The sun rises shortly before seven in the morning. At its first light, rays splay across the bay. I cannot help but think the breathtaking beauty of the natural portrait before me resembles a biblical painting.
The sunrise service is being held in a park with spectacular views of Grand Traverse Bay. The world is dipped in frost, and it looks as if God Himself has draped His creations in glitter and gauze.
Father Tristan, as he is known at the UCC church, takes the podium. I got to meet him briefly while it was still dark, and I was still on my first cup of coffee, but now I see him—pardon the pun—in a whole new light. He is wearing a black clergy shirt and collar with a bright golden stole that mimics the sun emblazoned with crosses.
Tristan has salt-and-pepper hair—none of the men’s real hair was visible under the Santa wig—round horn-rimmed glasses and a chiseled face. He resembles Clark Kent, if Clark had entered the clergy.
I look up at the sky.
Is it okay to think this way about a man of the cloth?
Tristan speaks: “For Christians, the reason for timing a service to coincide with the rising of the sun is simple. It was dawn when the first believers—in every gospel account, women—went to the tomb of Jesus, found the rock rolled away from the entrance and the body of Jesus gone. So it makes sense that, quite literally, this earth-shaking event would be celebrated as the sun comes up.”
My eyes drift to the sun.
For decades, my family attended sunrise service on Easter. The first one after my parents died, I remember waking early—not excited to retrieve the basket of candy at the end of my bed or to await the Easter Bunny—but to head to sunrise service. As I stood holding my grandparents’ hands while overlooking the bay on an early spring morning, I expected to see my parents again. I believed they would rise before my eyes and prove to me they existed, just like Susan wanted Santa to prove in Miracle on 34th Street that he could do anything.
“Lord, we lift our eyes to you.”
Father Tristan is saying a prayer. I close my eyes.
“As the sun rises, may this moment stay with us, reminding us to look for the beautiful colors of promise in Your word. Lord, we lift our prayers to You. As the dew air falls, may we breathe this morning in and know that like the earth, You sustain us, keep us and work within us always.”
I remember the cold Christmas morning—the first without my parents—when I got up, unable to sleep, and read The Polar Express. I needed to feel connected again somehow to my parents at Christmas. As I read, I could hear their voices in my head, as clearly as if they were snuggled beside in my bed reading to me.
“Seeing is believing, but sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.”
That morning, I got dressed in my holiday finest—a pretty velvet dress I’d never worn—and marched into my grandparents’ room and said, “We are going to church.”
My grandmother wept.
Suddenly, I think of Jordan, who I have not seen since the holidays, and I shiver.
“Amen,” I hear the parishioners say as one.
There is a hymn, and then the service is over. I wait as Tristan greets his parishioners as if they are old friends. He sees me and comes over.
“Let there be light!” he says with a laugh. “We can finally see one another.”
I smile.
His eyes sparkle blue like the bay.
Check one.
“Not that I haven’t already checked you out online,” he continues. “Not that everyone hasn’t checked you out online.”
I laugh.
“So what should I call you?” I ask. “Tristan? Father Tristan?”
“Could there be anything less romantic than calling me Father Tristan?”
“Tristan, it is.”
“I made brunch reservations at a little place just a few blocks away. You must be hungry after getting up so early and waiting for me to greet everyone. You up for a walk?”
We stroll into Traverse City, making small talk about the service. Tristan stops in front of a tiny coffee shop, packed with people. A line extends out the door. It is an old-fashioned joint, with guests seated at the counter, a cook slinging eggs and hash, and waitresses rushing around in aprons juggling coffee pots and platters of food.
“Now this is my kinda place,” I say.
“I had a feeling you might like it,” he says. “They make breakfast the way it should be.” Tristan pauses. “With lots of bacon and even more butter.”
Tristan heads to the hostess, and she greets him with a hug. He turns and motions toward me, and I cut the line with a feeling of complete embarrassment.
We are seated in a high-backed, red leather booth. We shrug off our coats.
“I could actually feel the Red Sea part,” I say. I glance around. “It’s like I’m with a celebrity.”
“You are! Didn’t you know?” he says with a chuckle. Tristan waves to a couple across the restaurant. “I actually made reservations weeks ago, so I’m not doing anything ungodly, don’t worry. Besides, no one questions a minister getting a seat first. It’s sort of like how passengers are relieved when they see a nun on their flight. Everyone feels very safe right now.”
A waitress with a name tag reading Sally walks up.
“Coffee, Father?”
He nods.
“Coffee?” she asks me.
“I’m on a morning date with a minister,” I say. “I need every advantage. Coffee, please.”
Sally’s eyebrows don’t just rise over her eyes, they almost fly off her face.
“Well, this is a first,” she remarks. “You better say a prayer your eggs aren’t overcooked this morning with the size of this crowd, though.”
She claps two menus down on the table before us and scoots away. We pick them up and study the options for a moment. Sally returns.
“Ready?” she asks. “Sorry, but it’s Easter Sunday. We gotta feed ’em and street ’em.”
“Well, it’s going to be the Skillet Scramble with bacon and biscuits and gravy on the side,” we say at the same time.
We look up from our menus and stare at one another in complete surprise.
“Well, this was meant to be,” Sally says. “As if the big man Himself had it planned.” She smiles. “Sorry, I had to. But you two certainly seem like a good fit.” Sally grabs the menus. “Like bacon and eggs.” She smiles again. “Sorry, I had to again.”
Sally sashays away, and I just look at Tristan.
“Speaking of bad jokes,” I start. “I just have to ask what your favorite book is?”
He laughs.
“Asking for a friend,” I say. “Actually, asking for myself as a bookseller.”
“Crime and Punishment,” he says.
“Seriously?” I gasp.
“No!” Tristan says with a laugh. “It was a crime and punishment to read in school. You know what it is,” he says. “But A Moveable Feast is a close second.”
“Seriously?” I repeat.
“This is Hemingway country,” he says. “And I love Paris.”
“I’m impressed. As do I.”
Tristan pushes his glasses up his nose and studies me.
“Do you know how hard it is for a minster to date?” he asks. “You wouldn’t believe who my parishioners try to set me up with—ninety-year-old great-great-grandmothers because they believe I only need ‘companionship.’ Oh, and the woman who has a sister who has a friend...”
I laugh. “Oh, I not only believe that, I’ve lived it.”
Tristan continues. “Then there are the casseroles.”
“The casseroles?”
“I receive about a half dozen casseroles a week from kindly women at the church,” he says. “I filled my freezer and then the one in the garage. I started to fill the ones at the church when Father Bill pulled me aside and told me why the women were being so kind. Turns out they’re known as The Casserole Queens. They’re on the hunt for a good man. And I don’t just mean a ‘good’ man, but they feel as if they were destined to meet a man of the cloth. I gained about fifteen pounds before I began to tell them all I had irritable bowel syndrome. If you think being a minister scares off some women, tell the rest you have stomach issues.”
I nearly spew my coffee.
“So you’re letting me know that being in my situation—social media’s Single Kringle—really isn’t as bad as your situation?”
“I’m saying that if anyone can understand what you’re going through, it’s me.” He waits a beat and then asks, “I know you’ve been set up with a couple of other guys. How did that go?”
Do I tell a minister I’m dating two men long-distance? I mean, I try not to even think about that so God won’t judge me. But if anyone could understand a long-distance relationship it would be a minister, right?
“Both are very nice men,” I say. “But I’m not quite sure they’re the one.”
Tristan raises an arm and pumps his fist in the air.
“Yes!” he says.
His black shirt stretches across his chest and his arms, and muscles pop underneath.
My face immediately flushes, and I wince as if a lightning bolt might appear out of nowhere.
“Are you feeling okay?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s my mind. Plays lots of tricks on me.”
“Join the club,” Tristan says.
Our breakfasts come, along with another round of coffee.
“This is good!” I say.
“Best breakfast in town,” Tristan says, taking a big bite of his scramble. “So, I guess you want to know why a guy like me was at the Santa Run in the first place as well as why a minister would use a terrible pickup line?”
“It sorta crossed my mind.”
“I’m not much of a runner actually,” Tristan says. “I grew up in Traverse playing ice hockey. My legs are too big for running.”
My mind whirls. I picture Hot Santa’s legs in his running shorts.
“I started as a teacher at an inner-city school in Chicago, and I used sports as a way to bond with the boys in my class. Sometimes, kids in junior high wouldn’t show up to class for days. I worried nonstop. I tried to start an after-school program as a way to keep the kids around and safe, but we didn’t have the money, so I did everything I could think of to give some of these children a semblance of love, family and normalcy.”
“That must have been a heart-wrenching job,” I remark.
Tristan nods and continues.
“I re-created holidays for them, throwing parties at school where I’d dress as the Easter Bunny, or a pilgrim, or, of course, Santa, as an innocent way to give them food and gifts, as a way to let them celebrate a holiday they might otherwise not. There was a boy in my class, Jackson, a kid with the most infectious giggle and the most voracious reader. He didn’t return to my class for a week. I went to his house and found out that he’d been shot. I sat with him in the hospital night after night, but Jackson didn’t make it.”
I put down my fork. “Oh, Tristan, I’m so sorry.”
“It really forced me to recalibrate what I wanted to do with my life. I’d always felt a calling, and I thought it was to teach, but it was actually bigger than that to me,” he says. “I ended up going to seminary school. I entered the Santa Run to raise funds for our church’s shelters in Traverse and Chicago. I’m not the type of guy who uses pickup lines or just approaches women out of the blue, but I admired seeing a woman dressed as Mrs. Claus. I thought, ‘Now here is a woman who knows herself, a woman who’s comfortable with herself. She doesn’t care what people think, or how she looks...’”
I laugh. “Gee, thanks.”
“And you were smart when we talked,” Tristan goes on. “I wanted to put myself out there for once. I feel as if my life is sort of just starting anew.”
“Me, too,” I say. “This whole thing has pushed me out of my comfort zone, and it’s reminded me that there are good men out there in the world. Mostly because I think I already dated all the bad ones.”
Tristan laughs.
“It’s also renewed my faith, in people and myself. So you know I’ve got to ask the obvious question here. Is faith important to you?”
“It is,” I say. I think of sunrise service. “Did you know I was named after the little girl in Miracle on 34th Street?”
Tristan shakes his head. “Love that movie.”
“I was sort of the opposite of her growing up, though. I believed as a girl not only in God and Santa but all the good in the world. And then my parents died. I grew up UCC but stopped going to church after that. I didn’t believe any longer. In anything. God was a fraud. Santa was a myth. Life was cruel. But I woke up the year after they died, the first Christmas without them, and felt a calling to read one of my parents’ favorite books. I returned to church, but I never really fully let myself believe because I was so scared of being hurt again.”
Tristan reaches out and takes my hand. His eyes are so understanding that I tell him about Jordan.
‘For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,’ Tristan says softly. “That’s Matthew 6:14. From the King James Version. I didn’t just make it up.”
I lower my head and laugh, and he gives my hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze before releasing it.
“I’m trying,” I say. “My grandma told me many years ago that it’s easy to have faith when you’ve never been tested. True faith appears when you seem to have lost everything.” I lift my eyes and look into Tristan’s. “When I go to church now, I often find myself staring at the stained glass windows. I think of all the work that went into creating them... I think of how much work went into creating each of us.”
I stop, my heart suddenly rising into my throat. “I feel now—at forty, after all I’ve been through in my life—as if my soul is a stained glass window dropped from heaven and then shoved back inside me, shards and all. They pierce me. And now I realize I would have it no other way for it makes me feel everything!—all the good, bad, dark, light, joy, pain—and I want to feel that. I have to feel that.”
“Maybe you should go into the seminary,” he says. “That was beautiful.”
“I feel like Sleigh By the Bay is my and my community’s adjunct church. We all come together at least once a week for something greater than all of us. We may bicker and fight, and differ on so many things, but faith and books give us a foundation from which to work.”
I hesitate and continue. “Now I have to ask the obvious question. Why didn’t you show up at O’Malley’s after the race?”
Tristan’s eyes widen and he shakes his head. “The ten-thousand-dollar question! I was running with a kid named Steph from the shelter who had never run before in his life. He was the one who goaded me to talk to you actually. Steph wanted to prove that he could do something he’d never done. He made it about a mile before he stopped, broke down and started bawling. It took me a half hour to convince him to go on, that he wasn’t a quitter. We ended up walking—and by walking I mean shuffling—the last few miles of the race. It took us over three hours to finish. By that time, he was cold, and I had to get him home to his mom. I’m so sorry.”
Sally returns and places a bill down before us. He picks it up.
“It’s the least I can do for abandoning you,” Tristan says.
“Just make sure to leave a good tip. The big guy’s watchin’,” Sally says. “Leave an even bigger tip if we helped make a love connection.”
Do you know when you have those moments where you can see your future clear as a bell?
This is one.
As Tristan reaches for his wallet, I can actually envision myself with this good, kind, handsome man. I can see Sundays together. I can see navigating between Traverse, Chicago and Petoskey. I can see a world filled with stained glass windows and oodles of books, faith and forgiveness.
We stand, and Tristan helps me on with my coat.
We head outside, past the line of people waiting and walk back toward the park. Tristan takes my hand, and—despite the chill in the air—I warm immediately. When we reach the park, Tristan says, “Oh, my gosh, my mother has a pin just like that. She wears it every Christmas. Brings back such wonderful memories.”
I had forgotten I was wearing it. I had forgotten I put it on my coat as “the test.”
I am only slightly exaggerating when I say I swear I hear angels singing.
“It does. I wear it as connection and protection.”
I want to give him a hint. I want to ask him, Look familiar? I want to make it easier for him.
For me.
“‘And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,’” Tristan says. “The angel Gabriel.”
I hold my breath.
“Your pin is actually different than my mom’s, though,” Tristan continues. “The red and green bejeweled angel, cheeks puffed, blowing a golden trumpet. My mom’s is simpler, a gold angel with diamond wings. It was her mom’s. I’ve never seen one like this before. It must be so special.”
The world around me seems to still. Everyone moves in slow motion.
Another nice man. Another good man. But yet another man who isn’t the one I met at the run.
I search the bay beyond him for an answer.
Isn’t the third time supposed to be a charm? I mean, c’mon, God, stop messing with me. Just how many women were dressed as Mrs. Claus at the race? And how many men hit on those women? The odds seem more insane than betting on a horse wearing sunglasses and rain boots to win the Kentucky Derby.
And yet here I stand, batting oh for three. I should be pulled from this lineup.
In the distance, a bell chimes, and I can’t help but think of church and a line from The Polar Express about the boy listening for a sound he was afraid he’d never hear: the ringing bells of Santa’s sleigh.
Will I ever hear the right bells?
My ears begin to ring, along with the bell, and the ringing in the cold air sings to me, You will never find the one, but maybe you can be happy with one of these men.
“I hope I can see you again,” Tristan says.
“I’d like that,” I say.
He leans in and kisses me. The kiss is better than I could have imagined, intense and filled with passion.
“Get a room, Father!” a kid on a bike yells as they whiz past.
We laugh and say our goodbyes.
As I drive home, I crank up the heat and roll down the windows. I need the sound of the bay to calm me, and the cold of the lake air to sober me.
My phone pings endlessly, everyone wanting to know how my date with Tristan went.
The ice on the bay is going through its early spring cycle of melting and refreezing, unsure of exactly what season it is.
“I understand,” I say to the water as I drive.