Under the Veil, Day 1

This will be a short one but here’s just a few stories of reactions from when I first put on the veil.

 

The first thing I did when I decided to wear it was start collecting scarves and matching up the ones I had with outfits they matched. For the first month or so I only had 1 scarf, my sparkly white one which was originally supposed to be a shawl to keep me warm in my homecoming dress from my sophomore year of high school (btw it was completely useless for that purpose). I spent a week before it left my bedroom on my head, practicing in front of the mirror, getting a feel for how to tie it and make it look decent. The first place I wore it out to was the one place I knew I wouldn’t be judged for doing so… Christ the Savior Orthodox Church. I was still a catechumen then, my conversion process was incomplete. I didn’t even leave the house with it on, I folded it and stuck in in my purse that morning and tied it on to my head in the church parking lot using the mirror of my red ford station wagon. When I was satisfied I stepped through the church doors. Most women and girls in my parish veil but they just throw a scarf over their heads and wrap it loosely for liturgy. What I was doing was still a tad unusual… our priest, Father Basil caught my eye and nodded at me with a smile on his face. I smiled back and stood in my usual place in the second row.

 

It was when liturgy ended and I went back out to my car that I saw a young couple… they were complete strangers to me, the man told me to “Go back to my own country” and his girlfriend/wife flipped me off… I just shook my head and got in my car. But secretly I was concerned… not about them… they were strangers so what did it matter what they thought? It was my parents’ reactions that I truly feared. My mom was a staunch, western, liberal-minded feminist who thought that dressing as immodestly as possible while still covering ones privates was the height of youth and freedom. My Dad on the other hand, was a soldier is the army core of engineers stationed in Tailand during the Vietnam war… he was nationalistic and not much for research about other cultures. I knew he believed the media perception of headscarves as symbols of oppression. I knew I would have to make them face this change eventually but I wasn’t quite ready, so I went to the one person in my family I could trust not to be so quick to condemn it. My beloved Grandmother… Thank You God for making me her granddaughter. Her reaction was about the same as it had been to the news of my conversion which had come some months earlier… That whatever brought me closer to God was good by her. This openness, this unconditional love that I’d known my whole life from her and only her was exactly what I needed to hear.

 

I pulled into my garage an hour and a half later… I decided to ease Mom and Dad into it, so I untied the scarf, brushed out my long brown hair so that it feel neatly past my shoulders and tied the scarf in almost a skull cap sort of style over only the very top of my head. I came in the back door of my house and found my mom sitting on the sofa reading a book, she looked up at me and studied me from head to toe as she always did when she hadn’t had the chance to approve or disapprove of my outfit. To my shock she smiled at me and said it was “cute”.

 

How they reacted to the full veil is another story…