly says "Adair". Not "Kimba." So it should be obvious to any caller at that stage that there is no Kimba to be found. That was problem one. Problem two was that even if I had wanted to call the angry-sounding woman back and tell her the mistake she'd made, I couldn't--her number was blocked from caller ID.

So I just ignored it.

Then, a while later, I got a follow-up voicemail. A voicemail of such surpassing brilliance that I saved it every three weeks for OVER A YEAR. It's not high quality, but I've finally managed to digitize it for you, my reading public:

If embed fails: The Glory of Naia

I am not usually huffy about lines. They are understandable, they are unavoidable, and they are supremely democratic. But my wait to express mail my POS phone back to the hellpit whence it came was an exception for several unimpeachable reasons:

1. I was only on the line because the self-service machine told me on step 9 of 10 that it could not perform its function. All line time was in excess of what ought to have been.

2. There is an unwritten code of conduct for DMVs, subways, and post offices, and it is predicated on the idea that nobody wants to be there and that if we all do our parts each of us can pretend we aren't. This requires that we do not take up more space than we need, we do not yap loudly on cellphones (especially when no one else in the room is talking at all) and we most emphatically do NOT sing along with any ambient music. ParTICularly a butchering of the wonderful "Got to Get You off My Mind". The woman in front of me on line was in flagrant violation of this code.

3. It was raining, and the gathering of wet people created an even more dank atmosphere than usual. This, while unpleasant, was not a problem. What WAS a problem, though, was that some bastard a few people ahead of me in line passed gas. Badly. And with the humidity in the room, the smell just hung there and we had no choice but to walk through and then stand in it. That is NOT right, it is NOT okay, and I damn near didn't make it anyway. When it hit, the man behind me in line had a look of such hurt and betrayal on his face that it bespoke not merely a nose but a soul in anguish. How could you, stranger on line? How could you?

When I finally left the post office (the whole thing took over an hour), it was with a feeling of great hatred. It had stopped raining, so I thought I would walk home and purge some angst. So there I was on the corner of Fulton St. beside a woman and her three girls, one in a stroller, when along comes some asshole booming down Fulton St. at at least 65 mph trying to beat a red light . . . and of course he swerves far right, goes through a massive puddle, and soaks us all before we can retreat.

To recap:

--Phoneless (still!)
--Shoddily customer serviced (trust me, that's how I wound up in the post office in the first place)
--Forced to walk through a fart-cloud
--Angry at learning too much about that chick's boyfriend's ex-girlfriend Shonda
--Covered in street water

NOT OKAY.

Because my time is not devoted exclusively to grief or to cell phone customer service rage, a quick update on other recent activities:

* Bridesmaided it up at my cousin's wedding.

I'd like to send a special shout-out to my skin for--for once!--waiting until after the highly-photographed event had passed to break out. I win!

* Saw a Mets game at Shea on Cinco de Mayo. As they were playing the Braves, whom I dislike a good deal, I actually rooted for them despite my unwavering Yankee fandom. (If you've got a comment on that, save it; it's a family tradition, geographically valid, and I've never chanted "[insert other team name] Suck" so I'm not your problem.) Anywho. As though designed to challenge my stance on not leaving games early except in extreme circumstances, the game went on for 14 innings. Fourteeen. Quartorze. Quattordici. At one point the Braves pulled ahead by a run and my friend Nat said, "Well, at least it will end soon." And I said that no, the Mets would score exactly one run and then go down in order. And I was right. It's not always good to be right.

My one real complaint: why the crap won't the soda vendors at Shea let me keep my bottle cap? I'm clumsy! I need closing capability or more than carbonation will be lost!

But my whining aside, it was a very good time on a lovely day. It's always great to attend a game with people who are willing to dance along with the ballpark DJ. Pics here:

* Got a new roommate as her predecessor went to travel the world. Do you know how terrible it is to know somebody who quits her job and travels the world? It's like a human reproach.

* Further solidified my adherence to the crazy cat spinster stereotype (tell me what's wrong with being a crazy cat spinster and maybe I'll work at fighting it) by getting Spike, who freaks out in regular carriers, an Outward Hound Pet-a-Roo Front Carrier. Spike's is in fetching red. I look for him to set new standards in adorability.

This represents the tail end of another misadventure in customer service that ended with the following outburst to my sister, Jonna: "I just want a goddamn cat bag! I'm 28 years old, why is this so fucking hard?"

Jonna took pity on me and got it. She is an excellent cat aunt. And she saved me from having to have another fight, so she is an awesome sister as well.

* Been reading lots of I Blame the Patriarchy and looking back wistfully to the days when I had a brain.

1. Listening to "I Got a Man". A lot. For 14 years, this song has brought joy and light to the world. My only regret is that it is not available for karaoke. For shame!

2. It has just come to my attention that the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency is a gentleman named Dick Pound.