My first suit

I wore my first suit on a hot June day just before I turned seven. I had not “dressed up” since my baptism and my entire family – two dozen aunts, uncles, cousins and people I’d never met – were going to witness it. I was to receive the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and a suit was a necessity. But a seven-year-old doesn’t care about all that stuff. He cares about playing and having fun and wearing whatever he wants. I know. My own son is seven.

My parents bought the suit at one of the many Portuguese Catholic ceremonial-wear shops on Bloor Street. The store is still there, just a few minutes away from where I live. They sell baptism gowns, religious jewellery, and fancy linens. And Communion suits, like the one I wore. It was a polyester three-piece and included a button-up shirt and oversized bow tie. Classic 1970s fashion with bell bottom pants and lapels as big as wings. I’ll admit, though, I kind of like the slanted pockets. Mercifully, because it was summer, my mother didn’t make me wear the vest.

I didn’t ever dress up as a kid so getting into that suit on a humid day was not fun. The shirt was stiff and felt tight on my neck. But while the jacket was constricting, the bow tie made me feel fancy. Once at my communion, packed into St. Agnes church with hundreds of other boys in cheap suits and girls dressed as brides, I started to seriously overheat. Polyester famously doesn’t breathe and I sweat on a cold day if there’s a warm breeze. My mother remembers fearing for my safety, as she looked at my hair, wet from sweat, plastered to my forehead, my eyes vacant. But the priest insisted parents stay away from their children during the ceremony. So she watched nervously from the end of the pew where I sat. She seemed miles away.

I felt feverish and confused as I waited to be called. The priest’s voice echoed around the huge church and I didn’t understand a word of his liturgical Portuguese. When it was finally my time, I was paired up with a little girl and we walked up the aisle towards the alter, like some tacky mass wedding re-enacted by children. I was overheated and my head muddled as the priest placed a small, thin disk of dry, flavourless bread on my tongue. I returned to my seat and a new panic overtook me, something they hadn’t mentioned in the months of catechism lessons: should I chew the wafer or just let it dissolve? Chewing made the most sense, it was bread after all. But wasn’t it disrespectful and probably blasphemous to chew The Body of Christ? So it slowly turned to mush. And I sat there in the pew, no different than I had been before Communion, just a lot sweatier.

I can only imagine how happy I was to get home and take off that awful suit.

[I would love to hear your memories of your first suit in the comments below.]

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