My earliest memory of Dad’s church is autographing the Order of Service. A pastor’s kid knows not to call the paper the usher hands out a “program.” because worship is not the circus. (One hopes, anyway.) With a pencil taken from the hymnal rack behind the pew, I scrawled my name over and over again, practicing for when I was famous. After all, everyone in the sanctuary knew my name.
Ms. Joyce knew every child in Sunday school. She told us that God delighted in making the yellow daffodils for us. But, since they were growing outside our classroom, we should leave them in the ground so that adults could enjoy them, too. We took this seriously because Ms. Joyce took us seriously. When she taught the lesson, she would sit on the floor and look at you through her round, owl-eye glasses. Her hair was pulled into a rather severe bun, but she smiled easily. “Jesus” was always a good answer; but if you raised your hand and asked a question, Ms. Joyce would first respond, “Good thought!” This caused you sit up a little straighter, even if you didn’t know Noah from, say, Adam.
I’ll never forget all those annual church yard sales when it always rained yet never dampened the spirits of the faithful, who lugged their basement junk from their cars to the folding tables. The loaves and fishes that fed the five thousand; the handheld radios and flower pots that balanced the church budget. And Ms. Joyce would give each child a new-to-you toy like a Superman figurine or the green plastic Army gun that Mom would make you give back.
Remember how strange and vaguely upsetting it was to see your kindergarten or first-grade teacher out in public? We thought that person could only exist in front of the familiar chalkboard and never in the grocery aisle. Like cereal, we like people in boxes. During the rest of the week, Ms. Joyce ran a plumbing company with her husband and, just last month, my father’s church’s parking lot was filled with trucks, pick-ups that had pipes and plungers standing at attention in the beds. The joke was that the city had better shut off the main water valve, for no matter the plumbing emergency, none of the workers were leaving Ms. Joyce’s funeral. I came to find out that those dozens of burly, heavily tattooed men with Old Testament beards who filled up a third of the sanctuary all called her Mama. I spoke with one of them in the fellowship hall after Dad’s benediction. His beefy hand was loading up a dainty china plate with a leaning tower of crackers and cheese. “Yeah, I sure gone miss, Mama. She made you feel special, you know?”
Walking to my car, I carried my Order of Service. Yellow daffodils were smiling at me. And, yeah, I knew.
ANDREW TAYLOR-TROUTMAN is pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church, a congregation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and has a certificate in narrative healthcare. His recent essays have been published online at Mockingbird and his poetry at Bearings. He and his wife, Ginny, have three children.