Trish and Gene’s wedding was the family event of the decade, held at Chapowee Methodist Church with Kirk – drop dead handsome in clergical robe – officiating and Pastor Cheshire assisting. Our small home church packed out until we set extra chairs along back and side walls. It was a beautiful ceremony, during which I, matron of honor, wept quietly as my little sister became a woman before my eyes.

Beside ring bearer Toby stood my little sister Lynette – our little caboose, as Dad called her, springing up unexpectedly as Anne approached mid-life. Of course, Anne was elated and after Daddy moaned over it a spell, he perked up and decided to celebrate the tiny one’s arrival, only a year after Toby’s appearance. Today, the four- and five-year-old duo were on their best behavior in small white tux and long daffodil-yellow dress.

“Get everything moved in?” I asked, hugging Trish at the reception. Gene’s present pastorate moved them fifty miles away, near the North Carolina state line.

She waved at guests. “Real country, Sis,” she said. “Like Podunk. But I love the people.”

“Least you don’t have to be fully dressed to walk out on the porch for the newspaper.”

Trish winked and flashed her dimples. “Your kids love it from what I hear.”

“What’s not to love with highway-to-highway asphalt church property that adjoins the parsonage yard? It’s a hangout playground for every kid within a mile-and-a-half radius. Oh! Don’t forget the basketball goals near the youth building.” I snorted. “Course the kids love it. I don’t see them till supper. Even nighttime doesn’t drive them in – night lights and all.”

Trish crossed her eyes and bucked her teeth. “Duh! What means night lights?”

I sniggered. Trish’s abode was in the sticks where, if you struck a match, it would be seen for miles about. “Still,” I sighed, “I love your quiet little setting.”

“Tell you what,” she deadpanned. “I’ll trade places. Just say when. Anyway,” she gently cuffed me on the shoulder, “you’re hardly ever home these days, school gal.”

“Yeah,” Cole, my not-so-little brother at fourteen, appeared at my elbow. “How you likin’ college, Sis?” His long arms snaked around my shoulders.

“Love it, honey.” I hugged him soundly, this strapping six-foot-two baby of mine. Till this day, I refer to Cole as “my baby” and he simply smiles that warm, warm smile of his that reaches to his gray-blue eyes, turning them into shimmery half-moons. Anne’s smile. Warm, rich auburn highlights his chestnut hair and he’s one of the most adorable hunks of family I have.

“You going to Hopewell Community College?” he asked. I nodded, moved, as usual, to see him. Immediately, his current girlfriend whisked him away.

“I feel a little guilty, sometimes, I enjoy it so much, Trish,” I confessed.

“You shouldn’t,” Trish quickly took my hand. “You deserve this, Neecy. Don’t you worry your sweet head over those kids.” She grinned wickedly. “They’re glad for the space.”

“Yeah. Toby loves kindergarten. Rules the roost, quote Miss Alta. Wish my little Krissie were as resilient.”

“She still down?”

“’Fraid so. Kirk and I talked with all four of her teachers about matters and – I sense Krissie’s got them pegged right.”

Trish’s mouth flat lined and her eyes turned a rare stormy gray. “How dare they.”

“Yeah – they all have a militant mentality – like the school is somehow special and above the ordinary, you know? We – Kirk and I, put the kids in private Christian School because we thought they would get emotional and spiritual nurturing. Krissie’s become a casualty. Poor thing. She’s so – defenseless, Trish – wants to please so badly and now, instead of one teacher, she has four to please. It’s all too, too much for her.”

More wedding guests swept in. I started to move away, but Trish surreptitiously took my arm as she bade others good-bye. “Don’t leave, Sis,” she hugged me again. “We’ve got to catch up. I miss seeing you all along.”

“Me, too.”

“Oh Heather,” she called, “come here, honey.”

Heather, who adored her Aunt Trish, rushed over, looking much more mature than her twelve years. Nearly as tall as me, she’d filled out quite nicely while her face elongated into an attractive oval that framed astonishing sea-green eyes set below burnished chestnut hair that could have, curled, rivaled that of the new Charlie’s Angel star Farrah Fawcett. Of course, Heather wanted hers perfectly straight. Heaven forbid she look different than any other twelve-year-old on Planet Earth in 1971.

Trish hugged her warmly. “You played beautifully today, Heather. I’m so proud of you.” I felt so undergirded by her love for my child, whom she’d helped me raise in those early years. Trish, who baked cakes to celebrate each family member’s birthday when I couldn’t even remember all the birthdays. Who followed Heather’s musical progress with as much zeal as I, asking for a recital during visits, settling back in a La-Z-Boy, truly listening.

“Where’s Krissie?” Trish asked suddenly. “I haven’t seen her since before the ceremony.” Heather went to get her and soon returned, where Trish and Gene still greeted lagging guests.

Krissie, ten, had evolved from the cherubic stage into a thinness that bordered skinny, looking wonderfully chic in the long sunny-yellow junior bridesmaid dress. Still flaxen-haired with eyes the color of a clear summer day, she was bypassing the awkward stage. At least outwardly.

“Now,” Trish took her petite hands, drawing her close for an intimate exchange, “What’s this I hear about you calling yourself a dummy?”

“We-ell,” she divulged quietly, blushing furiously, “sometimes, I feel like a dummy – ”

“Say! That’s my niece you’re talking about there, Kiddo.” Trish rolled her eyes devilishly down at Krissie, “talk about dummy, you shoulda seen me when I – ”

I turned away to search out Kirk, entrusting my girls to my sister. Trish, dear Trish, whose gift it is to enter another’s world, to blend as comfortably with a two-year-old as one ninety, never requiring one to leave their turf.

Hers is an entirely selfless existence. Already, Krissie’s battered little spirit buoyed.

I’d recently looked over her assignments and found them difficult for me, a college student and felt angry that such responsibility be heaped on Krissie’s small shoulders. “They don’t like me, Mama,” she said with dead certainty.

“Why do you think they don’t like you?” I asked, understanding.

“’Cause when I raise my hand to answer the things I do know, they ignore me. They never call on me in class.” Her wounded gaze tore at my heart.

At the next PTA meeting, Kirk and I had made a point of talking with each teacher to relay Krissie’s insecurities. Each expressed concern, but I’d not yet seen a dramatic turnaround in my daughter’s self-image. The bruising left her feeling unlovable.

“You’re a bright little girl, honey,” I reassured her afterward.

Krissie, being Krissie, never talked back. She was too kind and respectful to overtly disagree, but I could see it in the deep blue lagoons: she didn’t believe me.

Hopewell Methodist Church sported many musicians, which pleased me immensely because, finally, I could be a regular church person. Well, almost. Thanks to those of the latest flock, I now knew I would never, in ecclesiastia, be just a person. Here, as in other churches, I perceived that many regarded me as an appendage of my dear husband, Kirk.

Hopewell’s personality – oh yes, churches do have personalities – differed from Possum Creek’s in that while the latter kept Kirk humble at first, making him earn their respect, Hopewell cheered him in with something like a hero’s welcome, leaving me behind in a puff of perfume-bouquet, reverting back to the invisible fly on the ceiling.

I felt distinctly jerked around. No Ma McKonna lurked on the sidelines here, waiting it out to see if I was genuine. Nobody seemed to care one way or another when it came to the pastor’s wife. Their set-in-motion lives easily accommodated the new pastor, who fit neatly into the recently vacated puzzle space. I suspected that to squeeze me in would somehow throw their smooth life flow off course.

Not so different from me, BP – before the pastorate.

I learned another connotation term – PK. Preacher’s Kids. Nobody had a problem with Krissie. Sweet little Krissie with open face and innocence, whose gentleness and reaching-outness touched anybody with a pulse, had no problems. Heather, too, with a new maturity and talent and just plain brilliance, had little difficulty beyond feeling stereotyped as that nice preacher’s daughter, which, she admitted later, made her want to do something publicly obscene at times, something so outrageous and scandalous that the flock would see her, really see her.

Now Toby, he was another matter. Precious little Toby – with his shocking tow-thatch of hair, perpetually nosy gray-blue orbs, busy-busy hands and feet – had a rare propensity to rattle nerves.

“Let me take him home for one week,” teased Brother Holmes, an old retired minister who’d settled in at Hopewell Methodist, “and I’d straighten him out for you.” The white haired geyser’s jaw-splitting grin was undermined by a purely malevolent gleam behind watery, mud-colored eyes.

Yeah, right! I resurrected my Pastor-wife’s smile. While Toby was, I conceded, perpetual motion and racket, he was a good boy. Like Krissie, his affliction was not of choice but of genetics, his being boundless effervescence, like Kirk’s – Krissie’s being a gentle vulnerability, from her mother’s pool. Trouble was, few of the flock took the time or trouble to get past Toby’s liveliness to glimpse the generous little fellow who was unerringly polite and helpful in all things.

Until Jessica Montgomery burst on the scene. My one regret is that we had but one year with this stoical woman whose affliction – a lovely brain-damaged daughter named Deborah – redefined blessing to me. A widower, Jessica had decided to retire from teaching in Hopewell to be near her ailing ninety-year-old mother, who was now deceased.

The church service had just begun when a commotion commenced outside in the foyer. A loud raucous voice boomed, “No way! Shut up, Mama! You stupid.”

Kirk didn’t miss a beat in his commentary, but I saw puzzlement brush his features.

“Reading from Matthew nineteen, verses thirteen and fourteen: ‘Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them and pray: and the disciples rebuked him….’”

Cr-rash. The sanctuary doors burst open and in a flash, a young woman appeared halfway up the aisle, where she rooted, twisting the bangs of her shorn pecan-brown hair, gazing curiously about her at the sea of strange faces. “Ma-Ma-a-a!” she bellowed at the top of her lungs in a voice not unlike a hoarse, low-pitched trumpet.

Crrraa-ash burst the doors again, ushering in a handsome middle-aged woman who, though hastening, carried herself with queenly dignity. “Deborah, come with me,” she commanded in a gentle yet firm tone. Deborah, spiraling her twig and peering about, didn’t resist when the woman took her hand and tugged her toward a back pew. There, amid the still, shocked silence, the two women settled on a seat.

At least, the older woman settled. Deborah began to mumble and fidget.

Kirk, master of denial, quickly resumed his message, his mellow voice riding shotgun over the corncob rough bellowing, “Stop, Mama. No way.”

“Deborah,” came the even, genteel reply, “we’re in church now. Let’s sit quietly.”

“I’m hungry,” was Deborah’s final roar. The mumbling ebbed away.

Kirk, unruffled, lifted his hand, “’But Jesus said, suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’”

Jessica and Deborah had entered our lives.

Hopewell Community College presented me a bright new frontier. It also filled hours made lonely by Kirk’s duty-absences and the children’s schooling. With Toby in kindergarten, my nest sat unoccupied until mid-afternoon. Second semester had me on campus until five, thus throwing me into a tailspin over what to do with my rambunctious lad.

Jessica Montgomery approached me in the vestibule between Sunday School and Worship Service. “I’ll be most happy to watch after Toby while you’re in school, Janeece,” she informed me.

I shifted my feet on the burgundy vestibule carpet and stared at her, puzzled. “How – ?”

“I overheard the Pastor discussing it with Mr. Hardy, the Lay Leader. Am I correct in assuming you need someone to care for Toby between the hours of twelve and five?”

“Ahh – yes. But you have your hands full with – ”

“Quite full, but I believe I can rout out space for a small tyke.” She waited for my response with a dignity unparalleled in my pastor’s wife experience, maintaining a fidget-free silence.

I blinked and cleared my throat, unfamiliar with such up-frontness in the South’s heartland, where genteel beatingaround-the-bush prevails. “I won’t be able to pay much but – ”

“Pay? I would not require payment to mind Toby, Janeece. Shall I begin Tuesday? I have to take Deborah in for a checkup with her doctor that morning. After that, I’ll be free to pick him up at his school.”

“Actually, Mrs. Montgomery – ”

“Please call me Jessica.”

“Jessica – the girls get home about three thirty to see after him.”

She looked at me down her well-shaped nose and I glimpsed the beauty of her prime. Seventyish, she still cut a striking figure with her full, short-cropped salt and pepper waves, olive complexion and clear whiskey colored eyes. “Are you saying you want me to pick him up and then drop him off at your house after the girls get home?”

“Well – uh, if you’re sure it’s not too much – ”

“All right. I’ll pick Toby up Tuesday at twelve o’clock if you’ll just write down directions to his school.”

Her succinct decisiveness, I learned, was what gave Jessica the edge on life. She was not a shoot-from-the-hip person, merely intuitive, seasoned with a wisdom that astounded me. Deborah’s affliction, I’d learned by now, resulted from the undiagnosed RH blood factor during her birth. By the time it was discovered and transfusions administered, the infant’s brain was severely damage. Jessica did not bear more children because her husband died in an accident when Deborah was only two.

Fortunately, Jessica’s widowed mother helped with her granddaughter during those years, enabling Jessica to teach until her retirement some years back. Deborah’s favorite activities were watching cartoons, drawing and coloring pictures. Her least favorite things were crying babies, rowdy youngsters and arguments of any kind.

“Deborah reacts emotionally to things we only want to react to,” Jessica once explained. “Her colorful language, she picks up from her comrades at Flatland Skills, with whom she works three days a week. Since she has no inhibitions, she just simply has a go at it. She does okay if things move smoothly, but if anything unexpected happens, she reacts.” She chuckled, leaving the reacts open-ended.

After she departed with directions in hand, I had second thoughts. Toby and Deborah?

Deborah’s tolerance for noise is non-existent. I rolled my eyes upward, then squeezed them shut. And Toby is clamor seeking opportunity. Oh, well, I squared my shoulders and took my front pew seat, Jessica seemed confident things would work out so I would simply release them into her capable hands. Then breathe a fervent prayer.

During our Hopewell Church days, the phone rang incessantly and Kirk’s motto was to ‘be instant in season and out of season” with emphasis on instant. He vanished with sleight-ofhand ease to serve the flock. At times, I felt the old stirring of placelessness but attributed it to my being so busy and constantly en route from one study to another. The busy-ness, I think, kept me from dwelling on the notion that Kirk was distancing more from me. Bottom line: his springy step said he was reaching a pinnacle that I, alone, could not give him.

I convinced myself I had a choice, that I could demand Kirk’s time and attention should I need it. I think on some level, I feared delving too deeply. On occasion, Kirk acknowledged that he placed his ministry before family.

“I don’t mean to, Neecy,” he said on one rare night at home, after the children were in bed. “It’s just that – if I’m not there when someone needs me, I will have let them down.”

“True,” I admitted, “folks don’t usually call unless there’s a real need.”

So, I sent him on his way with blessings and took care of the homefront, warmly content that he was a true man of God. And though I hungered for more of him, I knew that in the final crush, if ever – God forbid – it came down to a choice, Kirk would choose me.

I knocked on Jessica’s pristine white front door. From within the modest ranch-brick structure, quietness smote me. Presently, I heard brisk footsteps and the door swung open.

“Come in, Janeece,” Jessica smiled and stepped back, pulling me inside with the momentum of her warmth. “Deborah and Toby are out back on the patio having some refreshments. It’s been such a nice, sunny day, I thought they’d enjoy a picnic outside.” She talked as she walked, focused and purposeful and with a grace that made me feel klutzy. “Here,” she pulled out a patio chair for me to join my son and his friend, “Have some cookies and lemonade.”

Toby sprang to his feet, then remembering Deborah’s propensity to react to undue stimuli, slowly took her hand and asked very nicely, “would you like to go exploring with me? I heard something in that bush over there. It might be a big – ” Mentally checking himself again, Toby shrugged, “just a little old bird or somethin’. Wanna look?”

Deborah looked blankly at him for a long moment and then, seeing his curiosity peaking, got awkwardly to her feet, shook loose of his small hand and, twisting her twig of hair, trailed him to Jessica’s tiny evergreen garden.

“They’re getting along well,” said Jessica, looking pleased.

“Thank you,” I said without forethought.

She gazed at me. “For what?”

“For taking on my little rambunctious guy.”

Jessica reared back and laughed, a sound that rolled from her like stringed alto arpeggios. Once loose, her mirth was as unfettered as her decorum. “Janeece – think about what you just said.” She peered at me and cut loose again with laughter.

“No way!” Deborah bellowed from where Toby crouched over shrubbery, his stick probing and separating leaves. She rocked from one foot to the other in her baggy jeans and big loose blouse – she abhorred garments hugging her skin – holding her bang-twig, scowling at Toby, fighting her own burgeoning inquisitiveness.

“Look, Deborah,” Toby squealed, then immediately lowered his voice, “look, will ya?”

Deborah slid one sensibly shoed foot forward and stretched her lean body to view Toby’s discovery, a green frog that leaped from obscurity, then frantically away from the two voyeurs.

Toby punctuated his belly laugh with three somersaults.

Deborah flung back her head, arched her back and poked out her lips into a huge donut that emitted excited huffs of soundless glee. “Huhhh! Huhhh! Huhhh!” Red-faced, she lumbered about in zigzagging circles, shaking and flailing her hands in the air as though freeing them of some invisible, burning liquid. She spewed energy and what I recognized as joy. This was Deborah’s celebration, this silent ritual of exuberance.

It moved me profoundly, bringing both tears and laughter.

Jessica and I looked at each other through mists of wonder.

The unlikely pair: Toby and Deborah, actually taming each other. Who’d have ever thought it? And gazing at my friend Jessica, who found humor and joy in a life that limited her horizons, I felt ashamed of every complaint I’d ever uttered.

The phone rang. It was Mollie Pleasant, Callie’s mother. “I got a letter from Callie today,” she said. “You asked me to get with you when I heard from her.”

Mollie went on to tell me that Callie was divorcing her current husband Joe, number three, whose ready-made family of three children had unexpectedly delighted my old buddy. Unfortunately, Joe’s drinking brought out his darker side and Callie had sustained much abuse before throwing in the towel. I thanked Mollie for calling and hung up, reeling.

Callie – abused? I had to sit down.

What had happened to my spirited friend who called all the shots?

I’d gleaned from mutual friends that Callie had, through the years, developed a drinking problem. She’d always seemed so – smart. Yet, Callie’s insatiable quest for thrills had always overrun reason. I felt a stirring of anger. At her. At it, the demon that drove her. In the next heartbeat, an incredible sadness swallowed it up.

Ours had been a unique closeness, Callie’s and mine. Polar opposites, we’d posed no threat one to the other and when we shared, it was wholeheartedly and with love unconditional.

And with the next breath, I knew I still felt that way about my friend. I loved her. Period. Didn’t matter what she’d done: she was still Callie.

I rummaged for my stationery and began to write her a letter. I poured out my concern and care, relating to our younger days and my talk with her mother. I poured out my aspirations for her well-being and her spiritual safety. Tears dripped onto the pages and by the time I finished and sealed the envelope, I felt drained.

I felt peace.

A festive Farewell Service packed out the sanctuary. Wonderful food smells wafted from the fellowship hall, where the gathering would convene for a covered dish luncheon. I looked around. Heather sat with the pre-teens and Toby with Jessica and Deborah. I occupied my front-pew seat, growing more misty-eyed by the moment because, despite the less than affectionate start for me at Hopewell Methodist Church, I’d bonded to this flock as surely as to the one at Possum Creek. Time can heal most things, I’d learned during those long months there. Just love folks and give them time: they’ll come around.

Krissie quietly slipped into the seat beside me, followed by her carrot-topped friend Sandy. My little shadow, I thought. Krissie always opted to be near me and I found myself, at times, nudging her to reach out to others her age, to assert herself into their circles, but shyness held her back. How I understood. I reached for her hand and squeezed it, a thing that would have mortified Heather before her friends.

Heather. I covertly watched my oldest swapping notes with pals, avoiding my gaze, like she didn’t know me. Two sides of the coin she was: one side a stranger who detested me, the other, a misty-eyed woman-child who, in rare, private times, told me how wonderful I was, how beautiful. I smiled and faced the front again, thinking how she’d never admit it to her peers, even under torture. Thinking, too, how nothing I did came off right in her estimation. I’d slid from being her whole world to being a big fat zero. It was as though she’d launched off to Teen-Planet where nobody spoke my language and only barely acknowledged my alien-existence. But everybody with teens told me it was only a phase. I wished it would zip by more quickly. I missed my daughter.

Andrea Smith finished her solo selection, one of Kirk’s favorites, Beulah Land,

and I thought of how fortunate Hopewell was with several trained pianists, singers and musicians. I thought of how Andrea, proper, musically accurate Andrea, was offended when, at a chain-gang prison service, one inmate had asked her to sing Just a Little Talk with Jesus and she’d told him she couldn’t sing such a song. Such an undignified, irreverent composition went against her conscience.

Dear, dear, I now imagined how that inmate must have felt in the face of such snobbery. Why, Lizzie would have shook the rafters with her rendition and had ‘em dancing in the aisles.

I checked the program. The final presentation was a processional with flags, escorting Kirk from the sanctuary to the place of honor in the fellowship hall. The organ rumbled and the piano chimed strains of Charles Wesley’s O For A Thousand Tongues to sing my great redeemer’s praise, and majestic banners swept past, borne by a color guard consisting of church elders.

“Ahh, Crap!” Deborah bellowed, springing to her feet and charging down the aisle, her red face rampant with mutiny.

“Deborah, come back,” Jessica commanded and with Toby shadowing her, pursued.

“Deborah,” Toby wailed, scuttling past Jessica, “Don’t be scared.”

“Stupid! Stupid! – ” came Deborah’s foghorn-trumpet howl as she collided with elder Ben Johnson, who, flag and all, went crashing into a pew, knocking Doris Hepplehoff’s new hat askew and drawing a screech of either pain or shock from deacon Silas Tate, who mostly napped through services.

Deborah froze mid-aisle, except for fingers twisting her twig, her mien one of scowled bewilderment.

“It’s okay,” Toby took her hand and patted it. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m hungry!” howled Deborah, her nose slightly sniffing the aromatic smells. “I wanna eat.”

“Shhh.” Jessica took her daughter’s other arm and along with Toby, tugged her through the double doors into the vestibule. No real damage was done other than to Ben’s dignity, which recovered rather quickly. Doris set her hat aright, and Silas roused for lunch.

And more than at any other time, I felt truly at home there.