Every darned year when I was a young girl, the county Baptists picked a church to hold a sunrise service for girls in the CGIT groups. CGIT stands for Canadian Girls In Training.
I was forced to go to the group in our little church, and I hated it. I like Sunday School, but not CGIT. It made no sense to me at all. Whenever I asked anyone what we were training for, the only answer I ever got was "to be a good person in society." I already was one. I didn't need some women at Church telling me I needed to train for what came naturally.
Anyway, the Sunrise Service was a nightmare for me. Not for my older sister or any of the other girls. Just me. I have a weak system and tend to get sick easily. So having to get up at 5:30am when I was used to rising at 8:00am always threw me off.
I at least needed to eat something when I got up, but oh no, they would serve us breakfast after the service, so I was never allowed any food before we went. That right there made me sick.
By the time we arrived at the designated church in the cold and dark, I was ready to throw up. Which I promptly did. Every stinking year.
I was weak and pale and exhausted from all that throwing up, and then I had to sit through a solemn service in the church for an hour and try not to heave some more. A whole hour of boring, I might add.
Down in the church basement, tables were set up with place settings for all the good little girls and women after the service.
I liked cornflakes, but these came in tiny boxes, and I think we were supposed to be awed by this. Actually, the other girls all were - year after year.
The boxes had a perforated opening at the top, like two little doors. You poured the milk in and then ate. Picture it. Soggy cornflakes in a soggy cardboard box - so disgusting to me at any time, let alone when my poor stomach was sick already.
I went hungry. One bite of that horror and I wouldn't have made it to the little girls' room a second time.
After another half hour of noisy girl din and even noisier eating, I finally got to go home.
No amount of begging ever made my mother change her mind about forcing me to go. A neighbor lady even said I should stay home because my system couldn't handle it. She was probably tired of having to clean me up every Easter morning before dawn in somebody else's church.
Once I got home, I ate a little and then I had to go to Sunday School at ten, and then Church at eleven, and the smell of those powerful Easter lilies in the sanctuary sent me running for the washroom again.
I doubt that Easter Sunday was all about making a little girl sick in those days, but that's all it ever did for me.
Thanks to CGIT and my mother.
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