Chance Encounter

It's not everyday that you get to meet an unforgettable character.  Whether by chance or some sinister twist of fate, I found myself in that position today.

First of all, a terrible cold has plagued me for the last 4 days, creeping its way through my body, from my clogged up sinuses to the ever-growing tickle in my throat that makes me want to cough my lungs loose, it continues to make its way through my respiratory system with reckless abandon.  I actually lay in bed this morning and fought that battle with myself.  You know the one, where you know your body is not going to keep up with the demands of the day, yet you feel the only option before you lies in your responsibility to others.  So I dragged myself up and got ready, dropped my boy off at school, drove up to the center and got the van and started my day of picking up senior members to attend Senior Action for the day.

In a way, this day snubbed me with irony at every turn. Off for 5 days in a row, I didn't recover from my cold fast enough to get back to normal before going back.  The new van driver was supposed to have started today, but got held up by HR paperwork.  The rain is a bitch when you're loading and unloading elderly folks from that large vehicle.  You could say if imaginary straws were drawn for this day, I drew the short one.

Once I got the van and started driving down Slater rd. I started to feel better about things.  The ride up highway 11 o pick up one of my members is a pleasant drive--relaxing even, and I started to look forward to it.

Then I happened upon a chance encounter with a woman named Karen.

At the end of Slater rd. I pulled up to the traffic light which was red at the moment.  I stopped with my right turn signal on, looked to the left, let two cars go, then looked back up at the light.  In that short amount of time the light had changed to green, so I while looking to the right out my windshield, proceeded to turn left.  Suddenly I heard a scraping and crunching sound.  "Crap!" I said.  "I hit someone.!"  I couldn't even see what or whom' I'd hit.

I got out of the van and ran around to see for sure what I had hit.  It was another car.  The woman inside wore her long graying hair in a ponytail.  She smelled of cigarettes and her car was filled with garbage, prescription bottles, you name it.  At first glance I thought she was elderly and I felt so badly that I reached in and hugged her and told her and asked if she was okay.  She said she was fine, but she was worried about her car and worried someone was going to hit her from behind.  I told her turn her flashers on as I called the highway patrol to report the accident.  Once we moved our vehicles out of the way, I invited her to come sit in the van with me where there was AC so she would not get so hot.  This woman was a character!

She had an expensive smart phone, but no service on it.  I had t let her use my phone to call her husband and daughter.  When she got out of her car and saw that her door was dinged and her tire was flat she went into panic attack mode.  I had to help her breathe through it and try to keep her in the moment with me instead of letting her mind rush off to the worse case scenarios of the future.

Her abusive husband showed up--yelling at her and then trying to yell at me.  I relished the opportunity to stand up to him and tell him he would not speak to me in that manner.  The lady asked me how did I do that without being scared.  I didn't have a real answer for her, I just know that a man isn't going to speak to me that way, no matter who he is/

Apparently it was a busy day for the Highway Patrol.  We waited 3 hours for an officer to arrive to file a report.  Three hours I was with this woman and intermittently her husband and 21 year old daughter who has suffered numerous serious injuries from car and 4 wheeler accidents.

The thing is, when you meet people in Marietta, you never really know what kind of person they are at first. This lady, whom at first glance I would have guessed was in her 70's, was only 53. She smoked like a chimney, then confided in me that her doctor told her she has heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, none of which she manages with any kind of medication. She's had cancer removed from her face and has been told if she doesn't stop smoking she will end up losing more skin on her face. I spent a long time talking to her about how important it is to take care of yourself by accepting that you have illnesses and taking steps to mange them. Her response was, "I don't claim any of that." I guess if you don't acknowledge something, it doesn't exist, huh?
I learned all about her 12 grandchildren and her youngest daughter who by the misfortune of 2 separate accidents has suffered head injury and partial paralysis of her right side.  I learned that her daughter was airlifted from an accident she caused on Highway 25 in Traveler's Rest a year or so ago, and that as a result of her accident on a 4 wheeler years before that, she has a "Titanic" plate in her head now.  I learned lots of new phrases and words I'd never heard in such contexts before.  I learned that if a person gets badly burned, they can get a skin "draft" that will fix them.  That "Titanic plates" can fix head injuries, and that the past tense of "Sperm Donation" is "Sperm Doned."  I got a front seat show to the daughters tattoo display, front, back and sides as she partially undressed beside Geer Highway right in front of a State Trooper.

"See her purdy angel wings?  I didn't even know she had them till I saw her in the ICU after her second accident." her mother beamed.

"They're....Nice...." I said. I wanted to say, "Put your clothes back on girl, I don't need to see your angel wings, your bible verses or your matching doves on your butt dimples.  To each her own, but if I don't ask to see your most intimate tattoos, it's probably best to keep em private.

Today was the first time I accidentally told someone her husband had cancer as well.  Total mistake on my part, but she made me walk right into it.  She told me that her husband recently had blood work done and it showed an elevated white blood cell count.  She said he had no infections and that he was very secretive about his appointment with his doctor after the blood work.  Then, she said, a few days later he called her into the bathroom to show her a piece of bloody tissue paper.  "Oh, it's just hemorrhoids," she said she told him.

"Well," she said he replied, "I didn't tell you last week, but the doctor said I have cancer."

As she relayed this story to me see seemed confused.  "Why would he say that to me?" she asked me.  "What does that even mean?  White blood cells don't mean you have cancer and if he has cancer he might die and I don't know how to take care of anything without him.  Why did he say that to me?" She pleaded with me.

Exasperated at this point, I gently said to her, "Do you think that might have been his way of telling you that he does, indeed have cancer?"

She began to cry again.  I could see her mind racing ahead to the future, his death, her financial ruin, her feeling lost and unable to take care of herself.  I tried to reel her back in to the present and that worked.  I tried to give her some kind of hope to cling to--maybe there's treatment that can help him, maybe it's not aggressive cancer, maybe its something he can beat.  She remembered her daughters fight and decided that her husband could make it through cancer if her daughter made it through both accidents.

You hear all the time to be kind to others, because they could be fighting a battle you don't even know about.  I am the first to admit that I had a true encounter with someone today that rates right up there with the Twilight Zone experience; but all the same, she was human and I just as human as she.  She's a woman who never learned to take care of her own physical health--she was more concerned about the dings in her car than her high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.  She's a woman who is somewhat controlled and at least verbally beaten down by her spouse--a spouse she's so dependent on that if he dies, she son't know how to do life.  And that spouse she depends so much upon likely has cancer.  She has a daughter with severe disabilities who will likely need care for the rest of her life.

I didn't tell her much about me personally.  I just listened and let her talk, finding some of her language anecdotes highly entertaining.  I tried to keep my patience and help her stay calm in the midst of a highly stressful situation.  Then when the police got there she turned into a monster with two heads, arguing with the cop, telling him I said things I didn't say, suggesting that she wasn't beside me in my blind spot, etc...I could have felt angry I guess, after having kept her in the van with me for hours running the air so she could breathe better, letting her eat my breakfast and use my phone and giving her information on Medicare, Disability and Medicaid for her daughter, but what good would getting angry do?

I'm just glad everyone got out safe.  No one needed any titanic plates in their heads and no one had to get skin drafted.

We won't even go into the story about Karen's real father who "Sperm doned" her.   I can't even.

God bless us everyone--Especially Karen.  Hopefully life will look much brighter for her again soon.

And hopefully I will not "run into her" again anytime soon.

Nothing But Blue Skies

It's early summer, or late spring, whichever you prefer to call it.  Here in SC winter often shockingly gives way to summer without much warning in the way of springtime.  This year the cold seemed to linger far too long before giving way to sweltering hot days and humidity laden afternoons that try to steal your breath away.  Over the last week rain began to make a daily appearance, either by tapping on our roofs all day long, or by gathering darkly in a far corner of the sky, then descending in a deluge almost without warning.

Yesterday while I waited in the car line at school with my sunglasses on I suddenly realized I didn't need them anymore.  Headed South from home, the sun shone directly through the windshield, necessitating my glasses and sun visor.  When I turned into the school parking lot though, the sky on the other side greeted me with low, dark, foreboding clouds.  They stretched from the trees, far up into the sky, casting their ominous shadow over everything.  At one point my car sat situated so that on one side of me I saw darkness and on the other, a perfectly sunny day.  At the time I merely sat in awe of nature.  I pondered how two such opposing forces could exist in the very same sky.  Had I never turned from the road I from which I started I might never have seen that dark sky or been aware that in a few short minutes, I would end up driving through such heavy rain that I could barely see the road. 

The rain fell so hard on my car that it drowned out the sound of the podcast Charlie and I tried to listen to as we drove into town.  Puddles formed quickly in the road, so deep that as I drove through them they tried to pull my car toward the edge of the highway.  I slowed down, of course, giving full attention to my driving.  We turned off the podcast and sat in silence, just listening to the rain pummeling the roof of the car, hoping that soon we might drive out of that storm and once again find the other half of the day--the part where the sun shone brightly and we could once again turn the radio on.

Lately I feel as though inside my head a storm brews.  So many things happen in the world, and now, thanks to social media and news everywhere we look, we can't avoid knowing without making a willful effort to avoid knowing.  Much like avoiding seeing that storm by staying on the road on which I first started my journey yesterday, most of us try, in life, to not see things that challenge us or make us feel afraid.  Sometimes just hearing something that goes against what we believe and hold deeply as truth scares us.  It gets our hackles up, makes us defensive.  We search out that route where we began, when we saw nothing but blue skies ahead--no challenges, no  information that threatens
our stability on the road or storms so loud they drown out what we really want to hear.

Today I saw the news about Paige Patterson's removal from his position with the Southern Baptist Association's Seminary as a result of his past comments and teachings regarding violence and sexual assault against women.  I admit, I felt relief that finally something seemingly is being recognized about the danger of the attitudes that he and others like him perpetuate among members of the largest protestant denomination in America.  Unfortunately those attitudes and beliefs now invade the denomination, and many of the Baptist off-shoots of Southern Baptists, like the Independent Fundamentalists, the Free Will Baptists and  Missionary Baptists.  The idea that women must take a back seat role to men in all things, in my experience, is a dangerous one, despite scripture that seemingly commands women to subject themselves to the wills of their husbands, or if they have no husbands, their fathers, and if they have no father, their pastor.  The argument is often softened with, "Paul also commands that husbands love their wives as Christ loves the church, and if husbands do what they're supposed to do, then women will find it easy--even safe, to submit to the will of her husbands."


If I wanted to argue Biblical ideology I could.  I spent the first 30 years of my life in an Independent Baptist church, deeply involved in studying scripture on my own and with the guidance of pastors and teachers who gave their own perspectives as to how those scriptures should be interpreted.  Being fundamentalists, we were taught to take scripture in its most literal form while also hearing regularly that to question the authority of our pastor would lead us down the wrong spiritual path.  Never once, in all those years, did a pastor, preacher or teacher actually speak about scripture in its true context. 

Instead of arguing Biblical ideology, let's talk about the word "context."  As a Fundie, I was always taught "People will try to confuse you by using pieces of scripture out of context."  However, not one person ever looked at scripture in its true context, historically, socially, or even with consideration of the attitudes and beliefs of the time period in which they were written, and then explained what they meant.  In the Baptist world, church members are encouraged to study scripture for themselves, then apply it to their lives today--two thousand years after it was written.  Surely times have changed a bit since then, right?

In Biblical times men often had more than one wife.  In fact men often had harems of sorts, with numerous concubines to satisfy their sexual appetites and provide them with  children, yet by choice, we do not follow that Biblical practice today.  Even in the New Testament, we are taught that if a woman's husband dies, her husband's brother is to take her as his wife, even if he already has a wife.  If that happened in any church today it would be positively scandalous.  Bible scholars fail to mention that in the social climate that existed during Biblical times, women were little more than currency.  If you were female in those days, your fate lay directly in the hands of your father, or your husband, or even a brother.  You made few choices of your own--women were traded like cattle, told to stay silent, to keep themselves at home, care for their husbands and not make waves.  Women were blamed for the lustful sins of men, while the men themselves took no responsibility for their actions.  If your husband thought that you, upon your wedding night, were not a virgin, he could abandon you, which for a woman of that time could mean a cruel existence, or even death.  Women followed the constricts of their day because to not follow them meant struggle, poverty, starvation, they would find themselves ostracized from everyone they knew.  We thankfully have evolved as a society, past those old constructs now.  For the life of me though, I cannot figure out why we hang onto some parts of those old ideas, and throw out others, as if they never existed in scripture to begin with. 

These kinds of thoughts continue to gather in my head over the last couple of days, making my mind feel as heavy and dark as those thunderclouds hanging low in the sky over my son's school yesterday.  I try to keep the thoughts to myself--I know they are not appreciated, I know they threaten people whose beliefs follow a straight line where a storm of questions and stories of real lives torn apart by their deeply held beliefs never blows them off course.  But not looking away from your own path doesn't mean another entire world of experience doesn't  exist.  It is there, looming darkly over all of us, if only we can find the courage to look at it, examine it, and take measures to understand it.

Millions.  I mean millions of women, and children go through life with the heavy weight of abuse, sexual exploitation, even rape and molestation on their backs.  A lot of these things happen to them at the hands of the husbands to whom they are told they must submit if they truly want to honor God.  Many of them experience sexual assault by clergy members or even just men who sit on the pews near them every Sunday.  Trusting their pastors, the leaders of their church, millions of women, families of children who were molested, go to those leaders for guidance when horrific things happen to them.  Millions of those same people hear, "You, as a Christian, must forgive them and keep quiet about this.  It could destroy that man's ministry if you tell people what he did to you."  They're accused of provoking assault, made to apologize in front of the entire congregation for having been sexually assaulted by a member of the church staff.   They've been told their virginity is worth more than their very existence at times. 

Domestic abuse in America is at epidemic proportions.  I find it hard to believe that religious beliefs do not in some way contribute to this problem.  Empowering men while completely stripping women of all power cannot lead to good things for society at large.  One in 5 women (who actually report abuse) have or will experience an abusive relationship in their lifetime.  Think of 5 female friends you know.  One of them either has been abused in some way, or will be.  Maybe that person is you.  Who would you go to for help? 

The problem with submission, and even the idea of a man loving his wife as Christ loved the church is this: how far do we take it?  Who decides?  Who decides whether a husband is loving his wife as well as Christ loves the church?  Is a mere mortal man, imperfect as all humans are, even capable of loving a wife with the same kind of love God supposedly showers upon the church?  And if God loves the church so much, why is "the church" so often the very place where women and children in particular, are harmed in such life-changing, life-destroying ways?   Who decides these things for us, when we cannot appeal directly to God himself for a direct answer?  As Baptists, you'd depend on your pastor as a spiritual leader to give you guidance on just how far to take the idea of submitting to a husband, a father or the pastor himself.  If we give men this kind of absolute power over us, that power will absolutely lead to our demise. 

Please don't read me as saying all Christian or Southern Baptist men are evil abusive people.  I absolutely do not believe that.  I know though, from personal experience, that the well is poisoned and far too many of those men buy into the idea that women were placed on this Earth solely for the purpose of fulfilling the needs of men.  They take the term "Help Meet" from Genesis and decide it means "servant."  Should a woman have dreams and goals of her own, or is her number on goal in life to help her husband achieve his dreams and goals?  His "calling" if you will.  Is servitude to men and children really the only valuable contribution we can make to the world, spiritually or otherwise?

How short are we selling our own worth when we adapt these kinds of ideas to our ONE CHANCE at life?

I've been around long enough to know that for every question I ask here, some Baptist will have a rationalization handy.  I too, was taught to have a scripture at the ready to combat any question someone might pose to me about what I believed when I was in the Baptist faith.  Those rationalizations backed by scripture taken out of historical and often spiritual context were burned into my brain.  You can come at me with them, but I've heard them all before.  My questions remain valid, your answers are not sufficient.

I feel right now like my thoughts are falling like rain drops--a deluge of their own, falling in useless puddles along the roadside.  Perhaps some of them will get someone's attention and persuade them to take a look past their own sunny path of belief, into the dark abyss of misery and despair they've helped to create in the name of God, or religion, or being Baptist above all else. 

It's getting late.  I have a busy day tomorrow, and so, so many more thoughts thundering around inside my head.  This post is the beginning, not then end.  It is not a mere statement of my opinion, it is a testament to my own experiences, and to the experiences of so, so many other women who find themselves forever changed by the abuse they've suffered at the hands and words of pastors, husbands, Sunday School teachers and "Christian" counselors.  There is more.   So, so much more and I want to share it all with you if you can be brave enough to turn your head just a little, and look at the darkness that exists in the same realm as the light in which you bask.  I ask you to accept, for just a while, that belief on its own is not enough.  I ask you to listen, try to understand a kind of pain and spiritual damage that seems unimaginable, but exists all the same, as a result of the religious teachings you've probably clung tightly to all your life.  I ask you to go on this journey with me, to examine the truth that exists outside your bubble of belief, and maybe even along the way, learn something profound about love.

I hope you can stick with me past the bright sunny sky of your belief, into the dark, stormy world of reality.

The Good Book

Sunday afternoons we sit on the porch and watch nature.  In the spring we watch baby rabbits hop around timidly, looking for tall grass or a shrub to hide under.  By Fall we'll find rabbits scarce.  The foxes will show up sooner or later, or the coyotes.  The little rabbits are easy prey for them.  Still, every Spring we see the little ones hopping about, proof positive that rabbits will probably never dwindle to extinction.

Mama usually sits on the porch swing with knitting on her lap.  She hums the hymn we sang at church earlier, just in fits and starts between short bits of commentary she offers on the latest church gossip.  Today she said, "Next week is Homecoming Dinner.  I wonder what I should make."  She went back to humming a few lines of "Just As I Am," then added, "I hope Betty Crowe don't bring that warm potato salad again.  I always end up gettin' a spoonful of that before I realize what I've gotten ahold of."

"Bible says ta eat at home."  Granny said.   Granny Jo is sort of  like the Holy Bible; you don't think about her much, but she's still always making you feel guilty about something.  She sits and rocks, back and forth, back and forth, seemingly in her own little world, but you can rest assured she hears every word that's said around here.  She wears her soft, thin gray hair in a tight little bun at the back of her neck.  The stretched out bobby pins sometimes show, though in the past she took care to assure they remained well-hidden among the waves of thick chestnut locks that once cascaded over her shoulders.  I know because a picture of her at about 23 sits on the mantle next to a picture of grandpa in his Navy uniform.  Grandpa died before I my birth, so I only know him through the stories Granny Jo and Daddy sometimes tell.  Lately, Granny Jo only speaks here and there.  She rarely even notices when Daddy starts telling one of her favorite stories about Grandpa.  Her feet just barely reaching the painted blue porch floor, she uses just her tiptoes to push off.  Her brown house slippers show signs of wear, just where her toes inside them make contact with the floor.  Mama said last Sunday it looked like Granny was going to need new slippers soon.

"She'll have em worn out again in a week." Daddy teased.

Nobody answered Granny Jo's remark.  It hung in the air for what seemed like a long time when Daddy spoke up to answer Mama.

"Well I think you aughtta make a coconut cake." Daddy said.  "Nobody ever makes coconut cake anymore."  Once in a while on Sunday he sits with his guitar, picking out little tunes as he stares off into space.  On this particular Sunday he sat motionless, his eyes darting back and forth across the field in front of him.  Once in a while he'd gaze up at the end of the driveway, like he was expecting company or something.

"Bible says if a man don't work, he aught not ta eat." Granny Jo stopped long enough to say before pointing her toes at the floor again, starting back into the slow, steady rhythm she prefers. 

Mama sighed, put down her knitting and looked down at me playing on the floor of the porch with my dolls.  I could feel her watching me.  I looked up at her and smiled and she smiled back.  "Child, you are outgrowin' all your Sunday dresses.  Look how short that dress is on her, Chuck.  We need to go shoppin' this week."

"Yeah," Daddy answered, not even glancing in my direction.

"Can I get a purple dress for Homecoming Sunday?" I asked Mama eagerly.

"Well sure you can!" She answered, "If we can find one."

"What if it costs too much?"  I asked, always aware of our humble means, I never wanted to ask for things that were out of my family's reach.

"I think we can manage one purple dress, darlin'. Don't you think we can, Chuck?"

"Of course we can, well I'll just rob a bank if I have to,." Daddy teased, still not averting his gaze.

"Thou shalt not steal!" We heard from Granny's side of the porch.  She spoke up with such force that we all finally looked in her direction.  Without rocking, she turned her head towards me and pointed her long finger, " And Bible says not to adorn yourself in costly array."

I looked at Mama to see if Granny was right.  Mama just looked back down at her lap and shook her head as she picked her knitting back up again.

After several minutes of silence passed.  The warm air of summer blew across the porch now and then, but as the sun made its way across the sky, the big water oak in the side yard fell out of its path, and the porch swing was soon invaded by its warmth.  With the sun shining on her back,  Mama sighed real loud and said to no one,  "Well the Bible also says that women aught ta dress modestly and she can't go around with her fanny shinin' in them dresses that are too little."

Granny Jo kept rocking.

"Yep." Said Daddy.

"It's gettin' hot out here." Said Mama. 

I kept playing with my dolls, imagining myself in my new purple dress with lace and frills.  As Granny Jo rocked I could feel the floor boards of the porch ripple beneath me.

Mama got up all of a sudden and threw her knitting work into a basket.  "I think I'll go get the dishes washed up." She announced.

"Alright." Said Daddy.

Mama went inside, letting the screen door slam behind her.  We listened as her Sunday shoes clip-clapped down the hall.  After her footsteps faded Granny looked over at Daddy and said kind of quiet, "Bible says ye aught not work on Sunday."

"She's just goin' to wash up the dishes, Ma." Daddy said back, not even looking up.

Granny stopped rocking for a few seconds, as she glanced in Daddy's direction, then she resumed her rhythm and the porch boards began their rippling again.

One person can change the mood of a lazy Sunday afternoon as quick as the summer sky can whip up a thunderstorm.  Feeling the tension build between everyone, I decided to go walk around in the yard barefooted.  It was May, after all, and the bare soles of my feet  had yet to feel the warm tickle of new spring grass or the still cool patches of dirt where the bare spots of our yard sat beckoning me to make mud pies.  I took off my Sunday shoes, tucked my lacy socks inside them and set them by the front door.  I felt the cool wood floor boards beneath my feet for a minute, still dipping in rhythm to Granny's rocking chair,  before I took off down the steps.

"Don't get your dress dirty, now." Daddy warned.  "You gotta wear that back to church tonight."

"Okay, I'll be careful." I promised.  Then I ran around the side of the house to see if the new kittens had opened their eyes yet.  Mama said I couldn't touch them until they did.

They were under the side of the house where, from my bedroom window, I could watch the mama cat come and go as she fed them.  I could hear them mewing sometimes during the night and I wondered if they might be cold out there all alone.  I'd pray for those kittens, "Lord, please don't let that black dog get the kittens tonight.  Please keep em warm and safe."  I guess I checked on them every day as much to see if the Lord was answering my prayers as anything.  They were tiny still, curled up on top of one another with the mama cat beside them, keeping watch.  I wanted to hold one so bad, but I just sat there on the ground watching them root around for their mama.

Eventually the damp ground began seeping through my clothes.  I  jumped up and felt the back of my dress.  It was a little wet.  I decided I'd go back to the porch and play dolls, hoping daddy wouldn't notice the red-clay stain on my rear end.

When I walked back up onto the porch Daddy asked me how the kittens were doing.  "They're still too little to hold." I told him, disappointed.

"They'll be weaned soon enough." He assured me.  Then you can play with them all you want, but don't you get your heart set on keepin' all them things."

"I won't," I said.  But I already knew if I begged hard enough he'd give in and let me  keep them all.

"Run get me my Bible." He commanded, finally  breaking his gaze from the treeline in front of him.

I tried to slip past him to the door so he couldn't see the back of my dress.

"Don't let that slam." He ordered as I successfully made it around him, hiding my mud-stained dress and opened the screen door.  "Your mama might be takin' a nap."

"She's washin' dishes." I reminded him.

"Well don't let it slam."

I felt relieved that I  made it inside without him seeing my dress.  I found his Bible on the table by his chair.  It felt heavy in my hands.  The edges of the pages were shiny silver when  when you closed it tight. I turned it over and looked at the cover, "Holy Bible," it read in gold lettering at the top, and then my daddy's name in smaller letters at the bottom, "Charles McKormick."  I carried the large book back outside to him and laid it on his lap.

"Here you go, Daddy." I said cheerily.

"Thank you sweet pea."  He patted me on the head and smiled.  Without even thinking I turned on my heel and went to pick up my dolls again.

"What's that on the back of your dress?" He asked me.

"Whatcha mean?"

"Is that mud on the back of your dress?  Was you on the ground watchin' them dang kittens again?"

"Yes sir." I said, my eyes downcast.

"Better go see if your mama can get that stain out.  You need to find a clean dress for church tonight."

"Can't I just put on some play clothes for now?" I pleaded with him.

"No.  You ain't wearin' no britches on Sunday!" He said emphatically.

"Okay. I'll go find another dress." I said.  I opened the screen door again, forgetting to let it close slowly.  "Snap!" it said behind me.  I felt sort of angry.  A child can never begin to understand the disparate rules of religion or society, especially as they relate to females.  I never understood why my cousins who were boys, could wear whatever they wanted to on Sunday afternoons, while I stayed trapped inside a dress, unable to climb or play or even get a little red clay on my butt.

"Girl, don't you be slammin' doors now!" Daddy hollered behind me as I hurried to the kitchen to find mama.

 Granny picked up on the tone in Daddy's voice.

"Bible says spare the rod, spoil the child." Said Granny Jo. "You aught not be afraid to put a switch to that girl." She added as I ran to Mama as fast as I could.

I found her in the kitchen whipping up a banana pudding for after church later.  "Don't tell your granny I'm cookin'." She whispered with a grin.

"I won't!" I whispered back.

"I got my dress dirty." I told her.  She spun me around so she could see the red-clay stain.

"Well we should have put play clothes on you after church anyway."

"But Daddy said I can't wear britches on Sunday."

"What Daddy don't know won't hurt him." She said, shaking her head.  "Go put on some britches and go out the back door and play. And don't let your Granny see you."

I spent the rest of that afternoon wandering around outside.  I waded in the creek, climbed a tree, went up into the loft of the barn in my bare feet and sat there with my legs dangling over the edge for a while.  I checked on the kittens two more times, but they still had their eyes closed tight.  "Lord, please make em open their eyes tomorrow." I prayed.

As the sun crossed over the peak of our house and the grass under my dirty feet grew cooler, I heard Mama calling me back in to get ready for Sunday evening service.  Daddy and Granny were still sitting on the porch when I came sneaking in the back door.

"Heavens to Betsy!" Mama exclaimed.  "What in the world have you been doin' all day?  How does a girl get so dirty?"

"I don't know, Mama." I said."I just play is all."

"Go get in the tub." She said in a low voice.  "Before your daddy comes in here and catches you in them britches."

I took off.  I ran myself a bath and got in.  I washed my feet and my belly and arms, then got out to dry off.  Mama came in with my clean dress just as I was reaching for the towel.

"I think you forgot to wash something." She teased,  as she picked up a washcloth and roughly scrubbed my face clean.

Freshly dressed in my rescued Sunday dress and shiny shoes again, I grabbed my little white Bible and headed out the front door with Mama.

"Time for church." I announced.

Daddy was asleep with his Bible lying open on his lap.  Granny Jo was rocking a little slower.

"Where'd the day go?" Daddy asked as he stretched and closed the Good Book.  "Guess we better get going. We don't want to be late for prayer meetin'. "

"Bible says forsake not the assemblin' of yourselves together." Said Granny Jo, looking proud of herself for remembering that one.

Granny Jo hadn't been to church in so long I didn't remember ever seeing her on a pew, but every Sunday my folks invited her anyway.

"You goin' with us tonight?" Mama asked.

"No." Said Granny Jo.  "I reckon I'll just stay here.  Bible says women aught to be keepers at home."

"Alright then, " mama said rolling her eyes.  "Don't sit out here after dark.  You'll catch cold."

"Yep." Said Granny.

We drove off to church, Granny still rocking on the porch, the sunset falling low behind us in the rear view mirror.  Mama hummed a little bit of "Just as I am," before she said, "I wonder if Martha Coggins is gonna be wearing that skirt around her hips again tonight.  I wish she'd pull that thing up to her waist where it belongs."

"Yep." Said Daddy, rolling down his window.

In the back seat, I stared at my white Bible on my lap as the wind from Daddy's open window blew my hair into my face.  I wondered if someday I might know as much about what the Bible says as Granny Jo.  I decided that even if I did, I'd keep it to myself.

Mama hummed a few more bars.  Daddy reached over and patted her knee.

"Lord sure gave me a good wife." He said.  "Not many find a woman like you that honors and obeys her husband."'

Mama glanced at him and gave a faint grin, as Daddy reached over and took her hand. 

"Lord sure is good." Daddy said.

"Yep." Said Mama, expressionless, as she gazed out the windshield at the road ahead.