Pound Cake and the Sabbath Don't Mix

My language and debating skills were tested today when I “came out” to my host mother as an atheist.

It was the pound cake that started it. We’ve been overrun with eggs for the last few weeks. The chickens just won’t stop laying them (my cholesterol must be at a record high). Last week, I asked my mother back home about some recipes that would use up eggs. She suggested pound cake “I always look up those recipes and then see the number of eggs required and say never mind.” She was right, one cake called for 5 eggs (3 sticks of butter and 3 cups of sugar (it was a Paula Dean recipe)). So I made 2 loaves of pound cake and they turned out wonderful. My host mother was overjoyed. I took some to work and the other teachers acted like they had never eaten anything so good. I brought it to another volunteers place for the weekend and we made strawberry short cake for the first time in a year. It was good cake.

My host mother liked it so much that she requested I make it again the following weekend. I said sure, of course, hey it’s something to do in a place where there’s nothing to do.

I had spent Saturday shopping in Iasi (the nearest major city). I had gotten back in the late afternoon pretty tired from lugging all my groceries home in the heat of the day. Around 7 pm my host mother asked when I was going to bake tonight and I told her I was planning on doing it tomorrow. At this she was a little taken aback and simply said “you can’t use the oven on Sundays”.  And I, though I had a feeling where this was going, said “why not?”

Let me just pause here and say I knew “why not”. I have this terrible tendency where I enjoy inciting people into debate. Even when I know I have nowhere near the language level to support a well thought out religious debate, I bring one up. I could have just said “sure I’ll bake the cake tonight”. But no, I said “why not?” I believe I get this charming and quirky albeit troublesome trait from my father, Thanks Dad!

So, I say “why can’t I use the oven on Sundays?” and I get a full explanation about how it took God six days to create the earth and on the seventh day we’re suppose to rest. Just to fill the people back home in, many Romanians practice something similar to rules of the Jewish Sabbath. They don’t wash clothes, cook, I wasn’t allowed to knit, or plant my herb garden. So this explanation wasn’t surprising to me. But my response to her seemed to come as quite a shock. She and I had had the “I’m an atheist and I don’t believe in god” conversation before, though clearly she hadn’t taken me seriously. Because when I said “well I don’t believe in God so I don’t have a problem baking on Sundays.” She flipped her shit.

I want to jump in here again and say none of this conversation was said in anger. I have a wonderful relationship with my host mother and completely respect her religious views. And she knows that. In fact it was something I repeated quite often during the conversation that followed. It just gets to a point sometimes when it’s frustrating living in a house (for two years) where you have to follow rules created by someone you don’t believe even existed. But once again, though there was a bit of tension (though, when is there not when discussing differing religious views?) the conversation was quite light, we were both smiling and laughing throughout it. Dishes were not thrown, tears where not shed, voices were not raised. Unless I missed something big in translation, which is entirely possible, things ended well.

So we get into it. She starts quoting scripture, a lot of which I’ve actually read. I try to explain that she doesn’t believe in Islam or Hinduism, how is it any different that I don’t believe in her religion. All in Romanian. Then she tells me a story about the devil. And I have to state again that I don’t believe in him either so the story doesn’t mean anything to me. Then she asked me where my soul goes when I die. Now just think a second how hard that question might be to answer in your mother tongue. And then try picturing that answer in a language you’ve only known for a year. I’m sure I sounded ridiculous and very unconvincing. Not that I was trying to convince her of anything other than the fact of my own belief (or lack thereof). She had a very hard time swallowing that I believe there is nothing but this life and the normal people in it. I think being a Scientologist (I would have had to explain what it was of course) would have gone over better than being an Atheist. And once again, while she was explaining her beliefs to me I would continually say “that’s great for you, it’s just not for me”. I tried to work in the word respect as much as possible (luckily it’s the same in English as Romanian).

Just as I thought I couldn’t handle any more of this circular, philosophical conversation in a foreign language. Her brother knocked on the kitchen window with a sack of potatoes on his back and said he needed her help with something. Our parting words were me-“I’ll bake tomorrow”, her- “I’ll bake tonight”.

I have I feeling though, I’m going to bake it tonight. Just in case I have missed something big in translation and she’s actually really mad at me. ;)