Choices, Choices...

Hello.  Thank you so much for stopping by.  What you'll find here, today, is something of a mystery to me.

Not that I don't have things to talk about -- I think you already know me better than that.  It's just a matter of which direction I'd prefer to take today.  So many stories to tell.  'My Little Flood', for one.  A wandering, ultimately painful account of why I haven't had a haircut in three months, for another.  I already have a little written examination of some old photographs prepared.  And then there's the matter of the pile I've made, of gnarled sycamore twigs, outside our back door -- what on earth does that mean?

But I think, as I mentally paw through these possibilities, that I'm just going to ruminate on... Sunday.  (Not as weighted for me as Wednesday perhaps, but still...)

Where Has Sunday Gone, or The Last Shall Be First

Early on -- when I was old enough to understand that one day was different from another, and also old enough to walk, by myself -- I made a weekly round trip, two whole blocks each way, to the big brick Presbyterian Church and then back home.  My parents had decided I should go there, and quickly, that Sunday school class became a special place in the week.

My parents didn't go with me.  They didn't go to church at all.  I was sent by myself.  I dimly remember dressing, and then saying goodbye to my father and mother, as they lay in their bed, with the blinds pulled and the bedside lamps unlit.  I could barely see them.  I would be gone for at least an hour.

As for Sunday school itself, I have only a hazy sense of being suffused, that once a week, with an endless supply of sugary assurances about Jesus, whose picture beamed down on all us children -- children He was said vastly to prefer to grownups.  Perhaps I was too idealistic a boy, or had an unusual openness, or a dangerously indiscriminate capacity for believing in things, but I know I felt that I'd found an invisible, faithful and attentive Ally, Who knew me by name, and was watching attentively as I sat at a little table, being as good as possible, and soaking up sweetness.

One Sunday, bad Eddie (master of the Word, you may remember) met up with me on my way to Sunday school, and coaxed me into playing hooky.  Behind a hedge across the street from the front steps of the church, we watched together as the other children filed in for their weekly treat of Bible tales and miracles.  I still recall the inner sense of transgression, a kind of dirty regret, that instead of marching to the Sunday school room with the good kids, and sitting respectfully while the teacher told us even more wonderful things, there I crouched, dressed in my Sunday clothes and hiding behind a bush.  I have no idea what the trade-off actually was, or what Eddie and I did until I had to go back home.  I didn't let him lure me away from Sunday school after that.

Soon enough my parents had moved us all to another place to live, a ranch-style house in a near suburb of Belleville. Sundays lost their pole-star place in the week for me.  There was no church close by.  There was no bus into town.  And this was really too bad, I thought, because we really needed extra divine help right then, because the family was clearly breaking apart.

I assured myself that Jesus didn't mind it all that much, that I'd skipped Sunday school one time; I didn't think He blamed me because I couldn't find another place to go and sit at a little table, politely, beneath a picture of Him, on the wall, smiling.  In my eight-year-old way, I was so sure of the things I'd been told about power, and love, and caring.  Though a bit tall for my age, and with a kind of bad haircut, I was still, technically, one of the little children He liked so much, wasn't I?  Looking through the open bedroom window, I lay in my top bunk bed and begged Him to fix our family.  It shouldn't be that difficult.  My parents screamed at each other -- my mother hoarsely taunting my father for earning so little money -- and I pleaded.  They threw things at each other, and I tried to find, in the dark sky, the direction in which Heaven lay, so my begging would take less time getting to the One who could surely do something for us.  (Whether these fights happened on Sundays or not, I can't tell you -- although at that time, my father was generally only at home on the weekends.  Whenever they happened, for me these battles obliterated time, twisted space, and swallowed weeks whole)
   
Months later, and hundreds of miles away from that suburban ranch-style house, my brothers and I had been left at The Home, as it was called.  Sunday reemerged, as though thrust up through the earth's crust, a terrible twenty-four hour monolith.  In the Home, it was impossible to confuse Sunday with any other day, ever.

We would all troop to the small, cold, white Valencia First Presbyterian Church.  We had assigned pews, away from the other members of the congregation.  I remember feeling examined, as the whole lot of us filed in, to take our places and then sit through another long, plain, somber Sunday service, relieved only by the hymns.  There were droning sermons about things I didn't understand.  Flat-backed wooden benches that had never known any manner of cushion.  I looked for distraction, or meaning, anywhere.  (I remember deciding, after staring at it week after week, that the large gold letters "I H S", embroidered on the red velvet flaps under the pulpit Bible, stood for a quote from Jesus, and they meant " I Hate Satan".  I thought about that for a few Sundays)   Every three months, we ate a cube of stale white bread, and then drank a small cup of grape juice.  We slipped the empty cup into a little wooden holder with three holes in it, attached to the back of the pew in front of us, next to the hymnal rack.  The tiny, wide-mouthed glasses, and the little rack, and how they all fit together, were interesting to me.

I really did try to pay attention to these obviously important, sin-centered thoughts being earnestly strewn over us, but it was difficult.  I was fidgety, but also afraid of attracting a disapproving eye.  I certainly didn't dare fall asleep; there was a cautionary tale making the rounds at the Home right about then, that even the bigger, tougher Senior Boys seemed to believe:

A man and his wife were in church.  During the sermon, the man nodded off, and started dreaming about Hell.  Just when things in his dream were at their hottest, his wife noticed that he was sleeping,  and prodded him sharply with her elbow.  He jerked once, had a heart attack, fell over dead, and went straight to the Devil himself.

This story was repeated over and over, with great conviction, as though it had been in the newspaper.  I wondered -- without, of course, saying anything -- how, if the man died so suddenly, anyone knew what he'd been dreaming about.  I was becoming a different kind of boy.   

After church, back at the orphanage, Mrs. Boyce and the rest of the kitchen staff had a big lunch ready for us.  We all ate in the former mansion's large dining room, each at our own place at one of the big round tables filling the room.  (We changed places and tables every week, lest friendships  spring up).  We had cloth napkins in napkin rings.  We stood behind our chairs for the blessing.  We sat, with a great scraping of chair legs and rustling of clothing, and then began the most substantial meal we would have all week.  I especially remember the salty gravy that always accompanied whatever main dish was served -- ham or roast beef...

(Sometimes we had venison -- by special government-approved arrangement, policemen could bring to the orphanage any deer that had been killed along the road, and weren't too badly mangled.  The handyman, Mr. Fyfe, would clean and butcher it.  It was never announced that this was what we were eating, or where it came from, but I know this was at times our Sunday meal.  Looking back, there seems a kind of gruesome rightness to this, to our consuming, communally, the results of an inadvertent sacrifice.  Certainly more apt than cubes of bread and grape juice)   

After the big lunch, we were sent to our respective dormitories, and were supposed to take a mid-day nap.  In the late afternoon, the bell range, and we all filed downstairs and into the main hall, for another devotional period.   The youngest kids -- boys along one banister, girls along the other -- sat in rows, up on the steps of the tall, wide main staircase with the big stained-glass window at the top.  Off to one side, Miss Creswell was prepared to accompany some hymns, on the old upright piano.  When this extra session of Bible readings, and thoughts about what Jesus wanted from us now, and then some songs, had ended, we went back to the dining room, where we had a very simple evening snack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and bowls of ice cream.  In retrospect, it seems odd and improbably festive -- cavalier, even -- that a day otherwise steeped in predetermination, and lectures on the pitfalls of sin, assurances of harsh judgement and other sour things, should be brought to a close with the taste of sugar in our mouths.  When we'd finished our desserts, 'Pop' Campbell, the head administrator, would dismiss us with his usual admonishment to shine our shoes.

I don't remember whether the occasional night-time beatings were suspended because it was Sunday, but I rather doubt it.

(And now, I'm putting Sunday aside.   Next week perhaps?  Prolix as I am -- I wonder if I've ever actually used that word before -- I certainly have plenty more to say on the subject.  Maybe I can revisit it... once a week?  Until I've exhausted what I think I want to say?  I can tell you this -- future Sunday-centric posts will include long hikes in the country, visions of a mink stole, the occasional visit to a Catholic church and attendant problems with an aspergilium, and perhaps finally, some musings on Jesus and the reproductive cycle of the common squid)

Time now, though, for more coffee.

Thanks again for being here with me.


©  2011    Walter Zimmerman