I spent the better part of my childhood sitting on a pew in the balcony of Bethel Springs First Presbyterian Church, listening to my dad’s long vowels as he preached on predestination. Sandwiched between my older brother, Matt, and my little brother, Joel, I counted bald heads, doodled on church bulletins, and studied the stained-glass Jesus.
Reverend McAndrews was godlike and mysterious. Definitely not the same man who read to us from Dr. Seuss, ran through the sprinkler on steamy Ohio summer afternoons, or smiled as we played hide-and-go-seek in his Father’s house.
Though I can’t remember many of his three-point sermons, I have other good memories. One Sunday during a hymn, Matt and I sang loudly, changing the words to our liking, “Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear,” and crossing our eyes for added effect. When we sat back down, I rested the hymnal on the railing and fanned myself by riffling through the pages. Then it happened. Onto one of the fifty-one shining bald heads below, I dropped the hymnal.
It clapped to the floor, and then in the congregational hush, Mr. Ludema winced in surprised pain. I only looked down long enough to see necks craning up toward the balcony and then turning toward my father and then back to the balcony. Dad squinted to see Mrs. Ludema as she nursed her husband’s head and then looked up at the cause of the disruption. Me.
Dad stared at me for fifteen seconds. I know because I counted every one of them. I did not look away; instead I memorized his thick sandy hair fringed with gray streaks. I couldn’t see his eyes because the sun was reflecting on the lenses of his glasses. His mouth was closed, his thick jaw tense. The congregation waited for the Reverend McAndrews, and so did I. At last he said, with a nod to the balcony and a sigh, “And the Word has come down from on high.”
During responsive reading, his voice rose and fell so predictably, I was nearly lulled to sleep unless I pulled out a pencil to sketch the hills and valleys. “‘O give thanks to the LORD, for he is gooood,’” Reverend McAndrews read from Psalm 136. His voice grew louder and the pitch higher until the word Lord, where he paused and let it fall off to a low, soft, long, concluding gooood. We echoed, “‘For his steadfast love endures for ever.’” After repeating it twenty-six times, what I thought everlasting was the psalm itself.
I did not question the psalmist’s message until I was nine and Matt was fifteen and we crossed a crevasse of pain. It took struggling through that jagged blackness of doubt and fear for the girl in the balcony to finally consider the words, and to really connect with the man in the pulpit and the woman at the organ.
My mother looked just like Jackie Kennedy. I don’t know if our former First Lady could play the organ, but my mother could not, despite the expectations of the elders of BS Pres. (Such an unfortunate acronym, but one this preacher’s kid enjoyed flaunting.) The organ faced forward, so my mother’s back was toward the congregation, which could have been symbolic considering her reluctance to play the role. Though my mother’s keyboard technique lacked beauty and grace, her speech did not. My mother’s voice was soft and gentle, full of intricate words she shared, always believing in expanding her children’s vocabulary at every opportunity. Nothing about her projected strength, but I would learn she had enough for all of us.
The summer before I turned ten was idyllic—until August 3, 1970. At the time I didn’t know what that word meant, not having heard it in a sermon or one of Mom’s vocabulary lessons. But it perfectly describes a time when I thought the world was safe and good things lasted forever. What I couldn’t know then, but try to remember now, is how fragile and delicate are the moments we most treasure, and if they break into pieces, repairing means seeing anew.