Who Is UU?

During the interview with Alex, I asked him about his favorite stuffed toy. His favorite stuffed animal is Pigeon. I asked what kind of animal Pigeon is, and Alex thought that was a pretty silly question – he’s a pigeon, of course! But then he told me that his other favorite animal is Tigey, and Tigey is a lion. Maybe the obvious answer isn’t always the right one, and maybe there’s more than one answer. Maybe it’s a good idea to keep asking questions. That’s something Bobby and Kayla have figured out, and something that brought them to UU Meriden.

Kayla grew up in Tolland, a town east of Hartford, and Bobby grew up in Scotland, a small village in eastern Connecticut. Attending church was important in both Kayla and Bobby’s families. Kayla was raised Catholic, and activities at church were a big part of her childhood. It was a great place to make friends and especially helped make middle school easier. Her church was a community of people looking out for each other. Bobby was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, and made close connections to other members of his faith. Bobby’s father lived down in Virginia, and Bobby’s “brothers” – members of his congregation – stepped into a paternal role. 

However, as much as Kayla loved being part of a community of faith, Kayla found that she didn’t believe her conservative church’s dogma. Similarly, Bobby wanted to leave his church, which he describes as conservative and inflexible, for a long time. Bobby recalls sitting in church “often towards the end, just looking at the scene, and I thought ‘what if I just never heard about this?’”. Once Bobby had moved away for college, without the reinforcement from being close to the members of his church, he no longer felt like he had a responsibility to pretend. After Bobby left the church, he lost all his friends, and even the men from the church he’d seen as father-figures turned their backs on him. 

Bobby and Kayla met when he was her waiter at a Friendly’s. His section was closed but they sat her in his section anyway. He wasn’t really happy, but he hid that from Kayla. “I was good at faking it. That’s why I was a good waiter.” Kayla came back the next day, and every week after that. “Very quickly we were talking in a relationship.” Her parents didn’t approve at first – “until they met me!”, Bobby clarifies. He was only allowed to see her by attending the same church. 

Bobby and Kayla’s wedding was ice cream themed. They had an ice cream bar, their centerpieces looked like sundaes, and the decorations had ice cream details. They got married at the church Kayla attended as a child, and had a reception at a tree farm in Canterbury. 

Bobby got undergraduate degrees from Quinebaug Valley Community College and from Eastern Connecticut State University, then a PhD from UConn. He is now a math professor at Gateway Community College. “I really like being at the community college now,” he says, “because I can speak to those students about my experience being similar to theirs.”

Kayla taught high school for six years. To continue her teaching career, Kayla needed to enter a masters program. She realized that she was serving two roles in the classroom, serving as both a teacher and a social worker, and decided to make her master’s degree part of a career change. But another part of the story is that Kayla was pregnant. She decided to “take a year off” – a pretty inaccurate way to describe staying home with Andy while also doing the internship for her social work degree! Now Kayla helps adults with eating disorders, and with general mood disorders like anxiety and depression. She’s in private practice, and has just passed a licensing exam, so she no longer needs a supervisor. 

I asked Kayla whether helping people through their problems felt draining. She said it is not. “If you can believe – it’s the calmest part of my life.” The least calm part of Kayla and Bobby’s lives is the most interesting – their two sons, Andy and Alex. 

Andy is six years old and he goes to first grade. His favorite subject at school is math, where he’s learning about measuring. Andy likes to play on the Switch when he’s at home. His favorite game is Super Mario 3D World. He doesn’t have a Switch 2, but his favorite game on the Switch 2 is Donkey Kong Bonanza. He likes to watch the TV show Teen Titans. He has “a million” stuffed animals. His favorites are Violet (a little purple bear from his great grandmother), Emma (a little crocheted cat from a family friend), and Uni (a unicorn from Kayla). After school, Andy takes a class where he learns clowning!

Alex is five years old and goes to preschool. In the fall he’ll go to the same school as Andy, but they won’t play together at recess. They’ll be on the same bus, though! His favorite show might be The Cat in the Hat, but it’s probably Teen Titans, because he’s only seen The Cat in the Hat movie. He likes playing Sonic games. His favorite stuffed animals are Pigeon – the pigeon from Elephant and Pigeon – and Tigey, the lion. After school, Alex is learning soccer.

Alex, Andy, Kayla, and Bobby have two cats, Twix and York, who are the same colors as the candies.

During the pandemic, “we were always in the house and always together,” Bobby explained. Isolation made the days and weeks blend together. Kayla recalled “very much missing the community” of church. UU Meriden offered Bobby and Kayla a chance to find that community again, without the dogma they had disagreed with. UU Meriden quickly became part of their routine – “a Sunday thing that we do that just says our week is over. We’re gonna listen to Tony.” They started with online services, then in person outdoors. It was great finding a church that was suitable for two little kids. UU Meriden was “a third space”, and one in which “our children – children in general – are welcome.”

As pandemic restrictions eased, the McDonalds came to attend UU Meriden less frequently, but then Alex and Andy started asking questions about faith and morality and religion. Bobby and Kayla weren’t sure what to do or say. Bobby says that he was thinking “I’m supposed to get them these answers, but my answers are different than what my father would say.” Their instinct was to communicate their uncertainty and to say that they too had questions, but that wasn’t enough for the kids. This brought back some feelings of guilt for Bobby – was it okay that his kids were growing up without the type of religious education he’d gotten to experience? When other family members started presenting definitive answers to the boys – answers that Bobby and Kayla didn’t agree with – they decided it was time to return to UU Meriden. “It’s not getting answers to those questions. It’s getting support.” 

Having grown up in rigid churches with very strict rules that they disagreed with, they really liked the idea of coming to a multi-faith church. They were excited that “right on the website, it said, you could be sitting next to a Christian, an atheist, a Buddhist, a Jewish person”. Having left two different faiths, Kayla and Bobby wanted a place that was gonna be supportive of their uncertainty about what they or their kids should believe.

In his free time, Bobby likes video games. He especially likes big, open world adventure games like the Elder Scrolls and Zelda series. Lately, he’s been enjoying Stardew Valley. “It’s cozy . . . I spend my whole day being stressed out.” In Stardew Valley, Bobby gets to relax watering his flowers, playing with his goats, and making friends with people in town.

Bobby plays D&D with friends every Friday. He’s played with the same group of friends since around the time he met Kayla. These are friends of Kayla’s friends. He used to LARP with this group. He and his friends have been playing the same Dungeons and Dragons campaign for the past 15 years. 

Kayla’s joined Bobby for a very small number of special occasions, but mostly it’s an opportunity to have lives outside of one another. In her free time, Kayla makes a lot of art. Right now she’s making watercolors, but she used to make and sell stickers, and she’s made pottery. She also loves listening to live music. She likes alternative rock bands, like the 1975, the Killers, Needtobreathe, Switchfoot, and also pop music, like Noah Kahan, Bleachers, and the Fray

Bobby doesn’t like concerts nearly as much – he does not like loud music or big crowds – but he plays a lot of music. He learned the saxophone in school, and he started learning the guitar last summer and plays every day. Kayla and Bobby disagree about his level of musical talent. Kayla says Bobby is very talented and can pick up and play any instrument. “I can make sound,” says Bobby. Bobby played the saxophone at school, and his mom played too, but he didn’t join his high school marching band. As a Jehovah’s Witness, he wasn’t supposed to be that close to people outside of the faith. He wishes that he’d known as a child what he knows now, and had done marching band despite what his church felt. 

Kayla and Bobby have both taken a look at strongly dogmatic religions and decided that they aren’t right for them, and that they aren’t right for their family. They found UU Meriden because it’s not a church with all the answers, but a church with questions. It’s a place where their family can come and be with a community of people who don’t all see eye-to-eye, but who’ll teach Alex and Andy with an open mind and with love.