Long, boring family issue, but with minimum drama. Here’s the sitch:
As some of y’all may know, I come from a fairly large family. Among my several sisters is one I’ll call Jessica here because I can’t remember what pseudonym I’ve used for her in the past and see no real reason to bother checking. She’s is a few years older than I and has a single child, a girl in her mid-teens whom I will call Tess. Jessica and I used to be extremely close, each other’s best friend; now we are not. Earlier posts of mine may give the impression that the fractures in our relationship are entirely her fault, but I’d say the blame is largely mine as well. The strained relationship does not extend to Tess, who is a great little kid. (Well, she’s often a mouthy brat, but that doesn’t bug me, as she’s also funny as hell when she’s being mouthy.)
Anyway…Jessica is a Pentecostal Christian who thinks that anyone who doesn’t adhere to the exact teachings of her church is doomed to Hell. This is sometimes a source of friction between us, as I am an technical agnostic but practical atheist. That said, I still attend services, because the congregation I belong to is extremely liberal. My best friends outside my family belong to that church, and they do a lot of good works in the community I have no problem supporting both financially and with the sweat of my brow.
One of my church’s ministries is aid to poor families. This consists of a twice-weekly giveaway of clothing and other needfuls to homeless persons, and a once-monthly giveaway of food to families in need. A few months ago I was at our father’s house and noticed that he still had a good number of my mother’s clothes in boxes. (She died a few years back).) I suggested that he donate those clothes to us. Jessica objected, opining that giving the clothes would be an implicit support of the open-to-gays church I belong to, and thus an endorsement of eeeevvvviillll.
Now fast-forward to this week. Tess is a member of some school organization that requires its members to engage in a set amount of volunteer work per quarter, and in return she gets certain privileges. Being a teen, she has goofed off and needs to find a way to get her hours in. They belong to a big church in town which, so far as I can see, does nothing for the community whatsodamnever. So Jessica asked me if I could arrange for her to work with the ministry I referred to earlier, which I am running at the moment. I told her, truthfully, that I couldn’t see it working, because the hours the closet is open are school hours for Tess, and though we do scut work when Tess is available, those slots are full. But earlier today, a couple of the kids who do the cleaning and sorting of the closet during the time Tess can help out told me that they are having to drop out this weekend. In other words, I could slot Tess in easily.
But I’m not inclined too. I mean, she’s a good kid and all, but her mother’s motives her strike me as a little mercenary. She was resolutely against the church till it was to her advantage (or rather her child’s advantage) to participate in something we were doing. This annoys me. And yet, I tend to think that if this were one of my other nieces, I would be probably have picked up the phone and told her I’d pick her up tomorrow morning.
Am I being a jerk?
