Sunday Afternoons at Grandma's

I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana until we moved to Arkansas when I was ten. I remember two things the most from those years: the humidity and going to my Mammaw's. As a kid, I always sensed tremendous tension between the parental units and my grandparents, but had no clue as to the problem. I was of mixed feelings. On the one hand, I wanted to go, be free of my mother's craziness, to be in a place that smelled of yeast rolls and sugar cookies. On the other hand, my grandmother's silences, hard work, and distance from emotion created a difficult, unnerving environment. I was pretty sure she loved me, but I never seemed to live up her exacting standards. Poppaw was easy. He just loved me. The warm crinkles of his eyes stays with me to this day. As a teen, Mammaw's neighbor, of no relation but called Mammaw Haynes, explained that sometimes love is doing. Rhubarb pie, blackberry jelly, and strawberry jam meant love. Hmmm... I'm a compulsive over eater. Go figure.

These stones used to literally just be lay
out in the fields. Folks gathered them for
fences and the outside of houses.

We were expected for Sunday dinner every week. My grandfather bought the one room house when he married Mammaw. Year by year he added rooms, using Indiana limestone on the outside. Eventually my Mammaw had a three bedroom, two bathroom home with a formal dining room where the family gathered on Sundays. Because I often spilled jelly on the Sunday tablecloth, I had waxed paper under my plate. It was convenient to draw on with the blunt end of my fork while dinner plates were removed and rinsed, and desert was brought to the table.

A year or so before we moved, things changed. In later years I heard stories of my grandmother's meddling and intrusiveness. I'll never really know how much was Daddy's resistance to anyone having a say over my mother and me. Or how much was my mother's mental illness. Or how much was religion, when daddy took mother and me from the family Methodist church where I sat between my parents or grandparents on Sundays, to the austerity of the Church of Christ. I certainly enjoyed Mammaw's yeast rolls over the cafeteria food and conversation of those church people on Sunday afternoon. Indeed, that year or two before we moved to Arkansas were the only years I remember my parents being social. My mother went to the hospital once or twice for her "nervous stomach" but she was relatively stable and we as a family seemed normal to the outside world.

When we moved to Arkansas I mourned yeast rolls and rhubarb pie. I didn't miss the coldness and the undertones of the house. But I dreaded, when I went back two weeks in the summer, returning to Arkansas where things had gotten really crazy. I tried, desperately, to tell my grandparents how wrong things were. I gave up when I was instructed to stop talking bad about my mother. Now I suspect that my grandparents couldn't tolerate their own powerlessness.

Put those thoughts on back the burner.

For the last two Sundays, Cameron and I have been going to church and then taking food to her parents since her father broke his shoulder. I am a convenience freak, and would not normally get up early on a Sunday morning to prepare a casserole before church to carry it to a family member. Hell, I wouldn't normally have a family member to carry a casserole dish to. Let's be honest, the parental units are 700 miles away, as is the youngest son. The eldest son doesn't speak to me. So Cameron's family is the nearest family I have.

Put that on the back burner.

Last night Cameron and I attended dinner and the theatre as guest of his brother and sister-in-law. Every year we pick the show, and as a Christmas present they take us out. Last night we saw Foxfire, which is about family and one's land, and roots. It struck deeply for me. I have no roots. They were torn from the ground and shaken when I was ten, poisoned by mental illness and over thirty moves in my lifetime. My family is distant, divided, or deceased. Yet there I sat with my partner and adopted family, accept and loved.

Put it all together and stir the pot.

Family Reunion
Cameron is in the shorts, I'm in the yellow shirt

On our way home this evening, I realized how much I miss what might have, should have, or imperfectly was. Aunts, uncles and cousins that gathered at those Sunday dinners. Forth-of-July family reunions and wedding anniversaries. Cameron's family has graciously given those gifts back to me. Last summer we gathered -- check out the picture. Huge family gathering and the only person not entirely aware of our "gayness" was Cameron's dad, who chooses not to acknowledge it. Cam and I are conspicuously together on the left side.

So going to church today, taking the in-laws food, was a delightful echo of years gone by. The should have, could have, would have of the past coalesced into something imperfect but beautiful, treasured and delightful. I actually spent the week planning the menu: veggie pie, slow cooked chicken, Saltine Toffee and Crispy Salted Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies.

I'm feeling daring. I think next week will be Sunday Sausage, Apple, and Cheese Strata and I want to try NILLA Tiramisu Cookie Balls.

Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors. NOT

Disclaimer. I am about to bash a Methodist Church. Let it be known that this experience was exclusive to the church where we went Sunday. We have had the opposite reaction at another Methodist Church ten miles away.

The original intent had been open hearts, open minds, open hands. As Peter DeGroote points out in his blog,

The decision was to replace “open hands” with “open doors,” thereby sabotaging purpose, clarity, and effectiveness. Church doors were already open; the question was (and is) how people were treated once they got inside. “Open hands” dealt with human community, “open doors” with public access to a building (the corrupting influence of mixed metaphors!

Cameron and I certainly ecountered the open door/closed hand this weekend. Light is visiting us this weekend, kindly helping us with major reorganization of our home, and we promised to take her to church Sunday. We were headed thirty miles south to our Episcopalian church, when I suddenly took a left hand. Since the door was metaphorically slammed on Cameron, she has never gotten photos of her murals for her portfolio. Light has a professional grade camera and will soon be photographing Cameron's work for an upcoming website. Without any pre-thought, I turned, we parked, we entered. Sunday school was going to be begin about ten or fifteen minutes. I figured the bustle would mask my intent.

I had forgotten just how breathtaking her work is there. She has a temple scene where Mary and Joseph are presenting baby Jesus. Simon is about to take Joseph and child to the inner court. My favorite: the prophetess Anna is about to take Mary to the women's court. Spiritual mentor between women is a powerful, but forgotten, theme of this text. I stood and wept at the beauty of the work, and the power of the Crone/Mother image.

Cameron had been greeted by the youth director, who made us welcome but quickly had to excuse herself to go put out fires. Another woman followed, who was intensely uncomfortable with me. Maybe it was pentacle. Maybe it was because she knows I am Cameron's partner. The minister quickly appeared, once she left, although I only learned his identity later. He made Light and I horribly, horribly uncomfortable and seemed intent on seeing us out the door as quickly as possible. It was a terrible, terrible experience and I was horrified.

When we got to our own church, hugged and welcomed by Father Mike and Mother Linda, made welcome by friends we hadn't seen in several months of an intense schedule, the stark contrast made me painfully aware of the contrast between the churches. It finally struck me that had that Methodist minister been doing his job, he might have introduced himself, made us welcome, invited us to the service. Or any one of a number of other people!

A few months ago Cameron came across the last check this same church had issued her several years before. In the chaos of the time, she had neglected to cash it -- about $250. Enough to have made a big difference in our current circumstances. She contacted the church, they assured her that it could be replaced by a current check. She took the old one, they said come back the next day for the new one. When she went to pick it up, Cameron learned that the minister had stopped the issuance of the new check...there's more to the story of this minister, but it's Cameron's to tell.

It breaks my heart that a supposedly open minded church could be so rejecting. I still have my membership placed with a Methodist church in Atlanta. I think its time I write a letter to move it, but also to those higher up. I am disillusioned by the church of my early childhood that I had held so dear to my heart.